Page 18 of Chained to the Horned God

VALOA

T he dawn sun filters through barbed window slits and lands like judgment across the infirmary straw.

When I wake, my side aches from the earlier steam-bath—spent warmth pressed against bruised flesh—but the ache doesn’t matter.

I draw breath, arch my shoulders, and realize my heart is still full, still tethered.

A scroll lies beneath my cot, sealed with a wax emblem I don’t recognize. No name. No seal. Only these words penned in silver ink:

“Meet me at the low-tier vault gate after final bell.”

I pause, heart hammering. Doubt curls around me—danger climbs fast in dark halls. The bell will ring when the last match’s death falls silent.

I slip out of the cot, strap a dagger to my hip, and creak down the corridor. Guards don’t bother with me—they’ve learned not to look too closely at the healer who steals into enemies' shadows.

The vault gate is a rusted arch in the dungeon’s lowermost tier, doors warped from time. I wait in the gloom, breath shallow, wrenching moisture from my skirt.

From the darkness steps a man draped in a hooded cloak—Beltran. The dark elf noble whose neutrality feels like a promise. His eyes glint from the hood’s rim. “You want him alive, don’t you?” he asks, voice smooth like midnight silk.

I don’t answer. I nod.

He flicks a troubled gaze down the corridor, then back to me. “Lotor is planning something. Something fatal.” That word— fatal —carries weight. As though he holds a blade over Barsok’s head, and Lotor’s whisper is the edge.

“Why should I trust you?” I whisper, wind catching my voice.

His head tilts, cloak shadowing half his face. But his eyes hold truth: “Because I knew him before he was the Horned Storm. Before blood made him legend. I owe him more than loyalty to the throne.”

My heart clenches tight. Beltran continues: “They want to harness his popularity as a weapon—to turn him on the crowd when the votes turn ugly. Or destroy him if he refuses. He’s part of the gamble now.”

I breathe deep. I think of Barsok lying on the cot, bruised and alive, hands that tremble when he thinks he’s broken. I steel myself.

Beltran presses a small, folded packet into my palm—ink-stained with new instructions for tomorrow. “Keep him strong. Don’t let him fight blind again. I’ll send more soon. You’re his tether.”

He turns, steps back into the shadows. The vault gates rattle shut behind him.

I kneel in the gloom, pressing fingers to the packet as if it’s a lifeline. A second scroll, with maps, safe routes, codes to delay the coup if necessary, and a fragment of hope I didn’t expect.

Back in the infirmary, Valoa stands in the torchlight, silent revelation tugging at her chest. She breathes deep—then straightens her spine. Shadows cluster in the corners, but she’s lit from within.

I watch her fingers fiddle with the dagger at her side. I don’t move.

She tucks the packet into her satchel and meets my gaze. “He won’t fight alone,” she murmurs.

I swallow. “Good.”

Her eyes flick to the cot where Barsok sleeps. Feathers of scarred flesh rise even under cover. “Then neither will you.”

I exhale slow, thick—the ragged inhale of someone recalibrated by stories whispered in shadows.

Night thrusts us forward. I taste fear in my mouth, but I also taste something else—defiance.

Tomorrow might be the day the arena falls. But tonight, I’ve chosen: I don’t fear what comes for him. Because I have belts of secrets, maps of escape, and a whispered vow not to push him away again—ever.

The guard rotations are messier than usual.

I pass the infirmary thresholds now smelling sweat and steel over worn linen in broader strokes—like someone turned the lamp up on danger.

Guards watch Barsok longer than duty calls.

At dinner rations, they glance at me as often as they glance at him.

Lotor’s voice drips through the upper galleries: “The Horned Storm has served well.” But it’s the way he says has that slices open every silent corner—it’s correctable. Replaceable. Disposable.

I feel fresh panic under my skin, cold and simmering. I slip scrolls and maps into my satchel as though they breathe. I don’t tell Barsok about Beltran—not yet. Not until I understand what’s entangled beneath it all.

That afternoon, I slip into our cell just as he’s sharpening his blade. He works slowly, tension in his shoulders, head lowered. I move across the floor bare feet mostly silent, inching closer until I stand across from him. He doesn’t stop grinding.

I swallow. “They’re watching you more.”

He glances sideways. No fear. Only assessment. “They always have.”

I touch the scar at the base of his throat with the tip of my finger. “But now it’s different.”

He sets the whetstone down. “Different how?”

