Page 25 of Chained to the Horned God
I glance down at the orc’s wound. Deep but clean. I’ll need to close it soon. “For me?”
“For everyone. They don’t like when things start shifting. When someone down here starts standing up.”
I rinse my hands in scalding water. It burns, but it wakes me. “What am I supposed to do? Let them rot?”
Durk chuckles. “That’s your problem. You think you still got choices.”
I don't answer him. I focus on my stitching, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from shaking. My vision doubles for a second. Then clears.
The thing is—he’s right.
Even the guards now… they leave scraps of food for me near the cot. They grunt thanks when I wrap their broken fingers or lance their boils. One of them asked me to check his rash the other night. Another slipped me a dull blade with a nod and said, “You’ll know what to do with it.”
I keep it under the sink.
I don’t think about it much.
Not yet.
But it’s there.
And so is the truth threading through all of this like a poisoned wire—there’s power in being needed. Power I never asked for. Power that terrifies me more than anything Lotor could dream up.
Because it makes me visible.
And in this place, being visible is the first step to being burned.
Barsok’s eyes have changed.
Not in color or shape. Not in anything anyone else might notice. But I see it. A flicker of unease whenever I pass one of the guards and they nod respectfully. A shadow beneath his brow when someone tosses me extra bread or mutters a half-hearted thanks for stopping their fever.
It’s not jealousy. I know the taste of that beast, bitter and green and clawing. This isn’t that.
It’s fear. Not of me—of what they’re building around me. A pedestal with no foundation.
“They build you up,” he says, crouched in our cell while I squeeze fresh salve into a cloth, “to make the fall louder.”
I look up. “Is that what they did to you?”
He doesn’t answer at first. Just watches the fire in the brazier crackle low, throwing long shadows up the wall.
Then he nods. Once. Slow. Like it takes effort to dig the truth up from wherever he buried it.
“Louder than thunder,” he mutters.
I set the salve aside and move toward him, but he turns his face away slightly. Not from me—from the memory. From the storm I can’t see.
“Maybe they will,” I say softly. “Maybe they’re waiting to watch me burn. But they’ll have to try harder than that.”
His jaw flexes. His fingers curl into the straw. His silence says everything else.
That night, I leave our cell alone.
I don’t mean to wander. I just need to breathe. The infirmary reeks of vinegar and blood, and the tension in Barsok’s shoulders wraps around me like wire. I slip through the corridor between the lower cells, torchlight flickering like a heartbeat against the stone.
He steps out of the dark like he was waiting for me.
One of the new gladiators. Young. Too young. Hair slicked back, tunic cut low, breath thick with sour wine.
