Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Death
The mirrors in this palace have rarely reflected truth.
They were made for kings who wanted to look powerful instead of guilty, and queens who wanted to look adored instead of doomed. Glass is a willing liar. It will take whatever you offer it and hand it back in a shape you can survive.
Tonight, the mirror in Elara’s chamber refuses to cooperate.
The candle flames in this room are stingy, puddled and dull, thrown from lonesome wicks that my wife forgot to snuff before she fell asleep. The light doesn’t flatter me. Never has.
Vale’s handsome face is gone, the borrowed perfection mortals have always found so easy to want. A tool. A way to walk among the living without their minds melting at the sight of what I truly am. And yet there’s something severely wrong with the reflection before me.
Not in my face.
In. My. Chest.
I lower my gaze and, with a motion that should feel casual but instead feels like a man checking a lethal wound, I slip my fingers under the edge of my ribs and reach into my chest. And there, hanging within the open cage, is my heart.
Scar tissue. Damaged nerves.
It hangs, broken and half-numb, held by a single heartstring that should be barely intact, stretched near snapping in the way a hair does when it’s been left under strain too long.
Only it isn’t.
The thread is…wrong.
Because the reflection of it looks just right—a fresh, crimson vitality that wraps around a valve that ought to be damaged.
It thickens the connection, holding the once near-severed thread together with such strength that the organ barely shifts when I cup it.
Worse yet, it gives a heavy, wholesome pulse against my palm.
Once. Ba-boom.
Twice. Ba-boom.
I freeze, fingers tightening instinctively as if to stop it. It doesn’t listen. It beats again, stronger than it has in centuries. How can this be?
I yank my hand out and brace it against the edge of the vanity, cold sweat settling on the little skin my skull possesses. My heart is healing—and with it, the full, agonizing spectrum of the one thing I’ve avoided since the dawn of my fear.
Love.
The word paralyzes me, skeletal fingers digging into the wood of the vanity frame until it groans under the pressure. How did this happen? When did it start? Weeks ago? Days?
My mind races backward.
Seeking the infection point.
Was it in the grave? In that silent truce when we watched the fog side by side, that rare peacefulness between us so narcotic to my senses, I wanted to soak in it for hours.
Or was it in the tower? When I held her after lust and curiosity were equally sated, and still, I pulled her body deeply into mine. Skin against skin, secretly wishing the sun would stop rising so I wouldn’t have to let her go.
Or does this go further back still?
Kael comes to mind. Or rather, the many times his name left Elara’s mouth. Kael is opening up to me. At least he has a heart. He had me on the table by the hearth… Filthy hands everywhere, ready to melt himself into my wife as if—
I stutter out a breath, the mere thought of that boy scratching at my insides like a rusted blade. Disdain for his righteousness, his daring, his constant defiance over the years, I told myself. Now I see the ugliness for what it was.
Blistering, possessive jealousy.
I stare at the red thread in the mirror, the cloak of denial thinning more with each of my heart’s throbs.
I should have known. The library. The sudden constriction in my chest when I foolishly kissed her.
The chapel. The tingle beneath my ribs when I spoke those rotten vows.
Those weren’t aches of old injury, but symptoms of an emotion long, long forgotten.
I’m falling in love with Elara.
Or perhaps…I already have.
I look at the single healed string, thick and robust, stomach turning more the longer I stare. This intense longing, this terrifying yearning, this ache that feels like my ribs are being pried apart…all from one string? One?
Panic, cold and sharp, spikes in my gut. If a single healed thread can reduce a god to a jealous, pining fool, what would happen with two?
I don’t want to find out.
Tugging my cloak back to cover my bones, I turn away from the mirror and toward the littered desk. Elara sits there, slumped over scrolls, her head resting on a stack of open books while her brown hair spills over a mouth slightly parted as she breathes.
Her posture is going to punish her in the morning. Stiff neck. Shooting pains. Mortal nonsense that is of no consequence to me.
