Page 13 of Chained to the Horned God

BARSOK

T hey move me to a private cell after the hydra fight.

It's walled in iron and stone, thicker than any others. Steel locks clamp tight and guard posts flank the gate. It feels less like a sanctuary and more like a shrine—a prison turned mausoleum. The walls are colder here. The floor is colder. Even the air tastes sharper, as though it’s been filtered of everything kind.

The crowd now demands me as the main event.

They chant in the streets: “The Horned Storm! The Horned Storm!” They weave my name into songs, rumors, wagers, and threats.

I enter the pit dressed in gold-streaked fur and cracked armor like some twisted king borne on suspicion.

The cole crowd roars not out of respect, but because they think they own me.

I’m less a gladiator now and more a legend they feed on.

I eat alone in this cell. The guards slide in me meals on iron platters—salted meat, hard bread, water in chipped bowls.

I chew through it without taste or thought.

I train alone in a dirt yard behind the reinforced bars.

No sparring partners. Only shadows. I swing my axe in slashes and arcs, sweat clinging like grime.

I feel every blow in my bones and curse the silence beyond my own breathing.

But at night, they let Valoa in. She’s earned that much authority for now.

The gate jangling open is the only sound I wait for.

When she steps through, she moves like daylight into the darkness.

Worn leather boots, blood-stained bandages but unwavering stride.

The cell door clanks shut behind her. Every time, I damn near drop to my knees. But I don’t. I won’t.

She carries fresh linens folded neat. She brings clean bandages, herbs in cloth pouches, and once, a small carved figure of a minotaur, chipped and dusty. She says, “I found him in the ruins under the infirmary. He looked lonely.”

I reach out and take it. The wood is smooth where someone else’s fingertips once touched. It fits in my palm like home.

We don’t need words. Mostly, she touches my scars—new and old—with gentle certainty. She dresses the deep cut from the hydra. She murmurs old words—not whispers, more like prayers: “It will stitch. Breathe deep.” Her hands are cool. Her scent is lavender and earth and something raw in between.

Occasionally, I ask for water again. Not the rust-stained bowls. Just water pressed between my lips. She brings it with both hands. I drink it and taste the future.

One night, she stays beyond midnight. I wake to her humming, quiet, raw in the dark. A lullaby she swore she didn’t know she remembered. She swipes a strand of hair from my face with a gentle thumb.

“You dream too loud,” she says.

“I like it more than being awake.”

She smiles, leaning in closer until her warmth is pressed between my ribs.

I hold her wrist, twist it gently. “Stay.”

She nods into the shadow of my chest. No else need say it.

We don’t make love. Not yet. Just breath. Just skin pressed together. Fingertips trailing outlines—scars, muscles, memory—mapping out peace in the only territory we still own.

When dawn filters over the stones, Valoa stands, adjusting her skirts, hair tangled, eyes dull but steady.

“You need rest,” she says because of course she reads me.

“Not yet.”

“Tomorrow’s fight is bigger.”

I don’t argue. Not this time.

She climbs out. I hear the lock, the click, the turn of chains on the other side. Silence returns, thicker than the iron door.

I hold the wood minotaur figure in one hand, feel the heft of the memory.

When I ask her if she thinks about escape, I watch her hands fold over fresh bandages, slow and precise.

She doesn’t look up at first—just straightens a line, smooths a rag, breathes deep.

Her scent—her quiet—fills the cell like an unshakable promise.

Then she meets my eyes and says, “Every hour.” She ties the knot, pulls the cloth taut, and finally meets my gaze again.

Her lips curve, iron with longing. “But it’s not time yet. ”

I don’t ask how she knows things like that. She doesn’t need alphabetized clues or spoken proof. She just does. She’s the steady drumbeat under the terror of this place. Better than prophecies.

Durk appears at the cell gate that night—his limp heavier, his armor scratched, exhaustion lining his face deeper than death.

He drags in the heavy cot behind him and drops down across the floor.

His voice rattles like metal on rock: “You’re going soft, man.

” When I raise a brow, he swears again and adds, “You’re hesitating in the arena these days.

Not killing as fast. Drawing the mess out.

