Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
Elara
Ispin around, breath catching when I find Vale comfortably stretched out on my bed, and stab a finger toward the door, wishing it were a knife. “Get out!”
He folds his arms behind his head and crosses his ankles, very pleased with the comfort he’s trying to make of my self-control. “What did he do? What did you two speak of?”
“What did he do?!” I slap what might be the last clinging creature from my jaw. “He baptized me with a splash of maggots carved from his festering chest!”
He studies my face the way men study shades of yarn. Bored. “Ah.”
“He’s rotting alive, Vale,” I yell. “And he’s an asshole—albeit one only half the size that you are because you mentioned none of this!”
He shrugs, infuriatingly calm. “I mentioned enough.”
I stomp toward him. “Winning the heart of a man who is decomposing at the speed of his manners is not what I signed up for!”
“Whenever was there a story told about someone who saved a realm, and it was easy?” he asks mildly, tilting his head, almost as if he’d woken from a nap beneath a tree and is now studying me with ardency. “Hard is why I chose you.”
“Oh, now we arrive at that hymn.” My laugh is a desperate thing, more high-pitched than I’m used to.
“You didn’t come to my door because I’m beautiful, or brave, and certainly not because I’m smart.
Oh no, you came because I’m the gravedigger’s daughter.
Because I’ve got a high tolerance for rot, and you thought, ‘Perfect, she’s made for kissing a corpse that still remembers how to talk. ’”
He sits up, swinging his legs off the bed to squish a maggot that failed to wiggle away. “Kissing will not be enough, Elara.”
A pang in my stomach. “Pardon me?”
“Obviously there has to be a wedding,” he says. “Followed by a proper bedding.”
The picture arrives uninvited—my body under the king’s, wet gauze sticking to my nipple, pus dripping down my neck. Something claws up my throat so fast I taste iron, nearly making me gag on the saliva that pools sour beneath my tongue.
My stomach pitches, but it’s not only disgust. “W-with…with him?”
“How else does a woman become a wife? A queen?” He arches a brow at me. “Surely you know how heirs are produced? Obviously, we need your sacrifice to come quick. Kael’s next queen can bother with producing an heir after he’s had some practice with you.”
I lash before I can think, kicking Vale’s boot with such force it makes him pitch sideways. “You could have led with that!”
He straightens and fluffs his white cravat, as though a wrong wrinkle is his most dire concern. “Touching him where his skin still feels like a man’s will do wonders, given how deprived he kept himself. Simply do not put your mouth where the rot smells worst.”
“You’re disgusting,” I spit with all the fury my voice can carry.
“I’m practical.” He takes my outburst like a wave that simply breaks over him before it trickles away. “And I’m trying to save your brother.”
“Don’t talk as if you care about my brother.”
“I do not, but the rot does. Very much so.” He stands, closing the small room until the shrinking walls seem complicit. “Every minute you fight me on circumstances not of my making, the rot climbs an inch higher on his fingers.”
His words land like a stone would in Father’s bucket—heavy, gulping, drowning in the bloody truth. I drag breath to the top of my lungs, the heat thinning to something less biting. The bastard is right. And between burying Daron and fucking a living corpse?
Well, I choose the latter.
“I know,” I say slowly, forcing my breath to calm alongside my heart. “It’s just…”
Vale arches a brow. “If the possibility of falling pregnant is a con—”
“I haven’t bled in a year, maybe longer.
” Hard to grow a babe when you can’t even grow enough blood, so that’s not a pressing worry.
“The thing is…” There’s a tremble in my voice I wish was still anger instead of nerves.
Instead of dread. Instead of old, undiluted, righteous fear.
“The only men I’ve ever touched were cold. ”
His gaze lifts, interest catching like a hook. “You are…” A beat. “A virgin?”
My hands flatten on my skirt. My eyes study anything that isn’t him. I don’t answer. Don’t tell him that it just never happened, and the longer it didn’t happen, the more terrifying it grew in my head.
He reads it anyway.
“We’ll cross that river when we must,” he says, stepping back the smallest inch, as if to give me air. “Not before. For now, do not let him scare you off. Stay put. Get close to him.”
“But he’s revolting.” Even my voice shudders, the tone melting into a whiny puddle at the end. “He’s a…a monster.”
“He is not a monster.” There’s a subtle quiver in Vale’s voice that surprises me more than how his usual nonchalance makes room for it. “He is a man rotting alive who still tries—badly, stupidly—to undo a curse. He is selfish, but he is also starving for connection.”
“Connection.” I taste the word like something bitter. “He is vile.”
“Forgive me for being so blunt, but you are not exactly a mouthful of…of…”—he draws elegant circles in the air with his hand as his mossy eyes search the room for words—“charm.”
“Oh, shut up.” I pace, because if I don’t, I’ll lose my temper once more, and that won’t help anyone. “He put me to the test and I…I failed. I ran.”
“To your room, not off the grounds.” He flicks up a finger. “Different animals.”
Wrapping my arms around myself, I sigh, a brown strand tickling the back of my neck where it must’ve escaped my disheveled coil. “What now?”
Eyes narrowing, he studies me for long seconds. “Wash, change, then go back to do it all over again. Fewer maggots, more success.”