And yet, I’m already moving.
I slide an arm beneath Elara’s knees and another around her back, lifting her carefully so as not to wake her.
Any mortal would at Death’s touch. My presence alone is something they often sense.
Hairs rising on their arms. Sudden chill in the air.
Stomach dropping. That instinctual glance back over their shoulder as if they noticed me watching.
But my wife? Oh, she sleeps on.
It annoys me, how safe she feels. As if her life spent digging graves has made her undisturbed by the god who fills them. She exhales softly, curling into me, her hand bunching my cloak in a loose, trusting grip.
My breath catches at the domesticity of it, making room in my chest for the tugging, the twisting, the pinching. My second heartstring, no doubt, frayed ends straining to mend back together in this very moment.
If I were wise, I would drop her.
Instead, I carry her the short distance to the bed like the immortal fool I am for this woman. But when I lay her down on sheets, still warm from the hearth, her arm refuses to lower.
My gaze drops to those little fingers hooked into my cloak, exposing a handful of alabaster ribs. The memory of the woods assaults me, not as a visual, but as blood rushing to my crotch, hot and heady.
I expected her to scream. When I stepped into the moonlight and revealed what most mortals consider grotesque, I braced for the retching, the flinching, the terror.
Ahh…flinch, she did.
But only once before she touched me, little fingers tracing torn skin, gliding along bone, slipping past tendons. She touched me there, too, little hand wrapped around my cock, exploring with the same curiosity she used on my ribcage and skull.
No recoil. No disgust.
Only the laboring in her breath. The quickening of her heart. That soft, helpless moan that vibrated past fleshy lips and straight into bone—lust, desire, pleasure braided together in a sound I thought no woman could ever offer Death.
A groan tears from my throat.
That was no scheme. It was real.
Blood surges between my legs again, hardening me with a speed that is concerning. I want her palm on my face, her lips on my teeth, her cunt around my cock, curse and rites be damned.
The need is intense. It floods my veins. And it dizzies my skull with an urge even more damning: to hold her after the way I did in the tower, the way husbands do with their wives.
Eons ago, I witnessed men take their first companions. I observed them sleep with limbs tangled while I rested in the company of shadows. I watched them walk the realm together while I treaded my paths alone…always alone.
I once wanted a companion. I have longed for a wife longer than I have had a name for longing. But that was before…
A shake of my head.
Enough with the lingering.
Having is the first step to losing, so I unhook her fingers, gently lowering her arm to her side. My gaze travels to her crown, gleaming dully on her forehead. My third heartstring pulses within the gold. And within the gold, it must remain.
I step back, allowing the shadows of the corner to swallow the hem of my cloak, putting distance between the sedative warmth of her body and the cold necessity of death.
My hand moves with brutal efficiency. I thrust my fingers into my ribcage, bypassing the frayed edges of the second broken string and diving deeper into the treacherous heat. Where is it? Where—ah…
The traitor.
The mended string.
It feels distinct against my bone-stripped fingertips—pulsing, thickened with weeks of unnoticed affection, knitting itself together on a foundation of forlorn dreams and domestic nonsense.
I curl my hand, positioning the sharp tip of my fingerbone against the pulsing red of the string. Then I press the point in.
It resists at first, rubbery and slick, before the bone punctures through with a wet pop.
A soundless roar fractures inside my throat as my knees hit the floorboards, the sickening pain turning my vision blurry.
I pant through teeth and tendons, blindly digging the bone hook deeper, dragging it down the length of the string to flay it open.
I tear. I rip. I peel away the healing layers until the red thickness is reduced to a weeping, ragged ruin. Only when the connection is stripped back to a single, trembling fiber do I stop.
I withdraw my hand, clutching the wound wherein the heart stutters, falters, and then resumes a lonely, broken rhythm. The agony is absolute. Excruciating, yes, but still only the faintest twinge compared to grief.