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“Your Highness,” the armed mortal beside us urged, gesturing the man with the bellow to feed the flames higher once more, sending plumes of smoke to the arched ceiling. “The fire. We need to turn him.”
“Ah, yes, turn me.”
Up I went, the itch along my skin unbearable, my scalp tingling where my hair grew back. Then I went down, diving into the sweltering heat of the biting flames. The moment I emerged, I focused on the remnants of the dead. Powdered bone, painstakingly brought here over the course of excruciating days, shaped into a first spike—
“Enosh.”
At the sound of my true name, the spike settled in the crack between rock, and dust rilled onto the stone floor. My pulse quickened. What an unexpected surprise.
“It is your name, is it not?” A smirk tugged on Dekalon’s mouth. “The priest who wed you wrote it in the book of bindings, along with your identity. Your wife is beautiful, from what I heard. Adelaide, correct?”
Book of bindings.
My molars ground together until they ached. “Mortals and their damned customs.”
“Wherever might your wife be, Enosh?” When I said nothing, he sighed. “I had a wife once, many years before I stepped onto Helfa’s path. Hilde. No woman in the village made better pie than her. The secret’s in the browned butter, she used to say. She died during childbirth… on a full moon.” He smacked his lips and slowly shook his head. “Seeing her go pale and lifeless was terrible to witness. Worse was how she then got up and scratched at the door, pacing bowlegged with my child stuck between her legs. I daresay heartbreak such as this ought to drive a man insane. Leave him in the fire for a bit.”
Panic stitched through my chest.
Flames wrapped me in agony until my screams died away in my throat. They devoured all thought, all nerves, all senses, reducing my existence to nothing but pain that no immortal should survive. I needed this to stop. I needed to get back to my wife.
When the fire finally retreated, I couldn’t feel my body anymore, couldn’t think past the fury clouding my mind and this all-consuming need for my wife. Wicked, wayward mortals.
A ringing started in my ears or whatever was left of them, which soon took on the sound of words. “—wife might have escaped to the um… what did the scriptures call it? The Pale Court? With its master gone, perhaps we may finally enter. Maybe she’ll even do us the favor and come out at some point.”
No, Ada was no fool. She would stay inside the safety of our home. But what then, once food became scarce and her only servant rotted away while my wife succumbed to age? A strange sensation came over my heart, like an odd beat of caution that didn’t quite fit its usual cadence.
Out. I needed out of here.
“Oh, how your eyes widened for a moment, even as they rolled in their sockets.” Dekalon leaned over, letting his whisper drill into my mind. “Several soldiers reported having seen you… consummate this union. As we both agreed, this world has no room for two gods, especially not one who breeds. Cut it off!”
Cold dread soaked into my muscles, chilling me to the bone until I was ready to beg for the bellow to hike the flames. Stabbing pain shot into my groin, ripping a scream from me that got stuck halfway up my throat, along with my breath. My back bowed and arched as they cut my manhood away. I trembled with such violence, the entire wheel shook.
“We certainly don’t need three gods, should this woman carry the spawn of the devil,” Dekalon snarled. “Priests across the land are spreading my word. Should this woman ever emerge, people are to bring us the wife of the devil and the spawn she carries in her womb.”
I sought the high priest’s eyes, no matter how mine faded in and out of darkness. “Hear me, m-mortal… your head will g-gr-grace my throne. Your bones w-will serve me for eternity, for I am your god.”
“My god is Helfa,” he said. “Watch and see, Enosh. Watch and see how my god will do his divine duty of keeping the world in line.”
Chapter22
Ada
Iwrapped my calloused fingers around the thick rope. With each pull on the line of fish cages, ripples hushed across the water’s surface. My breath rose in billows, more fervently with each strenuous tug against a weight that quickened the pulse in my veins.
Finally!
Rose looked up from where she sat on a boulder, a half-gutted trout in one hand and a knife in the other. “Heavy catch, huh?”
“Has to be,” I said, sensing the chill creep into my cheeks the wider I grinned. “I’ll give you one of the smaller trout if you help me pull them to shore. The last thing I need is a cage to rip from the line once they hit that current there.”
She tossed the fish and knife into her basket, letting her arm brush a few auburn curls from her forehead where they’d escaped her wimple, and waddled over. “Would be a shame if you lost another cage. Better make it two.”
“Two then.” I nodded. “Now grab the rope. On three, we walk back and drag them all the way in. One.” I braced against the river rocks underfoot. “Two.” My stomach tightened. “Three.”
Gripping the rope tightly, I shifted my weight back for leverage. My heels dug into the shifting rock as I fought for every inch, ignoring how exhaustion blurred the edges of my vision. Against the chill lingering in the crisp morning air, sweat broke along my spine. Heavens, this catch had to be worth quite a few coins.
I needed them.
