Page 18 of Chained to the Horned God
My hands are raw. My fingers stained crimson from too many makeshift surgeries. The water here is always tinged pink no matter how often I change it. There are no proper instruments, no clean linens—only what we scavenge, steal, or repurpose. I work with bone needles sharpened against rocks and silk thread torn from a dead merchant’s robe. Nothing is sterile. Nothing is safe. But they keep surviving, somehow.
Barsok is always last.
He comes limping in long after the others have been dragged off groaning or silent, his massive form dwarfing the narrow archway. He smells of dust, blood, and metal, his body a map of fresh wounds layered atop old ones. I never speak first. Neither does he. We just look at each other, and that gaze says everything we’re too scared to say aloud.
Tonight, his trident is gone—shattered in the pit, I hear. His chest bears a new gash, shallow but jagged, like someone tried to carve him open and the blade lost the argument. I gesture for him to sit on the stone bench as I wring out a cloth in what little clean water remains.
“You’re late,” I say, voice low and dry as I press the damp fabric to his chest. He flinches, just a twitch, but I notice.
“Got distracted,” he grunts.
“Oh? By what? A naga’s spine cracking under your heel?”
His lips twitch into something like a smile. “Slipped in the blood. Almost made it look accidental.”
I try not to laugh. I fail. The sound bubbles up, small and tired, but real. He watches me, and that look in his eyes—the same one that pins me in place every time—burns a little hotter.
We never talk about that night. The night the world outside our cell faded away and all that existed was sweat, skin, and desperation. We haven’t so much as brushed fingertips since, yet the air between us still buzzes with its ghost. Every time I touch him, it’s there—unspoken, electric.
“You should rest,” I murmur as I dab antiseptic on the gash. It’s a weak brew, made from boiled roots and moss, but it keeps infection at bay.
“Can’t,” he mutters. “They want me back out there in two days.”
“Idiots.”
He chuckles. “Tell them that.”
I smooth a strip of linen over the wound and press my palm flat against his chest to hold it steady as I tie it off. His heart pounds steady and strong beneath my fingers. It makes mine stumble in rhythm.
“You’re good at this,” he says, voice rougher than usual.
“I learned from my father,” I reply, then pause. “He died. During the raid. They killed him in front of me.”
Barsok doesn’t speak, but his hand reaches out—slow, like I might vanish if he moves too fast. He lays it over mine, big and warm and careful. I meet his eyes.
“They made me watch,” I continue, throat tightening. “Then they dragged me away and stuffed me in the belly of a godsdamned ship like I was nothing. And now I’m here, stitching monsters back together.”
“You’re not nothing,” he says. His voice doesn’t rise or soften. He just says it like it’s fact.
I want to believe him. I want it so badly my chest aches.
He shifts slightly, grimacing as the linen pulls at one of the deeper cuts on his side. I press a clean rag against it and start sewing—small, precise stitches, the kind that leave only the faintest of scars. His muscles tense under my hands, but he doesn’t flinch again.
“Will you keep fighting?” I ask, not sure why I’m brave enough to ask it now.
“I have to.”
“Why?”
His eyes meet mine again. There’s a storm there, silent but wild.
“Because if I stop, I forget who I was.”
I don’t press. We all have ghosts snapping at our heels. Instead, I finish the last stitch, wipe my hands clean, and sit beside him on the bench. Not touching. Just close.
The noise above us rises again. Another match. Another soul bleeding into the sand. I close my eyes and let the sounds of violence become a dull hum in the back of my skull.
“I hate this place,” I whisper.
