Page 4 of Chained to the Horned God

VALOA

I wake with my face pressed into coarse fur, warm and musky and real.

For one fragile moment, I think I’m home, curled beside Father’s old hound by the hearth.

The illusion shatters the second I inhale deeper and get a noseful of rust, mold, and dried blood.

My eyes flick open to the shadows of Barsok’s cell.

My pillow is no hound. It's his arm, thick as a tree trunk and about as yielding.

His breath puffs across my scalp in slow, even intervals, each exhale scented with something earthy, feral, and slightly bitter, like singed bark.

I lift my head slowly, ears tuned to every creak of chain or distant footstep.

My cheek’s damp. Probably drooled on him.

Lovely. I brace for him to yank away or shove me back into my corner, but Barsok doesn’t move, not even when I shift my weight.

He just lets out a low huff and adjusts slightly so I don’t fall off.

The chains rattle against the wall when he moves.

His eyes stay closed, but he’s awake. I can feel it.

“Didn’t mean to use you as a pillow,” I whisper, voice raw from sleep and weeks of dehydration.

“You’re light,” he grumbles, words slurred like sleep’s still fighting him. “Didn’t notice.”

“You noticed.”

His lip twitches. Not quite a smile, but close.

We both know it can’t last. Nothing good does in this place.

The moment’s shattered by the shriek of hinges.

The cell door groans open like it hates its job, and the world rushes back in—bootfalls, laughter, the stink of sweat and cruelty.

Barsok’s body tenses beneath me, and I jerk upright as two guards swagger in, all smugness and polished cruelty.

Their skin gleams obsidian in the dim torchlight, eyes red as coals and twice as cold.

One of them carries a whip looped around his waist. The other has a ring of keys and breath that stinks of fermented bloodfruit.

“Rise and shine, little healer,” the one with the keys sneers, his voice like oil on hot metal. “Boss says you’re too useful to rot.”

Barsok growls low in his throat. A warning. Not for me.

I scramble to my feet just as the guards move. One of them grabs my wrist, jerks me forward hard enough to jolt my spine.

“Don’t touch her,” Barsok snaps, voice thick with venom.

The whip flicks out. Barsok lunges. The chains scream in protest, dragging him back like a yanked marionette. His shoulder slams into the stone with a sickening thud. Dust falls from the ceiling as he snarls, teeth bared, horns tilted forward like he might charge through the wall if he could.

“You want another lash, beast?” the whip-carrier grins.

Barsok doesn’t answer. He just glares. It’s enough to make the grin falter.

They drag me into the corridor. I don’t resist. Resistance gets you hurt. But I glance back, locking eyes with Barsok as the door slams shut. His jaw’s clenched, shoulders tight. He wanted to protect me. Couldn’t.

The walk through the lower levels of Kharza’s arena is a labyrinth of rot and misery.

Every corner smells like fear. The torches spit black smoke that burns the back of my throat.

The guards say nothing as they shove me through a heavy iron door and into what passes for an infirmary down here—if you’re feeling generous.

The room is little more than a wide alcove carved from rough stone.

No windows. No clean linens. Just a cracked slab that might’ve once been a surgical table, a basin of foul-smelling water, and piles of blood-soaked rags.

A stack of rusted tools sits on a shelf—hooks, shears, bone saws.

Some of them look like they haven’t been cleaned since the First Reckoning.

The air is thick with the coppery tang of old blood and the sour stench of unwashed bodies.

They throw me forward. I hit the ground hard, palms scraping stone. My knees burn as I push up, eyes adjusting.

There are at least eight gladiators in here. All wounded. All watching me.

Some look hollowed out, like the fights sucked the soul from their bones and left nothing but meat and muscle behind. Others… others are watching me the way wolves watch a limping deer.

One of them, a brute of a man with mottled gray skin and a cracked tusk, chuckles low. “Another gift from the top, huh?”

“No,” says a smooth voice behind him. “She’s the new patch job.”

I turn. A woman stands against the far wall, arms crossed. Her armor is piecemeal, gold and silver glittering in the torchlight like a crow’s hoard. She’s human, tall, lean, with a scar that slices down one cheek like a knife took issue with her beauty and only half-won.

Sharonna.

I’ve heard of her in whispers, even below decks. The Gladatrix. The spoiled queen of the sands. Except she doesn’t look spoiled. She looks tired. Alert. Dangerous.

