Page 3 of Chained to the Horned God
I don’t plan it. My hand moves on its own. Fast. Desperate.
While he leans in to whisper filth into my ear, I twist my wrist and grab the hilt of the blade tucked under his belt. It’s small. Sloppy. A skinning knife, not a weapon of war. But it’ll do.
When he unshackles one wrist, I strike.
I jam the blade into his thigh, deep and cruel, right above the knee. I twist. He screams.
His voice is high-pitched and stupid. It doesn’t sound like him. It sounds like a boy caught stealing pies, not a monster caught mid-rape.
He staggers back, clutching the wound. Blood pours over his fingers, thick and black. I lunge at him again, aiming for his neck this time, but I’m not fast enough.
Another guard crashes into me from the side, smashing me to the deck. My head cracks wood. The knife skitters away. Hands grab my arms. My hair. My ankles. Someone kicks me hard in the ribs. I gasp, teeth snapping together so hard my jaw goes numb.
“Kill her!” one of them shouts.
“No,” snarls another. “Not yet.”
They strip the knife from my hand, re-shackle me tighter than before—iron biting deep. My shoulder dislocates in the scuffle. I scream. I can’t help it this time.
They drag me back below, kicking and half-conscious, body screaming with pain. My vision swims, red blooming in the corners. Someone punches my jaw. Everything goes dim.
I wake gods-know-how-long later, flat on my back, arms pinned, wrists bound tighter than before. The floor’s sticky beneath me—my own blood or someone else’s, I don’t know.
The man I saved earlier leans over me, eyes wide. “You’re mad,” he whispers, awed. “You stabbed a dark elf.”
“Yeah,” I rasp, through cracked lips. “Didn’t kill him, though. I must be slipping.”
He helps me sit up. My shoulder’s still out. I choke on the pain, fighting down the blackness threatening to swallow me whole.
“You’re lucky,” he murmurs.
“Lucky?” I cough. “Is that what you call this?”
“They don’t kill pretty ones quick.”
I laugh. It’s a harsh, ugly sound. “Then they’re gonna be real disappointed when they realize I’m better at gutting than grinning.”
He doesn’t laugh.
That night, I lie awake, every nerve in my body alight with pain. My wrists throb. My side aches. My mouth tastes like iron and defiance.
But I’m not broken.
They stop feeding me not long after the stabbing. Water, barely. Bread if someone’s feeling generous. I suck moisture off my own skin when it gets bad. Doesn’t help much.
I don’t ask questions. There’s nothing left to ask.
When the door slams open again, I barely flinch. The torchlight behind the guard sears into my retinas, and for a second, I think it’s the gods come to fetch me. But no. Just another dark elf with a crooked smile and a chain leash.
“Up, red,” she says. “Time to meet your fate.”
She doesn’t need to tug. I’m on my feet before the chain tightens, shoulders stiff with fire from the still-dislocated joint. I don't cry out. I won't give them that.
“No auction for you,” she sneers, yanking me into the corridor. “You’re going in the pit.”
The other guards laugh. One mimes swinging a sword. Another hisses like a beast. The air reeks of mold and blood and torch oil, a cocktail of misery that clings to the walls.
I don’t respond. My voice is gone anyway. Sliced to ribbons on the inside from salt and silence.
