Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
Elara
The woods behind the palace don’t like visitors.
They keep their paths narrow and their branches low, as if daring you to stumble over the half-crumbled headstone of the odd grave here and there. Somewhere far off, an owl hoots toward the moon, then goes quiet, like it regrets announcing itself.
Good.
Quiet is what I need.
Stillness, too, though I’ve learned over the last two days that Death listens to my summons with the same enthusiasm as a mule listens to commands: whenever he feels like it.
I stop in a small clearing where the branches open just enough to let moonlight fall like a silver veil across a large fallen tree trunk.
Presume my husband is busy with more pressing matters.
Like collecting the souls of those dying from a pestilence that only exists because he has a strange fondness for this fucking curse.
Damp cold settles into my lungs with my next inhale. As does a woody undercurrent, slightly spiced with hints of apricot and nuts. I knew it!
Following the length of the rotten trunk, I scan the shadows for the black-dotted caps of ashmorels. To ease the trembling in her fingers, Mother had said before she wrinkled her nose at the kitchen’s sparse selection of dried herbs, although—
“Whenever,” comes from the shadows beside me, “has there been a story about a young woman going into the forest at night, during pestilence and famine, alone, and it ended well?”
I straighten my spine, then I turn to the darkness just as I tap my nail against my crown with a dull clank. “Temporarily undying, remember?”
“As am I, albeit more permanently so.” Vale leans against the trunk of an ancient oak, its canopy of decaying leaves and gnarly branches shielding him well from the moon.
“And yet I once took a fall in this form, a great many feet down a cliff, shattering too many bones to count, but that was only half as miserable as the driftwood that rose bloodied from my guts.” Arms crossed in front of his vest, he lifts one leg, pressing the sole of his boot against the tree.
“An experience I would wish on nobody. Least of all my dearest wife.”
I give him my sweetest of smiles. “Pretty kind words coming from a man who was dead set on marching me to my execution mere weeks ago.”
Vale’s gaze drifts over me in that calculating way of his, only for him to sigh. “What are you doing out here?”
“Searching for mushrooms. Searching for my husband.” I take a step toward him, mud slurping beneath my boots. “You’re late.”
His mouth curves, thin. “Late for what?”
“Supper,” I say with a shrug. “Of all the hardworking husbands out there, I’d expect you to be the most eager to come home to rest your bones.”
That curve straightens, banishing all bemusement from his features. “What do you want, Elara?”
“Who says I want anything?”
“Oh, please, do you truly believe I know my wife so little?” Vale pushes himself off the trunk.
He takes one slow step forward, yet remains under the oak’s dark shelter.
“You only ever become this chatty when you think you’ve already won the argument,” he says, his voice a low, dry rasp that makes the fine hairs on my arms stand up.
“That treacherous little smile of yours? We both know it’s a taunt.
So, I’m asking again before I get bored and converse with the dead instead… what do you want?”
Whatever nerves are starting to drum against my esophagus, I swallow down. “I want to see you.”
Vale’s eyes flicker. “You see me.”
“The real you.” I inch closer, careful not to step into the tree’s shadow, careful to keep the moon between us. “Show me Death.”
Vale’s gaze flicks to the bright clearing, then back to me, displeasure tightening his jaw. “We’ve had this conversation.” He turns away, shadows seemingly melting into his black breeches. “I have no time for our marital disputes as if—”
“It’s not a dispute!” I call behind him, pulse quickening in my wrists. “It’s a demand for a wish.”
His boot halts mid-lift, stalling there for a second before he spins back around, a black strand settling wild across his forehead with how his gaze tilts. “I beg your pardon?”
“Assuming that…” I say slowly, testing the words, the sharp edge of their risk, “that my first wish was based merely on your assumption of having been fooled…” My breath fogs into the cold. “…what would happen to the wish I made?”
Vale’s eyes narrow. “Elaborate.”
The word is clipped. Demanding.
I keep my face calm, even as my pulse begins to thunder. It’s a gamble. A terrifying, irrevocable gamble. Sure, having fooled him by going along with his assumption buys me a wish, but what if admitting that I never plotted with Kael renders my marriage null and void?
My throat narrows.
Well, then I’ll simply use the leverage of this second wish to demand our marriage remains intact. It won’t get me any closer to breaking the curse, true, but I won’t let myself lose my footing, either.
It is a lateral move at worst.
A checkmate at best.
I take a breath, letting the cold air brace me.
