AllFreeNovel
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“Just tired,” I said when he left town and followed a prattling creek toward an old mill. “I know I should probably have asked this last night but… once you rot John, can you give my father a message? Only that I’m well and that I don’t want him to worry.”
“You are correct, little one. You should have negotiated it last night.”
My shoulders slouched, but I could hardly blame him for my own stupidity. “How powerful are you, truly?”
“How do you mean?”
“You can spread rot and remove it, dull pain, alter flesh, and command bone. Sometimes the ground shakes. It did last night, twice, and the windows clattered at the tavern.”
“You have not even seen a glimpse of my power, mortal.”
What a terrifying thought. “Have you ever altered anything on me?”
“I have mended you, have I not?”
“Beyond that.”
He glanced down at me. “You have ten and two scars on your body, and I trace them while you sleep. Your heart does not beat as it ought to—it’s like a symphony to my ears that I could single out over the span of towns.”
“My mother died giving birth to me because of her weak heart.” Or so Pa had told me. “Where are we going?”
“To Anna.”
My fingers clenched at the unexpected answer. He remembered her name?
The horse hadn’t come to a stop when Enosh dismounted near the mill and pulled me down. “This will be quick.”
He announced himself with a kick against the door. Rusty hinges howled as it swung open, the stench of filth behind it nauseating.
Shrouded in dimness, figures shuffled, wood moaned, and a woman shrieked. It took my eyes a while to adjust. Anna’s father stood leaning with his hands on the table, something unreadable coming over a face wrinkled by hardship.
His hand slowly wandered to a knife protruding from a chunk of dried meat. “What is it you want with us?”
Enosh glanced around, his fingers digging into the feathers of my dress as his eyes landed on the musty corner. There, on a mat of straw, cowered the man’s wife, one eye swollen to little more than a red slit, the wounds on her neck glinting red against the sparse light from the dying embers in the hearth.
Anna leaned with her back against the wall, still again, neck and torso tied to the brick with filthy ropes. They stood in stark contrast to the new bow she wore atop her immaculate braid, red like the ribbon on her fresh dress.
Something inside me broke at the sight.
Enosh must have noticed because his thumb brushed along my arm as he carried me over to them, lowering me between a corpse and a woman only slightly more alive. Her jaw, the side of her neck, her collarbone… God’s bones, she carried more bite marks than I wanted to count.
“How blessed man is in his ability to surround himself with family,” Enosh said, reaching for the woman’s face but pulled back as she flinched. “You didn’t lie when you threatened to beat her close to death.”
“Turn her around if her ugly mug irks you,” the man sneered. “Sorn her arsehole all you want, then begone. We don’t want you here and that… black magic of—”
He choked on the rest at the sight of a corpse stepping into his home. Not just any corpse, but the man Enosh had killed earlier, his gaze now abandoned, his soul gone.
“Make a wrong move, mortal, and my servant will eat you alive.” Enosh broke the ropes around Anna with one finger and picked her up. “I’ll return for you in a moment.”
I dragged myself over the floor behind him, crooked legs kicking to propel me forward. “Where are you taking her?”
“What is he doing to my Anna?” Her mother helped me to my feet and, together, we left the musty home.
Shaky arms and unreliable legs carried me toward the ancient oak beside the creek, where Enosh stood with Anna lifeless on the ground beside him.
The woman wept, sinking to the ground, and tearing me down alongside her, but the noise faded under theshk-shkof a bone spade shoveling soil. My mouth turned dry.
Was he…?
