Page 44 of Chained to the Horned God
He catches me, arms steady but warm. He holds me close enough to feel each breath, each scar, each word. He doesn’t speak again for a long moment.
“I can’t promise there won’t be storms,” I whisper, voice trembling.
“Then I promise I won’t let you face them alone,” he replies.
Night curls over us like a promise. The door clicks. Another guard passes by. Doesn’t open. Doesn’t speak.
We stand there for minutes that feel like years. The austerity of stone around us softens in his chest, in the heat of his body against mine. I taste salt and hope beneath the ache.
When I pull away, I find razor-thin cracks in my resolve. Not of fear. Of love. Love shaped into a vow made of scars and survival.
“And now?” he asks.
I straighten, breath shaky, but resolve solid. “Now we build something worth saving.”
He nods, jaw set, eyes fierce.
He takes my hand. I let him.
We don’t talk again that night. We don’t need to.
Because in the darkness, only one question matters: can we keep building even when the tide threatens to wash away everything we’ve made?
I don’t shake. I stand steady, anchored—yes, maybe he might drown one day, but I’m still breathing, still fighting to keep what we built alive.
That night,our fight isn’t in the pit. It's not against claws or horns or poison. The fire waits for us behind closed doors. We fight with words. With scars. With open wounds of memory and regret. I pace the cell, footsteps echoing slow, while he rests his back against the worn wall, arms folded tight across his bruised chest. The air is thick with candle smoke and fear, a bitter scent we both learned to taste long ago.
I stop in front of him. “You’re suffocating me,” I say, voice blunt and trembling. “I feel you everywhere before I even speak.”
He presses his jaw tight, the muscles standing out in his neck. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“But at what cost?” I whisper, stepping close enough to feel his breath mingle with mine. “Your soul? Your peace?” My words sting like salt.
He snaps. “If you can’t trust me to protect you, then what good am I?” His voice is low, heavy as slow thunder. “Maybe I’m not what you wanted.”
I flinch. I want to deny it. But tears leak free anyway. Feel the pressure in my chest crack open. “You’re everything. But you’re also so violent that I think one day I’ll lose you the way this pit loses people.” The pain in my voice is sharp enough to cleave the silence.
His mouth opens, then closes. His fist clenches the wall. “You wound me here,” he says, voice low and ragged. His eyes burn in the half-light. “But I keep coming back. You’re home.”
The tears fall freely now, each one a confession: fear, longing, love, exhaustion. I crumble. He stands, the cell feeling stifling, ground beneath my heels like broken glass.
Then silence.
He exhales. His shoulders slump.
He kneels.
My breath catches.
He doesn’t move toward me. Instead he covers his face with callused hands. The flame from the torch flares across his shoulders and the silver line on his forehead. Then he lifts his head, tears wet on his face.
“I don’t know how to love like a man anymore,” he says, voice hollow and raw. “This armor, these scars, the things I’ve done—I don’t even recognize the man under it.”
I reach for him, kneel across from him on the straw. “Then let’s learn together,” I whisper, voice thick with hope and sorrow.
He looks at me, eyes glossy with unshed tears. He takes my hand—strong, trembling, honest. Then he stands and pulls me tohim slowly. We don’t speak again. We give in to the silence that speaks louder than apologies.
We make love that night not out of passion, but because every touch and breath, every cry and kiss, becomes an apology and a promise tangled into one. His hands map my scars. My fingers trace the line of steel etched into his chest where the chimera’s horn crushed flesh months ago. Every gasp, every broken moan, every whispered name becomes a vow.
