All moisture seems to evaporate from my mouth, leaving my tongue dry, my throat itchy. What will I have them do? I don’t even know where these lowlands are. Never heard of them in my life!
“I—” My voice cracks.
I swallow. Swallow again, pulse fluttering against my throbbing esophagus. I know how to stretch a sack of flour. Know how to lime a grave. But I have no fucking clue how to stop a damn flood.
Air whirls behind me with how Miss Hampshire busies herself with lighting another candle, only for her to shift closer to my back. “Have them open the dikes to the east.” Her whisper barely reaches my ear, let alone the room. “It’ll flood the grazing lands, but push the flood west and save the townships.”
I glance over my shoulder, her eyes hard, unblinking beads. She’s feeding me the words.
Turning back to the minister, I straighten my spine. “Open the eastern dikes.”
The minister frowns. “Your Majesty, the grazing lands?—”
“Won’t feed a single gaping mouth if they’re already stuffed with grave dirt,” I say. “We’ll deal with the consequences of the flooded grazing lands once they come into existence.”
He blinks in surprise, offering no more pushback on the matter. “And…the bodies, Your Majesty?”
Moisture returns to my mouth, if only some. Graves. Corpses. That, I know!
“Where do most of them collect? Show me.” When he points out the affected area on the map, I search its surroundings, gaze trailing over forest, rivers, mountains… Mountains. My nail runs along the words scribbled under the illustration of a triangle. “With how scarce the salt is, I assume this mine isn’t currently being worked?”
“No, Your Majesty. Not in many years. It is nearly depleted.”
“Perfect. Use harvest wagons with wide wheels to collect the bodies,” I say. “Dump them into the mine. The salt will dry the bodies, contain the rot some.”
“But the rites?—”
“The dead care less about the rites than the living care about keeping rot away. Do it. Now.”
The decisive crack of my order snaps them into motion. They bow, low and hurried, and scramble out the door.
When the latch clicks shut and silence returns, so does that dull twist in my lower belly. I press my palm against it once more, but it does nothing to stop how it radiates into my lower back.
“Your Majesty?” Miss Hampshire takes a step forward, eyeing my hand on my stomach.
“I’m fine,” I say, straightening my spine. “Just…the corset thing.”
“One of the crueler mandates of royal fashion, but it helps keep the chapel gossip down about the realm having a queen.” She steps behind me once more. A tug here, a tug there, and the damn pressure eases its bite. “Better?”
“Yes, thank you.” Nodding, I stride over to the window. “Also, thank you for helping me just now.”
I pass the bloodstain that clings to the wooden floor. Whatever lay hidden beneath wool for decades has faded into a pale rust color ever since I ordered to have the rug removed. To show the handprint that sits deep inside the oak, raw and vulnerable—a daily reminder of what this curse took.
The things it can still take…
I close my eyes and press my forehead against the cool pane of the window.Wed him. Bed him. Crown him dead and slit his throat.How can something that sounds so neat be so impossible to achieve?
A throb starts behind my temple. Somehow, I managed to drag Death into a chapel and make him my husband, no matter how his vows dripped with pure poison. But the rest?
The memory of the open grave crashes over me, hot and humiliating. I tried to seduce him in the dirt, desperate and clumsy, and he shattered me without even undressing. He took my frantic offering and twisted it until I was the one unraveling, leaving me soaked in his seed but certainly notbedded.
How am I supposed to tempt a creature who knows desire as a weakness to be exploited? And why is he so adamant about clinging to this wretched curse? What does it give him, other than an endless harvest of souls he’s tired of? He looks at the world like a man exhausted by his own doing, yet he fights to keep the very thing that seems to be draining him alive. Why?
“The original documents about the curse.” I lift my head and look back to where Miss Hampshire draws the velvet comforter from my bed. “Where can I find it?”
I need to see it for myself. Maybe there’s something Kael missed, a nuance hidden to male logic, a hint. And even if there isn’t, being thorough, leaving nothing to chance will, at the very least, ease my mind some.
Miss Hampshire’s gaze flicks to my crown, then away again, as if she doesn’t like looking at the gold fused to my skull. “You may wish to try the?—”