“If I told you that I never plotted my coronation with Kael. If I told you that…that he ripped me from under the table that morning and simply shoved the knife into my hand with the plea to kill him, without me understanding why. Would that void my last wish? Our marriage?”
The silence of the woods is heavy for a long, terrifying moment. The air pressure drops, popping in my eardrums.
He exhales at the speed of a maggot crossing a grave. “So you’re a liar, same as me?”
“I didn’t lie.” Not entirely. “You simply voiced what you wanted to hear, and I didn’t correct you.”
“Is that so?” he bites out. “And now you’re here, testing whether you can wring another wish out of me?”
My muscles tense. “Answer my question.”
Vale’s mouth curves, sharp and bitter. “You want me to say no.”
“I want you to tell me the truth.”
His nostrils flare. The tendons in his neck strain against his collar, and I watch him grind his molars with enough force to crack stone. I brace myself, waiting for the fury, waiting for the whiplash of his temper.
But the eruption never comes.
Instead, he shuts his eyes tight, shaking his head slowly as if to himself. When his lashes lift again, the fire in his gaze isn’t aiming to scorch me. It’s burning inward.
He isn’t furious that I fooled him.
He’s furious that he fooled himself.
“I cannot undo what has been bound.” His voice is sharper, resentment threaded through it. “The answer to your question, wife…is no.”
A spark of new hope. So the marriage stands, securing me a second wish.
Vale watches my face and knows exactly what I’m thinking. “Oh,” he murmurs. “For once, I seem to have made my wife very happy.”
I lift my chin. “I wish—”
“I know exactly what you want to wish for,” he purrs, lifting his hand to beckon me toward him. “A bedding, isn’t it?”
Heat crawls up my throat. Fear, too, once I walk toward him, if only to buy myself time to think. The bedding is essential, that much I’m certain of, but…is it more important than getting him to show me his true form?
My mind flashes to the stanza on the paper. In the bed of the night, the sovereign shall yield, Receiving Death on the corpse’s field.
Not Vale.
Death.
On a corpse’s field, which—a glance through the woods is all it takes for my eyes to snatch on the lower graveyard nearby—this should serve. I can wish for him to fuck me. I can wish for him to show his true form. I won’t make myself look a fool by asking for both, inviting his cheery denial.
So which one?
I don’t realize how close I am to the ancient oak until Vale’s hand slides down my waist, palm flattening over my hip. His thumb strokes once, slowly, the touch more warning than caress.
“How would you like it? Against the tree? Right here in the dirt?” His whisper finds my neck—just breath and heat and the faint scrape of his lips hovering like a threat.
“I don’t recall the wording of the rites mentioning any details on where on your body you’re supposed to receive me.
Maybe I’ll choose your ass and take my time for once. ”
That muscle clenches at the mere thought of that invasion. “You didn’t even hear what I demand.”
He scoffs, his other hand sliding down my thigh, fingers seeking the edge of my skirt. “What else could it possibly be?”
My breath catches when his fingers graze the inside of my thigh. “Maybe I want you to show me Death.”
His hand freezes.
Very interesting…
For one suspended heartbeat, the woods seem to stop breathing. The playful, predatory heat of his body turns to stone against mine, the air curdling with a tension that has nothing to do with surprise and everything to do with fear.
Then, just as quickly, the rigidity shatters.
“Don’t be foolish,” he murmurs, but the playfulness is gone, replaced by a frantic, heavy hunger.
He crowds me, his hips grinding forward, letting me feel the hard, unyielding ridge of him beneath the black breeches.
“You’ve been trying for this since the moment you conspired with that… filthy messenger.”
His hand shoves upward, rucking my skirts to my waist in a single, rough motion. Cold night air bites my skin, instantly replaced by the searing heat of his palm sliding between my legs.
I gasp, my head falling back against his shoulder. “Vale—”
“Shh…” His teeth graze the sensitive cord of my neck, nipping hard enough to sting, while his thumb finds the slick heat at my center and presses. “Tell me you want me inside you. I shall grant it. A proper bedding.”
He kisses me then—a devouring, messy collision that tastes of desperation. He’s overwhelming me, drowning me in sensation, using pleasure like a weapon to beat back my request.
And that’s how I know.
I know…
I tear my mouth from his, gasping, my hands planting against his chest. My body is on fire, aching, but my mind is cold and clear as crystal.
“I wish,” I pant, shoving him back.
He stumbles a step, his eyes dark and blown with lust, his chest heaving. “Elara…”
“I wish…” To see you? No. He might only give me a glimpse and count it done. “I wish to explore your true form.”