“As if Miss Hampshire isn’t already preparing my first and final wages before she sends me off with no letter. He tried to dismiss me the moment I stepped into the room.”
“Ah, and yet he has never dismissed any of his caretakers, maids, or healers.” He crosses his arms in front of his chest, letting the silver and dark blue brocade of his vest stretch taut. “Why do you think that is?”
“Because he doesn’t need to.” Isn’t that obvious? “Because he knows full well that they’ll all run just fine on their own.”
There’s a pause as he sucks in his upper lip, biting down before he releases it with a pop. “Imagine what a shock it must be for him…the one woman who stays.”
That has me hesitating for half a second. “And when he plays butcher and carves himself up?”
“Then you will watch him with the excitement of a sloth,” Vale says. “Or, better yet, help him set the blade. Your unwavering touch will be a miracle to him.”
“I don’t want to touch him,” I say more to myself than him, knowing full well that what I want matters little. There’s no way around any of this—not if I want my family to live…
Vale turns toward the window and leans his forehead against the pane with a sigh. “Trust when I say that I know how difficult it is…to look at something so revolting, and still find beauty within.”
I watch how his gaze loses itself somewhere behind the glass, somewhere far off. “You speak from experience?”
A mother he lost? A wife? A lover?
I shouldn’t care. Maybe I do in this moment out of sheer desperation, searching for courage in ridiculous places.
“Aside from his selfishness regarding the curse,” Vale says, offering me nothing on my question, “he’s not an unkind man, Elara.”
Nodding slowly, I release myself from my hug and wipe my palms down my face. I think…I think I know that. The king has a foul mood and a temper, yes, but there are also specks of kindness, aren’t there?
“He’s starving himself.” Because as much as he can hunger, he can’t die from it. “Looks like the streets didn’t lie after all. He is feeding the poor.”
“Like I said, not unkind.”
“Still stupid, though.” Trying to outwit Death instead of spilling a bride and being done with it. No one grows that kind of haughty on his own. So who planted the idea?
“He’s clearly sick with rot, but his wounds look…strange,” I say. “The crown is healing them?”
“Only for the pestilence to bleed them anew.” Vale nods. “Endless suffering. Never death.”
“All kings die eventually,” I point out. “And then the curse gets passed down, I assume? How?”
“Those are circumstances that do not pertain to our cause.” He clears his throat.
“So long as he rightfully wears the crown, he cannot be killed before the sand runs out in his hourglass. And if he were to give up this foolishness and feed the curse, then he would still have many years to live. He is, after all, still young.”
“He doesn’t look it.” Not with his posture of a gout-ridden priest. “He looks ancient.”
“Twenty-nine is hardly ancient.”
“Twenty-nine,” I repeat, half in disbelief, half in awe. “You should have told me all of this, so I could’ve come prepared.”
Vale gives one of his mild shrugs and turns back to the window. “Apprehensive as you were about even the curse, I couldn’t risk your rejection by making the task less appealing than it already was.”
“Right.”
I drag in a breath, steady myself, and head for the small mirror on the wall. Great. My hair’s fallen out of its coil during the chaos, hanging in limp, uneven curls around my face. I unpin the rest, refusing to wear my defeat once I step out there again.
Except the damn thing refuses to cooperate. The strands slide out of my grip, snarl around the comb, and puff where I want smoothness. I try again. And again. But the mess grows.
Behind me, Vale watches, arms crossed, amusement softening the sharp line of his jaw. “You’re making it worse.”
“I’m aware.” I stab at a knot with the comb. “The dead never cared what I looked like. Now my hair won’t listen. It’s stubborn.”
“Like its owner,” he murmurs before a pause. “May I?”
I glance at him through the mirror. “What, you plan to do it better?”
His mouth quirks. “I might. You’re plainly not built for vanity.”
It’s meant as a jest, I know, but it stings in some small, traitorous place. “Plainly?”
He lifts a hand in mock surrender, an almost-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Poor choice of words. I meant it kindly.”
I should refuse out of pride alone, but pride won’t hold that damn hair in place. “Fine,” I mutter. “Make it quick.”
He steps in behind me, his reflection close enough in the mirror that I can see the faint pulse in his throat.
His fingers slip through my hair, slow and deliberate, dividing the strands into three neat parts.
The comb’s teeth rake gently across my scalp, sending tiny prickles down my neck.
It feels far too intimate, and far too steadying all at once.
“You’ve done this before,” I say, trying to sound unimpressed, though my voice comes out softer than I’d like. “Sisters perhaps? A wife?”
“No sisters. No wife,” he answers, tone unreadable. “Just…observation.” When he finishes, he ties the end with a black ribbon from my table and lets the braid fall over my shoulder. “There. Presentable.”
I face the mirror, fingers brushing the neat plait. “You’ve missed your calling as a lady’s maid.”
“And you did not at all miss your calling as a gravedigger,” he says, stepping back. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes.” I point to the door, desperate to end the strange heat crawling under my skin. “For you to leave.”
He inclines his head, bows a sliver. “Very well.”
I let out a breath when the latch clicks behind him. I stand a moment longer, staring at my reflection, at the braid too neat to belong to me. Then I square my shoulders. Once I gather my courage, I’ll go back to the king.
This time, I won’t fail.
I was never afraid of corpses.
I won’t start with this one.