Page 10 of Chained to the Horned God
Too late. Already am.
Valoa leans against the opposite wall, her arms wrapped around her knees like they’re the only thing holding her together. Her breathing has evened out some since she drank. Her face still looks like it went a round with a mace handle, but there’s a glint behind her lashes now. Something alive. Something that pisses off the kind of people who like to keep their boots on your neck. That’s probably why she’s still breathing.
We start talking when the drip of the cistern gets too loud to ignore. When you’ve stared at the same crack in the same wall for enough days to count the flecks of mold by taste, words start to sound less dangerous and more like the only weapon you’ve got left. She asks about the pit, of course, but not the way most do. Not with awe or fear. Just curiosity, like she’s pulling stitches through scar tissue, careful not to snag.
I tell her about the ship before the chains. Before the pit. Before I was Barsok the Beast, the Bull, the Bloody-Handed. I speak slow, almost forgetting how my own voice sounds when it isn’t grunting through broken teeth or roars meant to please thesadistic bastards watching from above. I tell her I used to sail the Crescent Reaches, a merchant captain with a silver-streaked horn and a ship that could outrun any storm. My crew was tight. My coin was clean. My rage was dormant.
She listens like it matters. Not like she’s taking notes for gossip or barter, but like she wants to hold on to something that isn’t this rot-stinking cell and the fear crawling under her skin. She tells me she was trained by her father, a surgeon from some quiet little town on Prazh that doesn’t exist anymore. She doesn’t weep when she says it, which makes the pain in her voice cut deeper than any scream. Her hands move when she talks, as if remembering the weight of scalpels, of twine, of pressing a palm against a wound to keep someone’s insides from spilling onto the floor.
She asks questions no one’s bothered with in years. About my shoulder, about the way I breathe when I move, about the scar that stretches across my left rib like a brand. She scoots closer as we talk, her voice low, her movements careful. When she reaches out and lays her fingers on my shoulder, I don’t flinch. I don’t growl or bare my teeth. I let her touch me like I’m not something to be feared, like I’m not the horror story whispered between guards over mugs of fermented slimewater.
Her fingers are cold, but not timid. She traces the edge of a fresh gash I didn’t know was still bleeding, clotted halfway and crusted with filth. “This one needs cleaning,” she murmurs, leaning close, inspecting it like it’s just another puzzle to solve. “You let it sit, it’ll rot from the inside. You’ll start feeling fevers in your bones.”
I grunt, but don’t move. “Didn’t notice.”
“That’s the problem,” she says, brushing some of the caked dirt away with the hem of her sleeve. “You’ve stopped noticing when you’re in pain. That’s a bad sign.”
“Means I’m used to it.”
“No,” she says, her voice sharper than before. “Means you’ve let them take more than they had a right to.”
I don’t know what to say to that. No one’s talked to me about rights in years. Not without laughing after.
She sits back, hands in her lap, eyes fixed on my chest like she’s waiting for another wound to announce itself. Her gaze isn’t afraid. It’s searching, like she’s trying to map the shape of the man under the monster.
“You should sleep,” I mutter.
“So should you.”
“I don’t.”
She tilts her head. “Why?”
“Because sleep lets the ghosts in.”
She doesn’t argue. Just leans against the same wall I’m backed into, close enough now that I can feel the warmth of her skin bleeding into mine. She doesn’t curl into me, doesn’t press, doesn’t ask permission. She just lets herself rest in the same air I’m breathing. Her presence is quiet, respectful, as if acknowledging a kind of trust neither of us is willing to say aloud yet.
The cell is quiet, save for the hiss of water trickling down the stone and the distant roar of a crowd somewhere above us. They’re probably watching a kill. Maybe a spectacle, something with fangs and a lot of screaming. Valoa’s breathing deepens beside me, soft and rhythmic. She’s not asleep yet, but she’s close.
The space between us feels less like a void and more like a barrier broken.
“You ever kill anyone outside the pit?” she asks suddenly, her voice just above a whisper, barely brushing the air.
“Once.”
“Did they deserve it?”
“More than most.”
She exhales slowly, like that answer gives her something she didn’t know she needed. I glance at her, studying the curve of her jaw, the dirt smudged across her collarbone, the dried blood at the corner of her mouth. She’s a mess, and still, she looks… right. Like she’s carved from something older than this place, tougher than the filth clinging to our skin.
I shift, easing my weight so I don’t brush against her. She notices, and her hand moves to rest just shy of my arm. Not touching, just near. A promise, maybe. Or a question.
I say nothing.
The silence stretches long again, not uncomfortable, just full. I breathe it in. The stale, copper-heavy stink of the dungeon fades for a moment. The memory of chains pressing into bone goes quiet. I feel the warmth of her body beside mine and forget, for just a moment, that we’re waiting for a dragon to tear us limb from limb tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever the guards get bored enough to feed it.
In the stillness, I let my eyes close.
