AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Never my whore, forever my woman.
Those words had meant something to me when he’d spoken them, if only for the bit of dignity they’d returned.
His silence stripped it away once more.
Chapter11
Enosh
“Why did you refuse me your promise not to run?”
After hours of silence, the question startled my woman enough that she hissed under the ache of her sore muscles. “Lying’s a sin, and I’ve piled up enough of those in the last month.”
“Had you given it, I may not have twisted your legs, little one. Maybe you could have escaped.”
For a while.
She shifted from one seat bone to the other. Hours on horseback had taken its toll on her flesh, but not once did she so much as whimper, as though leaving the Pale Court was worth the pain.
Feet wiggling whenever long strands of grass brushed along her ankles, lungs expanding wide when we passed fragrant flowers, a gentle smile lining her lips whenever a breeze wafted around us. When had her mortal body ever felt this light, this warm and alive in my arms?
Never.
Perhaps Orlaigh was right. I couldn’t lock her away between bone inside a kingdom as quiet and cold as death. It hadn’t always been like this. Winding staircases adorned with the most intricate motives, bridges spanned over statues so detailed you could see the veins of the animals they depicted, rooms appointed with the finest furniture… Ah, the Pale Court was a shadow of its former glory.
Because I’d made it so.
I had given an oath never to receive mankind’s bones again and look what it got me. My woman’s chain had been so short, a good part of the dais around my throne remained unpainted. How fine the other part looked with her vines and those delicate roses shedding their petals.
“You wouldn’t believe me anyway,” she said after a while. “If I have to be a whore, then at least I want to be an honest one.”
“I don’t recall ever paying you.” She shifted again, her muscles souring with shame, her bones growing heavy with guilt I failed to make sense of. “Why so much distress over a word?”
She shrugged, her gaze drifting toward a waterwheel that spun along a creek, the wings of the mill cutting the air. “A man is free to divorce his wife after three years of fruitlessness. Can even sell her to the whorehouse. John never did.”
I shifted sideways, clasping her chin to bring her gaze to mine. “Fruitlessness?”
“I never gave him a son, as is a woman’s purpose.” Her voice was so strangely thin compared to that bite she often carried. “To make it worse, I was the one who sent him for pinweedle moss. Healers say it cures a barren womb, you know. So up the falls he went to where it grows, only to hit his head and die. It’s my fault.”
Her fault?
Oh, my little naïve mortal. Her womb was neither cursed nor barren. Perhaps the only thing I would have rectified, no matter how I adored her imperfections, for she would carry my child, painting eternity with life and laughter. Giving me the purpose of a man instead of the ungrateful duty of a god.
But a babe in such a bare place…?
Oh, what a predicament.
“Is that why you’re so desperate to rest his bones, little one?”
She nodded. “It’s the least I owe him.”
“So devoted to a man who never claimed your heart?”
“It’s not the man I’m devoted to, but the promises I made before—” She stopped herself right then. “Well, you know. I swore an oath before a priest, vowing to be a good wife, and I intend to see it through in death, for I didn’t in life.”
“An oath before a false god.” All forgiven because she worshipped me so nicely when she kneeled by my feet, dozing off with her head on my lap while I stroked her soft hair. “And a pathetic act of guilt.”
She spun around, her blue eyes narrowed. “An act of duty and commitment. Not that I expect a god who abandoned his duty to understand its meaning.”
