AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mm-hmm, he loved her…” The shadows beneath her wrinkles darkened before she mumbled, “Loved her to death.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle, warding off a sudden chill. “What do you mean? Someone slit her throat, correct?”
“Aye, Commander Mertok,” she said, matching Enosh’s version of this closely enough. “For three days, me Master hid himself away with her corpse, keeping the rot from her in a frenzy. Oh, how the Pale Court shook, bridges cracking right through the pillars.”
Given how he’d made a tavern shake in anger, I didn’t have the courage to picture how he must have been when Njala and the baby died. “Did she… return his love?”
She tilted her head and lifted a brow. “As sincerely as they teach any lady of good breeding.”
So… she hadn’t loved him.
Why not?
Enosh had a loving, attentive side to him. By the sound of it, Njala had seen more of it than I ever would. In a time when the god had done his duty, could it have been so impossible to fall in love with such an annoyingly handsome man? Had Enosh known she hadn’t loved him?
“It’s hard for me to imagine how he must have been before she died,” I said. “I only know him as an enraged god with a grudge.”
“Ach, lass, the lands beyond the Soltren Gate are no more, all over quarrels of the heart.” Her hands stalled on the furs and her pale green eyes bore into me. “Worse than a god in rage is a god in love.”
Chapter17
Enosh
Throughout my existence, I had stood in valleys now covered in water and climbed mountains now crumbled. I had conversations with kings surrounded by riches and beggars rotting in rags. I had seen the sky on fire and the seas turn to endless ice.
Decades. Centuries. Eons.
Never before had I had a wife.
A mortal so selfless and true, she’d negotiated with a god to gain rot for those children she’d never birthed. Little over a month with Ada, and she conflicted everything that had been true to me for two hundred years.
It did nothing to cure my obsession.
I lounged on my throne, one leg perched over its armrest, watching my wife with utter fascination. How she gingerly trailed the hairs of the brush over a young blossom, the lack of a chain allowing her to turn the throne room into a garden of thorns and roses. More curious was how she grabbed the next brush from Orlaigh’s rot-speckled hands with not a trace of disgust stalling the movement.
The strangest flutter came to my chest, touching me in a place where I ought to be numb. Ah, my little one called me heartless, the world I had created cruel; yet it had produced a woman so at ease around the remnants of death, she had begged me for rot instead of fainting at the sight of it.
A most perfect mate.
My woman, my wife.
My queen?
“You may leave us, Orlaigh.” I rose and descended the dais, only to sit beside Ada and glimpse into the depleting oils. “My little one is running out of paints.”
Her eyes remained fixed on the sway of yet another vine, but it didn’t escape me how her blue eyes flicked to me for a fraction of a moment. “Don’t bother sending the old woman for more. I’ll run out of canvas even sooner.”
Ah, my mouthy wife and her snarky remarks, pointing out the lack of bone at any opportunity that presented itself. Whatever her simple upbringing, when it came to convincing me to open my gates, she lacked no ambition.
I hooked a finger underneath her chin, bringing her mouth close enough to mine that I sensed the heat of our lips merge. “There are always the bridges.”
“And leave our child with nothing to paint on once he’s old enough? Whatever will he do all day?”
“Perhaps I will take pity on a corpse outside and turn it into a doll.”
“Bone cradle, skin tunics… heavens, an arm to play stick and hoop, and someone’s skull for a rattle. That has to take at least three.” Her eyes ensnared mine with stomach-fluttering intensity. “Taking pity on one simply won’t be enough.”
An unexpected laugh escaped me, no matter the somber truth of her words. “Ah, I am gaining the sense that my wife will not stop pestering me.”
