Page 6 of The Minotaur’s Little Peach
SOREYA
T he morning starts like any other—kaffo steaming in my cup, the scent of warm bread drifting through our open windows from the market stalls below.
Korrun left before dawn, as always, pressing a kiss to my forehead while I pretended to still be asleep.
The familiar rhythm of our life, predictable and precious in its simplicity.
I'm arranging the last of our fijus harvest in baskets when the door bursts open hard enough to rattle the hinges.
"Soreya." Mirath's voice cuts through the morning quiet, sharp with something that makes my blood freeze. Her healer's robes are streaked with dust and something darker, her usually neat curls wild around her face.
The basket slips from my hands, fijus scattering across the floor in purple bruises of fruit.
"Mir?" The word comes out smaller than I intend, already knowing I don't want to hear whatever brought her here looking like death itself.
She crosses the room in three quick strides, her hands finding my shoulders with a grip that would bruise if I could feel anything beyond the sudden roar of blood in my ears.
"There's been a fight at the colosseum." Her dark eyes search my face like she's memorizing it. "One of the prisoners—Varkas—he had a concealed blade. Lashed out during training."
The world tilts sideways. I can't breathe, can't think past the thunder of my heartbeat echoing in my skull.
"Korrun stopped him," she continues, her voice breaking on his name. "Killed the bastard, but?—"
"But what?" The words tear from my throat, raw and desperate.
Mirath's face crumples. "The blade found its mark first, Soreya. I'm so sorry."
I don't remember moving. Don't remember pushing past her or stumbling through the door or running down the narrow stone streets that suddenly feel like they're closing in around me.
My skirts tangle around my legs, threatening to send me sprawling, but I can't slow down.
Can't stop. Can't do anything but run toward the colosseum with Mirath's words echoing in my head like a curse.
The blade found its mark.
The colosseum gates loom ahead, ancient stone stained with the sweat and blood of countless fighters. A crowd has gathered—trainers, officials, spectators drawn by the commotion. They part before me like water, their faces blurring into meaningless shapes as I push through.
That's when I see them.
Four men carrying a stretcher, moving with the careful reverence reserved for the dead. The massive frame on it is unmistakably Korrun—too broad, too tall to be anyone else. Dark fur matted with blood, those beautiful amber eyes I've stared into a thousand mornings now fixed and staring at nothing.
The sound that tears from my throat doesn't feel human. It comes from somewhere deeper than breath, more primitive than language. A keening wail that belongs to animals mourning their dead.
Hands try to hold me back—gentle at first, then more insistent as I fight against them. My vision swims, the world tilting and spinning like I'm drunk on grief. I tear free with strength I didn't know I possessed, stumbling toward the stretcher.
"Korrun." His name breaks on my lips as I fall to my knees beside him, my hands finding his face.
The familiar warmth is already fading, his skin taking on the waxy pallor of death.
The scar over his left shoulder that I've traced with my fingers countless times is lost now in a web of new wounds, fresh blood still seeping into the sand beneath him.
"No, no, no." The words spill out of me in a desperate litany as I try to gather him closer, as if I could somehow pull him back from wherever he's gone. But he's too heavy, too still, and my hands come away slick with his blood.
The metallic scent fills my nose, sharp and wrong and final.
This morning he kissed my forehead and teased me about sleeping late.
This morning he was warm and solid and mine, complaining about a loose board in our kitchen that needed fixing.
Just days ago, he was planning names for our baby and talking about building a cradle with his own hands.
Now he's nothing. Empty. Gone.
"I'm sorry," Mirath's voice breaks somewhere above me, but the words sound like they're coming from underwater. "Soreya, I'm so sorry."
I fold over his massive frame, my body shaking with sobs that feel like they're tearing me apart from the inside.
The grief is raw and primal, bigger than my small human form can contain.
It fills every space inside me that used to hold joy, love, hope for the future.
It devours the part of me that believed I was safe, that believed the world was a place where good things could last.
His horns, polished smooth by years of careful tending, catch the afternoon light one last time. I press my face against his chest, searching desperately for the steady heartbeat that used to lull me to sleep. Finding only silence.
The world has narrowed to this—the weight of him beneath me, the smell of iron and death, the terrible stillness where life used to be. Everything else fades to gray noise, meaningless chatter from a universe that kept spinning even though mine just stopped.
Mirath's hands circle my wrists, trying to pull me away from Korrun's still form. Her fingers are firm but gentle, the way she touches patients when she's trying not to cause more pain.
"Soreya, you need to let them take him." Her voice carries that steady healer's tone she uses when delivering bad news, but I can hear the tremor underneath it. "There's nothing more we can do here."
I shake my head violently, my grip tightening on Korrun's bloodstained shirt. The fabric is already cooling beneath my palms, another small death in the wake of the larger one.
"I can't." The words scrape my throat raw. "I can't leave him."
"You have to." Mirath's voice breaks on the last word, and when I look up through the blur of tears, I see grief carved into every line of her face.
She loved him too, in her way. Loved how he made me laugh, how he brought me fresh fish from the market because he knew I wouldn't eat properly without someone looking after me. "The stretcher bearers need to?—"
"No." I press my face back against his chest, breathing in the scent that's already wrong. Usually he smells like leather and sweat and the salt breeze that follows him home from the docks. Now there's only copper and something sharp that makes my stomach clench. "They can't have him. Not yet."
