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His lips pressed into a thin line as he struggled age-stiffened bones from the bed. “Your cheek needs stitching, and even then, it’ll leave an ugly scar. Where have you been, Ada? Why have you not sent word? So stricken was I with grief and guilt, but the mule, it… There was nothing I could do to hold him.”
I shook my head, not knowing where even to begin. “No, Pa, there was nothing you could’ve done. But listen, I can’t stay in Hemdale. Stitch me up as good as you can, and I’ll try to explain while you do.”
The silence grew pregnant while I heated water in the kettle by the hearth, stacked the fire, gathered needle and yarn. How could I possibly explain all that had happened if I could barely straighten my thoughts or overcome this hollowness swelling beneath my ribs?
Keeping my voice low lest the night guard might grow suspicious, I told Pa everything. Well, almost everything, leaving out the parts that would make any god-fearing man draw the sign of Helfa to his ashen forehead.
“We married in a little temple,” I eventually concluded.
At that, Pa’s bushy white brows knitted. “And have you been this… creature’s wife in every sense of the word?”
Cheeks sucked between my molars, I nodded. “Not a creature, Pa. A god. And… I gave my vow.”
“And before this terriblegodcoaxed this vow from you, for we all know of his cruelties…” There was a heavy pause as he held the needle into the fire, sending a shudder across my back. “Has he touched you? Has he… forced himself on you?”
I flinched twice.
Once at his question, the second time when the hook needle poked my skin, thread squeaking through the flesh around a weeping cut on my cheek.
Between the drafty gaps in the daub and the old straw in the mattress of my simple home here in Hemdale, the answer would have been yes. But nothing was simple about Enosh or how I’d gone from captive to wife to… to lover? Where had my obedience ended? Where had my cravings begun? What if I’d welcomed the desire in his touch, his attentions, using his power as a convenient way to wash my hands of sin and call it insanity?
Pa stroked my hair back. He must have read the confusion on my face, and that shamed me deeply.
I forced a smile. “Enosh said he would open his gates and rot the dead the day I loved him.”
“Sounds to me like something the devil would say. And a pact with him is what you got yourself into.”
My stomach clenched. “King. God. Devil. He brought rot to the girl Anna, and he agreed to do the same for all the children in these lands. Does that account for nothing?”
“My child, I simply don’t know what to make of this.” Pa sighed as he cut the thread with a sharp blade. He wiped a cold, wet cloth over the wound before the room filled with the balmy traces of marigold salve, which he dabbed onto my cheek. “John was bad enough. Oh, I never forgave myself for agreeing to his bride’s price. Can a father be concerned for his—” A cough cut through his words, leaving a speck of blood on the corner of his mouth. “I worry about you.”
“I know.” But I worried about him more, and how his chest now vibrated with a constant rattle, as though blood collected in his lungs. “This morning, Enosh took me with him to stand by his promise. Soldiers attacked us. Maybe the corpses he raised put them on our tail. Maybe they’d watched the Æfen Gate all along. Who can say?”
“Ever since people reported his sighting, High Priest Dekalon issued all villages and towns to supply a militia for his capture for he would surely emerge again.”
Something I’d warned Enosh about, but neither the god nor I had expected such force. “They used fire as though they knew what his weakness was, just like in that book someone told me about. I’d bet a silver coin that the Hight Priest knows exactly what Enosh is.”
“Yes, a god, you say.” Doubt carved itself into the wrinkles around his scrunched nose. “Has he spread rot? Have you seen the children rot in the ground, whatever that might look like?”
An itch started underneath my skin, growing more uncomfortable with each second I said nothing. “Well… we were attacked. He had no opportunity to do so.”
“So headstrong, not even the devil could master it.” He scoffed, but the sound held more accusation than amusement. “A man who broke your legs, collared you, had corpses keep you a prisoner, and did who knows what else to you… yet he has done nothing to lift this curse from what I can tell, aside from rotting one strange girl.”
“Twisted.He didn’t break them, but—” Damn it to hell, I should have kept my mouth shut or came up with a lie. Of course, all this made me look like a woman out of her wits. “I trust his word.”
Pa frowned. “The devil is the father of all lies.”
I rose and paced the creaky floorboards, not liking how this itch refused to ease. “Enosh is many things, but he’s no liar.”
He’d vowed no mortal shall find rest at the Pale Court, and none did. He’d promised to make every one of my orifices his to play with, and he had. He’d threatened his cock up my arse if I wasn’t agreeable, and he’d done that, too.
All perfect examples of his truthfulness, but even without saying them out loud, I sounded like a madwoman, even to myself. As much as those things proved his sincerity, all it did was make him an honest devil—one who likely burned at the stake at this very moment.
I let myself slump to the ground before the hearth and buried my muddled head underneath the tangle of my arms. Nearly two months with Enosh and what had I achieved? Very little.
That dark void in my core expanded, sucking all my remaining strength into its black nothingness until my chin hit my chest. All I’d accomplished was getting him captured. And for what? To rot the remains of my deadbeat, late husband? He could go right ahead and walk off the fucking cliff for all I cared.
Curse this mess to hell and back. I’d made everything worse. Days, months, years… eventually, Enosh would free himself. And once he did? Oh, my husband would listen to no talk of rot, and instead, he’d come straight for High Priest Dekalon. And if something happened to me out here…?