I hold my breath. “Your name on banners is like an invocation at court. That means someone is expected to fetch ends when it fails. If they’re planning something —if Lotor’s sharpening his blade—then it could go inside you.”

He stands, jaw worked tight. His shoulders rise. “That knife touches me, it’s not me dying.”

I take a breath too heavier than I mean. “You’re scared,” he says. Not accusing. Observing.

I flinch. Scared. The word trembles on my lips. “I don’t like that.”

He watches me, expression taut. “Then give me something to believe in.”

The suddenness catches me—only his scent, his heat, the buried tremble I know well. And he leans in and kisses me so hard it hurts, not careless but feral, wanting. The faint brush of leather and steel and salt and blood—an intimate revelation in teeth and tongue and heart.

When lips part, he breathes, “Believe in us.”

I taste tear and terror and longing. I relax, letting him pull me onto the cot against the bedding that smells of steam and lavender oil.

I hold his face in my palms, eyes tracing the shards of scars on his cheek, the faint silver line above his forehead.

I cling to him until I feel something like hope.

We don’t speak again until the torch guttering above sputters flame. He slides his hand into mine, fingers lacing. His voice is low: “You don’t have to carry this alone.”

I nod, chest tight.

He nods back.

When he finally lies down, I climb beside him and rest my head against his large shoulder.

His heartbeat is steady beneath mine—thunder in the chest of a storm tamed.

Walls shake as gates opening echo in distant halls, footsteps marking shift changes.

But inside, with legs twisted together and breath slow, there's only us and the fragile dawn just behind closing eyes.

That night, sleep doesn’t find me. I perch beside Barsok, body curled in the low pallet, sweeping my hands through the weave of the bedroll to steady myself against the tremor of fear and longing.

His breath, even in sleep, is a low tide—steady, slumbering, tethering me to something beyond this pit’s endless cruel demands.

I watch him inhale, exhale, and I realize what home even looks like in shadowed cells.

My fingers brush the carved minotaur figure tucked beneath my tunic—smoothed edges from the countless nights I’ve held it like a talisman.

I feel the rough scar that arcs beneath my breast where the chimera clawed me, throbbing with memory.

I breathe in the smell of sweat, old linen, steam wafting through rusted bars combined with the lavender oil I applied sneaked through stolen rags.

It's a scent made of battlefields and fragile peace.

I dwell on the choices coming—a path toward escape, toward Beltran’s alliance; a path towards revolution; a path towards exile with him; maybe toward death.

I envision gardens turned from jungle ruin, beds warm beneath simple quilts, names spoken not in fear but in love— Barsok , tender and reverent, and my own name echoed gently in his longing.

I bite the inside of my lip, tasting copper and anxiety and resolve.

I think of what I’d kill—every guard, every noble, every snide whisper in silk—to keep him alive.

He shifts and groans softly in his sleep. His arm snakes behind me, musk and warmth, dragging me closer into his chest. I smell sea salt and leather and the faint copper edge of his blood-streaked bandages. I press closer, letting my cheek rest where I can hear the hum of his heartbeat.

When he opens his eyes, they’re glassy with sleep but bright with something unspoken. He lifts a hand to the back of my neck and exhales low. “You smell like fire and salt,” he mutters.

I press my lips to his brow, tracing the silver scar there that veins jagged like lightning across his skin. “That’s because I’m burning for you,” I whisper back, voice breathless and steady.

He doesn’t answer. But he tightens his hold—wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me flush to him, as if I’m the only thing standing between him and the abyss. I rest my head beneath his jaw, breathing in the loop of fur and scar and strength.

We stay like that until my tears dry on his chest. His steady breath sinks me toward sleep—soft, inevitable, protective.

The world outside disturbs the silence—guards shifting, distant contraband clinks, a death echoing through attic halls.

But inside this fragile cocoon, thunder refuses to reach us.

His fingers trace small circles in my ribs. I feel one of the ribs beneath my wound pop gently—he doesn't pull back. I gasp against the pain. His chest thumps hot beneath mine, familiar and unwavering.

I realize then that love isn’t a promise born in safety. Love is forging forward believing in someone when everything tells you it’s impossible. Love is burning for someone across rust and whispers and shadows.

“Stay with me,” he breathes in sleep, words heavy in dark.

“I will,” I promise, voice muffled.

He shifts, pulling me tighter. I drift over the edge of darkness, anchored by his heartbeat and shaped by the possibility that one day, maybe—just maybe—there’ll be a garden waiting beyond this arena.

And in that moment, I understand: I’ll burn it all down for that chance.