Page 13 of Chained to the Horned God
“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 likeit 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.
