Page 16 of Chained to the Horned God

VALOA

A fresh shipment arrives before dawn: noble spectators escorted in under gilded banners and velvet robes.

Their chatter fills the gates like birdsong before a storm.

They smell of wine and perfume and entitlement, like nights when mercy is currency and death is entertainment.

Among them, a patron known for importing exotic beasts strides through the infirmary doors himself, his robes rippling like water over stone.

Under his arm, seated atop a gilded cage, is the chimera—a grotesque horror with goat horns, lion’s body, serpent tail—and eyes hungry for blood.

They pit it against enslaved gladiators who have no glory left to lose. I’m ordered to stay after the match, tend to the wounded once the rows of victims are brought out on littered stretchers. They call this a spectacle. They call it sport.

What I see isn’t a battle. It’s a massacre wrapped in ceremony.

Limbs shredded. Spines snapped at the ankles.

Half of the orc fighters lie still, faces frozen in the last moment before they realized it was over.

One naga, not fully dead, hisses for his mother in a child’s voice, a whisper of mist before the flame.

My stomach reels. I swallow and hold it, but it’s too late. I vomit into the corner bucket, bile steaming in the cold air. Guards don’t flinch. Slaves don’t cry. I do.

I stay on my knees, pushing breaths through nausea, until Valoa appears behind me like a shade—steady, calm.

She grips the basin’s edge, then tilts until I can lean and dry heave again.

When I’m spent, she presses a hand to my shoulder.

“You did good,” she says quietly. “Let them be monsters. Promise me you won’t become one. ”

When I can stand again, I gather wounds with numb hands, stitch torn flesh and broken bones. The smell of burnt hair and acid from chimera venom etches into the cold stone. I taste iron. I breathe death. I tend what’s left.

Afterwards, the noble—draped in silk too fine for this pit—finds me at the edge of the infirmary, offering wine from his glass. He tilts it toward me. “I can transfer you to my house,” he says, voice too smooth. “Softer life. Privileges. A place beyond this vermin’s den.”

I look at him across the broken bodies and refuse his glass, spit slabbing across his wine like disdain’s swelling echo. He recoils as if I slapped him. Crocked laughter explodes from behind me—it’s Sharonna. She wipes her mouth with her sleeve, amber eyes bright with vicious humor.

“I hear house-slavery suits you,” she calls before swaggering out.

I feel the noble’s cold fury, his lean toward me until I see Barsok appear behind him—shoulders squared, body swallowed in shadow. I don’t speak. My jaw throbs. Barsok’s eyes blaze silent fire. The air tightens until laughter chokes in it. The noble’s blood drains beneath his polish.

When he speaks, it’s not words. It’s a growl low in his chest, reverberating like warhorn through my bones.

“I was polite,” he says. “Don’t mistake that for weakness.”

The noble stumbles back. Servants grip his arm. He’s escorted off, dignity flapping like torn silk. The guards close ranks instantly.

Barsok turns back to me. A broken man stitched together by promises and scars.

“Never again,” he says. Rage drips like boiling lead from his words. “Anyone ever tries that again…”

I swallow. Gratitude and fear well inside me.

No more words are needed. Valoa holds my hand as they fight to clean me. She whispers under her breath: “You’re safe now.”

Spare glimmers in her eyes. Hope trembles in our breath.

Because in the world beyond, everything warps. But in here, with her beside me, I know who I still am.

After the chaos of the chimera slaughter, Barsok becomes more possessive.

Not in the way chains imprison, but as if he insists on guarding the fragile spark inside me.

Every time I pass the cell door, there’s a hand near my waist—an instinct to redirect me when guards shuffle too close.

When I stitch another gash at dusk, he sits outside, head leaning against the bars, watching me as if the world ends where my fingers work. His presence is both solace and storm.

One night, after a match slaughtered by Lotor’s exotic beasts, I step inside the cell to wash my training dress.

He follows, closes the door, and steps right up behind me.

His fingers brush the bruises on my sides as I lift water to rinse the blood and grime from my tunic.

It’s protective. It’s careful. I turn, towel in hand, and lift my voice.

“I’m not your burden.”

I don’t mean it to hurt him. I only mean to breathe truth into this cage of us.

He pauses in the torchlight, the water dripping from my hands onto the stone. His eyes soften. “You’re not,” he replies softly. “You’re my reason.”

My chest aches. I swallow. I grip the towel tighter. His words hang between us, heavy and sacred.

But then something rattles inside me. The echo of chains. The smell of the infirmary, stale and scarred. The faint memory of the orc boy’s convulsions. I pull the towel to my chest and step back.

“Sometimes,” I say. “Part of me wonders if we’re just building sandcastles in the tide.”

He doesn’t reply. His jaw tightens. I take a breath to steady the storm rising in my belly.