I’ll be damned if it isn’t because you think about her. ”

I want to punch him. Instead, I open my mouth and shut it. His words hit harder than the ogre’s hammer. He tosses his head, boots scuffing the dirt. “Don’t risk dying for a feeling, Horned Storm. That shit kills more men than anything.”

I don’t argue—not because he’s right, but because the thought of being right terrifies me more.

I swallow. I feel the sick weight of visibility in here—guards slipping scraps, whispers in the halls, the carved figure I carry tucked beneath my tunic like a beating heart.

Maybe I am going soft. Maybe nights of her breath in my hair have turned me into something less savage than before.

The next day, the chorus in the stands shifts when I enter the pit.

Lotor’s box creaks with luxury and disgust. He sipped wine as the twin-headed hydra died.

Now he’s draped in silk again. His gaze flicks down at me in a tilt like he’s inspecting if the price is worth it.

The crowd roars every time I turn, every time my shadow falls on jagged sand.

I face another match—a brute who fights with a war club bigger than my head.

He swings once, with a sound like thunder.

I hesitate—not enough to ruin the counterstrike, but enough that I see Valoa’s face behind the gates in my mind: worried eyes, clenched jaw.

I grip the haft tighter. I spare him until I hear the snap of ribs, not because I think he'll rise again but because I want to return whole.

This game is bigger than the kill. It's hollow if I lose myself for their cheers.

The blade comes down. The crowd gasps. The death is quick. The roar follows. I’m supposed to hold my axe up high. Instead, I wipe it on the sand, dirty it again.

Back at the cell, a guard brings water before the door opens wide. Valoa slides in like dusk easing across my side. She kneels beside me, presses a damp cloth to my cheek despite the gathering depth of bruises. She doesn’t say anything, only breathes strength into my skin.

When I ask if I should train harder, she leans forward, voice low: “Train smarter. Because I need you carving through that dumb show not as a star, but as everything I’ll find in the ashes.”

I stare at her mouth the moment she smiles—not for me, not to charm—but because she sees me. And that’s dangerous for both of us.

The rest of the war day is edges and shadows.

Each fight I enter, I enter cleaner, faster, careful.

They calibrate their bets accordingly. But I keep my secrets: the half-finished scars I carry because of her, the hesitation tightening like a knot in my chest only when the crowd knows my name too well.

Night falls. The torches gutter outside. I return to the cell. Valoa is crouched lighting a small fire in a brazier made from a rusted basin. Sparks spiral upward. I feel the heat—it’s small but enough.

Durk leans against the wall across the cell. I sit near Valoa, and there's no need for talk. Her fingers pull thread back through fresh wounds. Our thighs touch. Just once. Like a vow. I breathe her in. Her scent is parched dirt, lavender, faint cinnamon from the stew she stole for me.

Durk blinks and clears his throat like he remembers he’s guarding—not giving blessings. He staggers off to sleep. The cell door clicks shut.

Valoa stops stitching. She looks at me, head tilted, face battered but resolute. I catch her wrist again, careful. No words necessary. My thumb digs into her palm just enough to ground us both.

We lie side by side again. No spoken promise. Only presence. I feel the carved minotaur pressing between us in my pocket—and I tuck it into her hand. She lets it rest there. Closed fingers.

The chains rattle once when a guard passes outside the door, and we tighten around each other as though our breath alone is enough to hold us upright.

I close my eyes and feel safer than I’ve ever been in any battlefield.

Because of her.

Even if the world will always want to tear us apart, I choose to stand here a little softer. And hold on.

The air inside the cell tastes of iron and old sweat, but when Barsok kisses me, the world rewrites itself.

His lips brush mine with the careful reverence of someone touching something sacred, not just a woman.

His body, so large and wild—black fur streaked with silver, shoulders broad enough to shield a battlefield—shakes with restraint.

He’s spent his life holding back. Holding in.

And now, in the hush between screams outside the cell, he lets me in.

“Valoa,” he breathes against my mouth, voice raw like gravel and thunder. “Tell me this is real.”

I slide my hand up his broad chest, feeling the dense muscle beneath the thin fur. My fingers trace the silver scar down the center of his brow. “It’s real,” I whisper. “I’m yours. Right now. All of me.”