She nods at the pile of bloodied bandages beside the slab. “Start there. Best get moving. They don’t like it when the meat takes too long to mend.”

I blink at her, stunned. “You’re human.”

“So are you,” she replies, tone dry. “That doesn’t mean you get to be stupid.”

I crouch beside the bandages and start sorting through them. Most are beyond saving—crusted black and crawling with flies. I push them aside and use what’s left of the herbal paste from my belt pouch. It’s nearly gone. I make it stretch.

A gladiator groans behind me, clutching a gut wound stitched with twine and bad intentions. I approach slowly, hands raised. “I can clean it. Maybe ease the pain.”

His eyes flick to Sharonna. She nods once, and only then does he let me near.

As I work, Sharonna leans in, voice low.

“Don’t show fear,” she says.

“I’m not.”

“You are. I can smell it.”

I swallow. “Is that supposed to help?”

“It’s supposed to keep you alive.” Her gaze sweeps the room. “They’ll eat you slower if you don’t act like prey.”

I press a cloth to the wound and the man hisses in pain.

I grit my teeth and keep going.

I work with shaking hands. I stitch flesh that doesn’t want to close and wipe blood that refuses to stop flowing. My fingers tremble, but I keep them moving. Movement gives the illusion of confidence, and confidence keeps the wolves from circling.

The orc on the table is massive, one hand missing at the wrist, a slab of iron strapped to the stump with a crudely fashioned harness.

His green skin is marbled with scars old and new, and his chest rises in shallow, ragged breaths.

The gash across his ribs is deep, angry, and still seeping. Infection’s already settling in.

“Hold still,” I say.

His eye cracks open, red and sharp, narrowed with contempt. “Try not to sew me crooked, red.”

“You want pretty stitches or to live?” I thread the needle with what passes for gut twine and press the curved tip against the ragged edge of the wound.

He bares his teeth but doesn’t move. “You got nerve.”

I jab the needle through.

He doesn’t scream, but his fingers curl around the edge of the table until the wood creaks.

“You got name, nerve girl?” he asks between gritted teeth.

“Valoa.”

“Durk.” He spits to the side, missing my foot by inches. “They call me Dragonslayer. Earned it. Didn’t ask for it.”

I loop the thread and tie the knot, snipping it clean with my belt knife. “Well, Durk Dragonslayer, you’re lucky the guards need you alive. Otherwise, you’d be pissing blood into the afterlife by now.”

He snorts, something half between a laugh and a cough. “You talk big for someone without tusks.”

“You bleed like everyone else.”

His eyes narrow, then his lips curl into a grin. “You’ll do.”

Sharonna watches from the wall, arms still crossed. Her expression hasn’t changed, but there’s a flicker of something—approval, maybe—in the way she nods once and turns away.

The guards don’t say a word when they come for me again.

They just yank me from the makeshift infirmary and toss me back into the black corridors like discarded laundry.

I don’t fight them. My arms ache, and my legs feel like water, but I keep my back straight and my jaw clenched.

I walk back to the cell on my own feet, bruised but unbroken.

The door opens with the same grating moan, and Barsok is already there, crouched by the wall, chains loose enough to let him rise if need be. His eyes flick to me the second I step inside. He takes in the blood on my arms, the weariness in my gait. He doesn’t ask questions.

“Durk lives,” I mutter.

“Then you’ve done more than most,” he replies.

I slide down the wall beside him, the cold stone leeching the heat from my skin. My fingers are sore. My shoulders scream. But I’m here. I’m not dead.

I don’t mean to start talking. The words just come, quiet at first, then faster once they begin.

I tell him about Prazh. About the fire and the shouting.

The smell of burning wood and screaming horses.

I tell him about the way my father fell, the way his blood fanned across the dirt like spilled ink, his fingers twitching once before going still.

“I was under the cart,” I whisper, choking on the memory. “He shoved me there. Said not to make a sound. I watched them—dark elves, half a dozen—laugh as they ran him through.”

Barsok doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to.

The silence stretches long enough that my vision blurs. I blink fast, but it doesn’t stop the tears. They fall thick and hot, streaking down my face and into the grime on my cheeks. I bite the inside of my lip until it bleeds, but the sob rips out of me anyway—ugly, wet, and raw.

