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I swallowed.
Looked forward to it, even?
Orlaigh cut my internal ramblings short when she stepped through the door, balancing a platter with bread and, from the sweetness of it, steamed pears. “Ach, lass, have a look.” Platter placed on my bed, she lifted her hands and wiggled ten immaculate fingers. “Not a speck of rot on me old bones. Whatever ye did to me Master, do more.”
I sensed my forehead wrinkle. “That’s an issue because I have no idea what I did, exactly.”
A hearty chuckle shook her chest. “Only taken the man as yer wedded husband.”
I quickly rose to wash between my legs, then slipped into my chemise, and took a warm slice of pear. “And gave a vow he doesn’t need. Enosh would’ve kept me locked here for eternity in any case, so what’s the difference?”
She placed her hand onto my shoulder, the touch cold but the gesture warm. “The difference, lass, is that me Master couldn’t make ye give a vow.”
Nothing bores me more than to make you.
One of his first words to me.
Well, he hadn’t looked all too bored when he’d made me swallow his seed or viciously fucked my arse. What difference did it make to him if I came at my own choosing, given how little effort it took him to make me? None. Not unless he actually cared about my opinion of him.
Or my feelings…
My stomach tumbled as I thought back on his brother’s offer.I will make her love you,he’d said.She’ll adore you. Enosh had responded with silence. Something I’d dismissed as arrogant indifference then, but what if it had been hesitation? If he had the very human desire of a mate and a child, what if he also desired to be loved?
My mouth turned dry.
Could I ever find affection for the heartless god?
No… not heartless.
Saying Enosh had neither heart nor compassion would have been a lie. The grave he’d dug for Anna, the pain in his eyes over a daughter lost, that he’d agreed to at least rot the children…
It worked on me.
Scraped away my hate one small kindness at a time, uncovering compassion for his pain and an understanding for how the curse damning our lands had come at the hands of mortals. Still, sympathy was a long way from love.
I devoured the slice of pear and turned to Orlaigh. “Tell me about Njala.”
She eyed me for as long as it took the old woman to shake the furs covering the bed. “Aye, I was there when the little lady came to this world. Nursed her moments later, then watched her grow. Bonny lass. The first proposal for marriage came when she was only thirteen summers old. Dinnae let me catch me breath either, shushing me about even as a wee thing.”
“Did she go with Enosh willingly?”
Orlaigh pursed her lips and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, eyes going adrift on bone before she turned her head and gave me a smile too tense to be sincere. “Ach, lass, as willingly as any daughter of any lord may go with any stranger he sees fit. A young thing, sixteen summers old, with her reputation stained because of how they found the lass in the stables with that bloody—” A thick swallow struggled down the rest before she rose, shaking the same furs yet again. “Years, a decade, centuries… dinnae even remember the lad’s name anymore. Ach, how the little lady cried when me Master brought us here.”
So she’d been forced, as was the lot for most girls, regardless of station. “Was he cruel to her?”
“Lass, if anything, me Master wasn’t cruel enough,” she said on a sigh. “Ach, the little lords and ladies with their starched bottoms, never content with what they had. The room too cold, the footmen too dead, the sight of corpses too ghastly.”
“She didn’t like the Pale Court.”
“Nay, lass, no matter how me Master shaped it whichever way her mood swayed, so taken was he with the foolish thing.”
The only thing he’d ever shaped for me with enthusiasm was my collar. A fact that, somehow, twinged between my ribs.
“He truly loved her.”
Another twinge.
Did he love her still?