But they're waiting, these men who carry the dead with practiced efficiency. Patient but implacable, like death itself. One of them shifts his weight, and I hear the soft clink of coins in his pocket—payment for services rendered, for hauling bodies away from grieving lovers who can't let go.
"Soreya." Mirath's hands move to my shoulders now, her grip more insistent. "Look at me."
I don't want to. Don't want to see the pity in her dark eyes or the way her mouth has gone tight with worry. Don't want to acknowledge anything beyond this moment, this last chance to pretend he might somehow come back to me.
But she's stronger than she looks, my friend with her compact build and deceptively gentle touch. She pulls me up with surprising force, my hands sliding away from Korrun's body like I'm drowning and losing my grip on the only solid thing in the world.
"Please." I reach for him again, but Mirath blocks me with her body, her arms wrapping around me in a fierce embrace that feels more like a restraint. "Please, just a few more minutes."
The stretcher bearers take this as their cue to move.
They lift him with efficient care, their movements respectful but businesslike.
Korrun's massive frame makes them strain—even in death, he's formidable.
His arms hang loose over the sides, hands that used to trace gentle patterns on my skin now slack and empty.
I watch them carry him away and feel something fundamental tear loose inside my chest. A sound escapes me that belongs more to wounded animals than grieving women—high and desperate and utterly broken. My knees give out, and only Mirath's arms keep me from hitting the ground.
"I know," she whispers against my hair, her own voice thick with unshed tears. "I know, love. I know."
But she doesn't know. Can't know what it feels like to watch your entire future being carried away on a stretcher. Can't know how the absence of him creates a vacuum so complete it feels like my lungs have forgotten how to work.
The crowd begins to disperse now that the spectacle is over.
They drift away in clusters, murmuring among themselves about the fight and Varkas and poor Korrun who was just doing his job.
Some of them cast pitying glances in my direction—the pregnant human girl who couldn't keep her minotaur safe.
As if love alone should have been armor enough.
"Come on," Mirath says, trying to guide me toward the gates. "We need to get you somewhere quiet."
I resist, my feet rooted to the bloodstained sand where he fell. "This is where it happened." The words feel important somehow, like bearing witness might change something. "This is where he died."
"Yes." Mirath's honesty cuts through the fog of denial I'm trying to wrap around myself. "And staying here won't bring him back."
The simple truth of it hits like a physical blow. Won't bring him back. Nothing will bring him back. Not crying, not pleading, not the fierce love that's still burning in my chest with nowhere to go.
My hand moves instinctively to my belly, to the small swell that's barely visible beneath my skirts. The baby he'll never meet, never hold, never teach to fight or laugh or love with the same fierce intensity he brought to everything.
That's when Mirath's expression shifts from grief to something sharper. Professional concern bleeding through personal pain.
"The baby," she says, her healer's training kicking in as she studies my face with new urgency. "Soreya, all this stress—it's not good for the baby."
The words land like stones in still water, sending ripples of fresh panic through the numbness that's settling over me. I feel my pulse spike, feel the world tilt sideways again as a new kind of terror takes hold.
"What do you mean?" My voice comes out smaller than I intend, already knowing the answer won't be one I want to hear.
"Extreme emotional distress can cause—" She stops herself, probably reading the growing hysteria in my expression. "I just need to examine you. Make sure everything's all right."
But I can see in her eyes that she's worried. See the way her gaze keeps dropping to my midsection, the careful way she's choosing her words. And suddenly the grief isn't just for Korrun anymore—it's for this child who might not survive the violence of losing him.
"I can't lose the baby too." The admission tears from my throat like a confession. "Mir, I can't lose them both."
Because that's what this pregnancy is now—the only piece of Korrun I have left. The only proof that what we had was real, that it mattered, that it produced something beautiful in a world that seems determined to destroy everything good.
"You won't," Mirath says, but the uncertainty in her voice betrays her. "But we need to get you somewhere safe. Somewhere quiet where I can properly?—"
"How am I supposed to do this?" The question erupts from some deep place I didn't know existed, raw and desperate and completely without hope.
"How am I supposed to raise his child without him?
How am I supposed to wake up every morning and remember he's gone?
How am I supposed to live in a world where he doesn't exist? "
The questions hang in the air between us like accusations, like prayers to Zukiev, the Lady of the Light, who've already proven they don't listen. Mirath's face crumples with fresh grief—for me, for Korrun, for the impossible situation we've all been thrust into.
"I don't know," she admits, and the honesty in it is both brutal and strangely comforting. "But we'll figure it out. Together."
Together. As if anything could fill the space he's left behind. As if anyone could replace the steady presence that made me feel safe in a world that's never been particularly kind to human women who love outside their species.
I let her guide me away from the colosseum then, my legs moving without any real input from my brain.
Each step takes me further from the place where he died, from the last spot on earth where we existed in the same space.
Further from the life I thought I was going to have and deeper into this new reality where everything is uncertain and terrifying and wrong.
The sun is still shining. People are still going about their daily business, buying fruit and haggling over prices and complaining about the weather. The world has the audacity to continue existing even though the most important part of mine just ended.
And somewhere in the growing darkness of my grief, a smaller fear takes root and begins to grow—that this baby, this last gift he'll ever give me, might not survive the violence of my breaking heart.