“I don’t want to be your anchor,” I continue. Tears threaten—fury or fear, I can’t tell. “If it means I drown with you.”

Silence. Not the safe kind. The kind where worlds shift and something breaks.

Then his hand comes up and catches my elbow. Not holding me. Guiding me.

“You’re stronger than you know,” he murmurs.

I look into his eyes. I see vigilance. Watching. A man trying not to drown himself too.

“That’s why I protect you,” he says. “Because you keep me safe too—not with strength. With you.”

My vision blurs. I try to resist the swoon. Heart pounding, words swimming in my throat. But I fail. My knees weaken. I gasp.

He catches me, arms steady but warm. He holds me close enough to feel each breath, each scar, each word. He doesn’t speak again for a long moment.

“I can’t promise there won’t be storms,” I whisper, voice trembling.

“Then I promise I won’t let you face them alone,” he replies.

Night curls over us like a promise. The door clicks. Another guard passes by. Doesn’t open. Doesn’t speak.

We stand there for minutes that feel like years. The austerity of stone around us softens in his chest, in the heat of his body against mine. I taste salt and hope beneath the ache.

When I pull away, I find razor-thin cracks in my resolve. Not of fear. Of love. Love shaped into a vow made of scars and survival.

“And now?” he asks.

I straighten, breath shaky, but resolve solid. “Now we build something worth saving.”

He nods, jaw set, eyes fierce.

He takes my hand. I let him.

We don’t talk again that night. We don’t need to.

Because in the darkness, only one question matters: can we keep building even when the tide threatens to wash away everything we’ve made?

I don’t shake. I stand steady, anchored—yes, maybe he might drown one day, but I’m still breathing, still fighting to keep what we built alive.

That night, our fight isn’t in the pit. It's not against claws or horns or poison.

The fire waits for us behind closed doors.

We fight with words. With scars. With open wounds of memory and regret.

I pace the cell, footsteps echoing slow, while he rests his back against the worn wall, arms folded tight across his bruised chest. The air is thick with candle smoke and fear, a bitter scent we both learned to taste long ago.

I stop in front of him. “You’re suffocating me,” I say, voice blunt and trembling. “I feel you everywhere before I even speak.”

He presses his jaw tight, the muscles standing out in his neck. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

“But at what cost?” I whisper, stepping close enough to feel his breath mingle with mine. “Your soul? Your peace?” My words sting like salt.

He snaps. “If you can’t trust me to protect you, then what good am I?” His voice is low, heavy as slow thunder. “Maybe I’m not what you wanted.”

I flinch. I want to deny it. But tears leak free anyway. Feel the pressure in my chest crack open. “You’re everything. But you’re also so violent that I think one day I’ll lose you the way this pit loses people.” The pain in my voice is sharp enough to cleave the silence.

His mouth opens, then closes. His fist clenches the wall. “You wound me here,” he says, voice low and ragged. His eyes burn in the half-light. “But I keep coming back. You’re home.”

The tears fall freely now, each one a confession: fear, longing, love, exhaustion. I crumble. He stands, the cell feeling stifling, ground beneath my heels like broken glass.

Then silence.

He exhales. His shoulders slump.

He kneels.

My breath catches.

He doesn’t move toward me. Instead he covers his face with callused hands. The flame from the torch flares across his shoulders and the silver line on his forehead. Then he lifts his head, tears wet on his face.

“I don’t know how to love like a man anymore,” he says, voice hollow and raw. “This armor, these scars, the things I’ve done—I don’t even recognize the man under it.”

I reach for him, kneel across from him on the straw. “Then let’s learn together,” I whisper, voice thick with hope and sorrow.

He looks at me, eyes glossy with unshed tears. He takes my hand—strong, trembling, honest. Then he stands and pulls me to him slowly. We don’t speak again. We give in to the silence that speaks louder than apologies.

We make love that night not out of passion, but because every touch and breath, every cry and kiss, becomes an apology and a promise tangled into one.

His hands map my scars. My fingers trace the line of steel etched into his chest where the chimera’s horn crushed flesh months ago.

Every gasp, every broken moan, every whispered name becomes a vow.

When he kisses my tears away, I taste salt.

When I kiss the scars on his chest, I taste battle and longing and release.

The world outside the cell—crowds, battles, death—fades into distant rumble.

All that remains is breath and heartbeat, raw flesh pressed against raw flesh, confession braided into skin.

We fall asleep wrapped in each other, tangled limbs heavy with the weight of survival and the fragile bloom of hope.

It’s not perfect. Our bodies ache. We wake in pain: bruises, tight joints, nightmares ringing loud.

But when we wake, he holds me. I trace the line of gold his horns cast on the ceiling.

All I know is this: he looked into the depths of my fear and chose to stay. I looked into his past and refused to run. It’s not perfect. But it’s ours.