Father of Nothing, some priest called Death in one of the documents buried somewhere at the bottom. My fingers drift absently to my lower belly, to the lingering ache there now that my bleeding is finally easing after a few days.
Can Death even father a child?
He seems to think so, which indeed is a worrisome thought at best. If I fall pregnant with his child, would it be godly? Mortal? And how would it change?—
Now I’m getting ahead of myself.
I chuckle into the room as if my situation is funny, then groan until the candle beside me flickers because it’s anything but. For all I know, his caution is just a convenient excuse to avoid bedding, a lie to distract me from a goal he’s making impossible to reach.
A polite rap on the door, followed by the bristle of Miss Hampshire’s skirts as she enters with a basket clasped underarm. “The straw you requested, Your Majesty.”
“Put it beside the bed,” I say with a jut toward the blood-drowned bucket that already rests there. “I’ll take care of it myself in a bit.”
She does as told before she straightens and looks at the littered table, eyes narrowing. “Your Majesty might wear a crown now, but even queens need rest. Would you like me to have a maid prepare your bed?”
“Not yet.” My fingers lift to my face, rubbing the itch from my eyes. “How do I get my husband to show me his full true form?”
My head of staff gives a high-pitched, almost offendedhuh. “Whyever would you want to see such a gruesome thing?”
“I have a feeling it matters.” I press my thumb to the edge of a brittle page, grounding myself in its roughness. Vale fights the bedding tooth and claw, but what if I’ve been aiming at the wrong target all along? Maybe I’m not supposed to seduce Vale…but Death. “If only I could fool him again, maybe he’d owe me another wish.” My gaze drops to the line of ink. “I could demand he show me his bones. Or better yet, ask for a proper bedding.”
Miss Hampshire’s brows lift, straining the angry-red wound where her pustule finally popped a few days ago. Then she turns to shake at a curtain. And another, her eyes narrowing as if palacekeeping is fueling her thoughts.
“Your first wish was only granted because you convinced him you had plotted behind his back with the late king, may God rest his poor soul.” Her half-hand taps her apron when she turns back around to face me. Her gaze meets mine, sharp, calculating. “It sounds to me as if you have fooled him a second time already.”
“Technically, he fooled himself.” And yet, her words settle into me like a spark finding dry kindling, small but viciously bright.
“One must wonder if technicalities matter.” Miss Hampshire curtsies—stiff, habitual—then slips out, leaving the room to hush and candlelight.
A second wish. A second lever.
For a moment, that spark flares…only to be blown out by one drafty fact. Demanding payment requires me to confess that my first wish never had a foundation to begin with. And that’s a risk that might not just crumble my marriage into a divorce, but straight up annulment.
A husband unmade. A god released, making me lose the only chain I’ve managed to get around his throat thus far. And then what?
The sense of defeat is a deadweight that pulls my chin toward my chest, but I stop it by anchoring my gaze to a document before me. The script is nothing like I’ve ever seen. The letters don’t flow. They snarl: sharp angles, strange loops, marks above vowels like little teeth.
A part of the curse in the olden language.
My gaze slides to its original translation on the right…
“To break the Crown, love must rise,
The sovereign binding Death
in lover’s guise.
In the bed of the night,
the sovereign shall yield,
Receiving Death on the corpse’s field.
For the string restores
not by the blade’s cruel art,
But snaps only within
