Page 42 of Chained to the Horned God
I don’t hesitate. I press into her hand like it’s the only solid thing in this whirlwind city. I lean until my forehead rests against her temple. I breathe her in—the faint tang of herbs, the clean line of her skin, the scent of quiet after chaos—and it steadies me.
We don’t need to say more.
Hours later, I step into the pit again under a sky heavy with rain. The crowd’s war cries are distant thunder now. I feel their hunger, but I also feel something else—a quiet tether pulling me away from the edge of unfurling rage. Valoa is waiting in the infirmary. I know she is.
I fight. I kill. But I hold back. Not because of mercy. Because I still want to go home. I still want her hand on my scar, the carved minotaur tucked in her palm.
When I return, bruised and tired and bleeding, I lean on the doorframe. She’s there, waiting exactly where I knew she’d be.
I limp to her. She steps forward, presses her palms against my chest. The pain flares with each breath. She doesn’t flinch. She breathes with me.
I pull her into me. We don’t speak. No words left anymore. Just flesh and promise and something brittle and real beneath it.
I know this city wants me to become its myth, its monster. But inside her arms, I keep holding on to being whatever I was before the chains.
That evening, the torchlight in the cell is softer. Shadows lean in closer as Valoa opens an old, leather-bound book someone slipped her—a battered collection of children’s bedtime stories, rusted cover and yellowed pages. She flips through it until she finds a tale with embroidered letters and faint water damage. She reads aloud, her voice carrying softly through the still air, weaving the words into music that sounds like childhood, like warmth, like everything I’ve lost.
I sit behind her on the cot, careful not to crowd her space. The cell feels quieter than it has in weeks, hollowed out for simple peace. As she reads of princesses and forests, I take a loose strand of her hair and start braiding it. It slips between my fingers like silk. Each braid is deliberate, reverent, something sacred in this war-forged world. I don’t know how she sits so still, letting me do this—though if I pulled taught, she’d glance back and smirk.
She reads the next line in a voice that trembles with laughter and surprise. She mispronounces a word, and it cracks the story open. I feel something in my chest knot and loosen all at once. Her laughter rumbles like a spring breeze stirring deep roots. She leans forward to fix the braid when I wrap it tight at the nape of her neck.
She shivers like she feels it, fingers tracing the braid where my teeth held the end. Our eyes meet in the torchlight. It’s not shame. It’s something municipal and tender—like she sees my mapping of her scars as a blessing, not a claim.
We don’t touch again. We don’t need to.
I coil beside her, careful that my weight doesn't crush her breath. I drape my hand across her chest, fingertips spread wide, pressing over the pulse beneath her skin. It thumps steady andstrong, like a drum calling me back from the edge of rage every time everything else goes silent.
She sets the book aside, tucks the pages beneath her pillow, and rests her face against my arm. I breathe in the faint scent of old paper, fire, and lavender she washed with. Torch smoke curls through sour-sweet air.
Words left unspoken slide between us. No need for more promises. We rest in presence.
When I close my eyes, I feel her heartbeat against my palm—a slow, bright arc of sound. I know every tremor in her chest. This is the rhythm I will tie my life to.
Above, the arena hums—crowds, fights, bargains whispered in dark stairwells. But inside this cell, there’s only the quiet ring of two hearts trading vows without words.
I hear bars rattle when guards change shift. I smell stale barley and blood that will rise again in the morning. I feel the ache of old wounds beneath bruises I haven’t tended to yet.
Still, I stay.
Her heartbeat hums the only song I want to learn. It calls me back from something dark inside me. If the world outside demands I be a legend, I don’t care. I’d burn the whole city—stone and banner and steel—to protect that heartbeat.
Some day, maybe, I will.
But tonight, I let sleep claim me as her arms stretch into mine, and I sleep anchored in warmth rather than hatred.
13
VALOA
Afresh shipment arrives before dawn: noble spectators escorted in under gilded banners and velvet robes. Their chatter fills the gates like birdsong before a storm. They smell of wine and perfume and entitlement, like nights when mercy is currency and death is entertainment. Among them, a patron known for importing exotic beasts strides through the infirmary doors himself, his robes rippling like water over stone. Under his arm, seated atop a gilded cage, is the chimera—a grotesque horror with goat horns, lion’s body, serpent tail—and eyes hungry for blood.
They pit it against enslaved gladiators who have no glory left to lose. I’m ordered to stay after the match, tend to the wounded once the rows of victims are brought out on littered stretchers. They call this a spectacle. They call it sport.
What I see isn’t a battle. It’s a massacre wrapped in ceremony. Limbs shredded. Spines snapped at the ankles. Half of the orc fighters lie still, faces frozen in the last moment before they realized it was over. One naga, not fully dead, hisses for his mother in a child’s voice, a whisper of mist before the flame.
My stomach reels. I swallow and hold it, but it’s too late. I vomit into the corner bucket, bile steaming in the cold air. Guards don’t flinch. Slaves don’t cry. I do.
I stay on my knees, pushing breaths through nausea, until Valoa appears behind me like a shade—steady, calm. She grips the basin’s edge, then tilts until I can lean and dry heave again. When I’m spent, she presses a hand to my shoulder. “You did good,” she says quietly. “Let them be monsters. Promise me you won’t become one.”