A tremor runs through him. His cock, already hard against my thigh, pulses with the admission. It's huge—thick, alien, velvety-dark and hot against my skin. The sheer size of him should intimidate me. But instead, it fills me with want so deep it aches.

His hands move slowly, reverently, as he undresses me piece by piece. His claws never scratch, only glide, catching the fabric of my tunic until it pools around my waist. His gaze rakes over my body like prayer, eyes dark with desire and something deeper—worship.

“You’re so small,” he murmurs, voice almost broken. “So soft. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” I say, guiding his palm to my breast. “You never could.”

His touch is fire. His fingers curl gently, cupping my chest, thumb brushing my nipple until it peaks under his attention. I sigh, arching into him, needing more. Always more.

He kisses me again, harder this time. Hungrier. His tongue explores my mouth, tasting me like a starving man at last allowed to feast. I feel his cock twitch against my stomach and reach down, fingers wrapping around the base.

Gods.

It takes both hands.

His breath shudders out of him as I stroke, slow and deliberate. “I’ve dreamed about this,” I whisper, pumping him. “About you inside me. Filling me. Breaking me open and putting me back together.”

Barsok groans, pressing his forehead to mine. “You’ll have to guide me.”

“I will,” I say. “But first, lie down.”

He hesitates, then obeys, the cot creaking beneath his massive weight.

I straddle him, my thighs spread wide across his hips.

I kiss his chest, tasting salt and ash and the ghosts of his past. My hair falls around his face like a curtain, and I feel his heartbeat echo through his chest beneath mine.

“I want to taste you,” I say.

He growls low in his throat, but nods, surrendering to me.

I slide down between his legs, his cock heavy against his thigh. I wrap my lips around the tip, tongue swirling over the slick head. He jerks beneath me, hands fisting the edge of the cot.

“Valoa—fuck.”

I suck him slowly, rhythmically, taking as much of him as I can, my fingers stroking the length that won’t fit. He’s leaking already, the taste rich and musky. His hips twitch, restrained but desperate.

“You’re going to make me come,” he warns, voice strangled.

“Good,” I murmur. “Come for me now. I want you hard again when you’re inside me.”

I don’t stop until he groans, deep and guttural, hips jerking as hot, thick cum floods my mouth. I swallow every drop, licking him clean. When I crawl back up his body, his eyes are wild, burning.

“I need you,” I whisper, straddling him again. “Now.”

He grabs my hips, but gently—always gently. “You sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

I reach between us, guiding his cock to my entrance. The stretch is immense—glorious. My pussy protests, then yields, inch by inch. I cry out, not from pain, but from the shock of being so completely filled.

Barsok groans, forehead pressed to mine, his breath ragged. “You feel like fucking heaven.”

“Don’t stop,” I gasp, hands on his shoulders. “Please, don’t stop.”

He thrusts slowly at first, every motion careful. My walls clench around him, dripping, pulling him deeper. I ride him, adjusting to his size, his rhythm. My body shakes with each movement, overwhelmed by sensation.

“I can feel your heartbeat in your cock,” I moan, teeth grazing his ear.

“You’re squeezing me so tight,” he growls, his hands now clutching my waist, helping guide the motion. “Like your pussy knows me.”

“It does ,” I pant. “It’s been waiting for you.”

He flips us, placing me gently beneath him. He begins to thrust—slow, deep, relentless. Each stroke hits a place inside me I didn’t know existed. I cry out again and again, not caring who hears.

“I see you,” he whispers into my neck. “Not just your body. You. ”

I wrap my arms around his back, nails raking down the fur. “I’ve never belonged to anyone before,” I whisper back. “But I want to belong to you.”

Our bodies slap together, slick and perfect. My climax builds fast—tight, impossible. I scream his name as I come, pussy convulsing around him, milking him. He follows seconds later, roaring as he spills deep inside me, filling me with his heat.

We lie there in the sweat-slick aftermath, the cot groaning beneath us.

He pulls me against his chest, still inside me, still hard. “You’ve ruined me,” he murmurs, voice dazed. “I’ll never be the same.”

“Good,” I say, pressing my mouth to his. “Neither will I.”