I curl into myself, fists tight against my knees, trying to keep it quiet. Trying to keep it together. But I can’t.

I don’t hear Barsok move. I just feel his hand, massive and rough, settle on mine. It’s not a gesture of pity. It’s something else. Something older. More honest.

I don’t pull away.

When I finally catch my breath, when the shaking slows and the ache in my chest dulls just enough to speak again, I look at him. “What about you?”

His gaze is far away. Like he’s staring into something I can’t see.

“Milthar,” he says. “That was home. Islands in the far sea, white cliffs and black sand. We fished, traded, kept our ships close and our honor closer. I was a captain. Third-generation. Had a vessel with golden sails and a crew who knew the waves like their own names.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“Storm caught us near the Kharzan coast. Hull split. Survivors got picked up by raiders. They took my ship. Killed the rest. Spared me for the arena.”

He says it all so flat, so stripped of emotion it feels like he’s telling someone else’s story. But I see it in the way his jaw tightens. The way his hand curls slightly when he talks about the ship. He doesn’t mourn the vessel. He mourns the man he was on it.

“They made me fight,” he says. “Told me I’d earn my freedom in a hundred victories. I stopped counting at fifty.”

The silence between us settles thick and solid, like fog over calm water. I lean against the wall, closer to him now. Close enough to feel the warmth that rolls off him like a hearth fire.

“We’re both lost,” I murmur. “Broken different, but still broken.”

Barsok grunts. “Not broken. Changed.”

“Maybe.”

He doesn’t move his hand.

The torches outside the cell sputter low, casting more shadow than light.

The dark creeps in and stretches across the stone like a living thing, curling into every crack, crawling up the walls and swallowing the ceiling whole.

I count each breath like it might be my last. One for the blood I spilled.

One for the lives I couldn’t save. One for the ache in my chest that no amount of stitching will ever fix.

Barsok hasn't spoken in what feels like hours. He doesn’t move, either.

He sits beside me, broad shoulders brushing mine every so often, steady like a mountain refusing to fall.

I want to ask him if he regrets telling me about Milthar.

About the sea and the life he lost. I want to ask if he ever thinks about drowning.

Not the kind that ends breath, but the kind that steals the will to fight.

I don’t ask. I don’t have to.

He turns to me slowly, his eyes unreadable in the low light, their silver sheen dulled by exhaustion and time. The silence shifts. Grows tighter. Something invisible crackles between us, stretched thin by everything we’ve said and everything we’ve been too afraid to say.

He leans in, hesitant at first, like he’s testing the water for sharks.

I don’t move away.

Our mouths meet—not in hunger, not in desperation, but in a kind of aching quiet. It’s not the kind of kiss I imagined I’d ever have. It doesn’t burn. It doesn’t take. It doesn’t demand.

It just… is.

Soft. Questioning. Careful.

His lips brush mine, and I forget the stench of mildew and blood. I forget the iron bite of manacles and the bruises blooming beneath my tunic. I forget the guards, the cell, the dungeon, and the fact that tomorrow might be my last.

For a moment, I exist only in this kiss.

It ends before it really begins. No grand gesture. No spoken word. Just a breath shared between broken things trying not to crumble completely.

He pulls back, eyes flicking down to the dirt like maybe he’s ashamed. But I’m not.

“Thank you,” I whisper, surprised by the sound of my own voice.

His brow lifts. “For what?”

“For not pretending.”

The tension in his shoulders loosens. He leans his head back against the stone, exhaling through his nose in that slow, measured way he does when he’s thinking more than he wants to admit.

I don’t ask what it meant to him. I don’t try to define it.

We sit there, breathing each other in. I lay my head against his chest again, careful to avoid the angry bruise near his collarbone. He doesn’t flinch this time. His arm shifts, settling around me like it belongs there.

His heartbeat is slower than mine. Heavy. Certain. Like waves hitting the shore again and again, unconcerned by anything but the rhythm.

My fingers curl into the fur at his side, and I try to memorize the shape of him. The warmth. The quiet strength that’s carried him through years of violence without breaking.

I’m not sure when I fall asleep, only that I do.

There’s no nightmare waiting for me tonight. No fire. No screams.

Just the thud of a heart I want to understand, and the breath of a monster who kissed me like I was something worth saving.