Page 64 of Chained to the Horned God
“Not like this,” she says, voice breaking. “We’re better than this.”
My chest heaves. My hand shakes.
I look down at him, this man who called himself a liberator and turned out to be a monster. This man who burned a city to build a throne.
I want to end him.
But I don’t.
I drop the gun.
Just barely.
The pain doesn’t register at first. Just a dull throb, like something's knocking on the edge of my body, asking to be let in. Then the weight hits me—bone-deep and soul-heavy. My legs give out. My knees crack the marble. I collapse forward, into her arms, into her warmth, into the only thing left in this broken place that still feels real.
Valoa catches me like she always does. Her arms wrap around me, strong and soft, her fingers threading through the blood-soaked fur at my neck. Her breath is shallow against my cheek, but it grounds me more than any battlefield ever could.
I taste blood in my mouth, hot and metallic, mixing with the copper stink of the air and the grit grinding between my teeth. My shoulder screams, raw and pulsing, but I don’t pull away from her. I press closer. Her skin is streaked with ash. Her hair smells like smoke and sweat. Her heartbeat hammers against mine like a war drum set to a different kind of rhythm.
“You saved us,” she whispers, voice cracking like old leather. “You saved me.”
The words cut deeper than any blade. I don’t know if it’s true. Maybe all I did was delay the fall. Maybe all I managed was a different kind of ruin. But she says it like it’s gospel, like it’s carved into the bones of this moment.
I tilt my head up, just enough to see her face through the haze. Her eyes are wet. Her lips tremble. There’s blood on her brow, smeared like war paint, and she’s never looked more like a goddess risen from the ashes of her own fury.
I kiss her.
It isn’t gentle. It isn’t clean. It’s desperate. It’s raw. Our mouths crash together with a hunger that has nothing to do with lust and everything to do with survival. Her fingers dig into my shoulders, and I flinch, but I don’t stop. I can’t. I need her like air. Like water. Like the aching need to be whole after being broken in every way a person can be.
My breath shudders when I pull back.
“We’re not done,” I say, choking on the words, on the fire in my lungs. “Not yet.”
Her hand cups my cheek, rough with grime but trembling all the same. “But we survived.”
I nod, forehead pressed to hers, eyes closed against the ruins around us.
“Together.”
The city groans outside these stone walls, wind catching the torn banners and fluttering them like the last heartbeat of a dying animal. Somewhere distant, a gunshot cracks the silence, but here, in this hollow place where thrones are built and toppled, there is only her.
The war isn’t over. The blood hasn’t stopped. The scars are fresh and gaping.
But I have her and that’s all I’ll ever need.
23
VALOA
Smoke drifts like ghosts through the streets of Kharza, curling around toppled statues and charred doorways, seeping into every crack like sorrow made visible. The city moans beneath our feet, its bones fractured, its breath a shallow rasp. The fires have mostly burned themselves out, but the air still tastes like ash and memory.
Half the noble houses lie in ruin. Gutted shells, their once-gilded facades blackened and broken, weep soot down marble steps. The market square is littered with debris—splintered carts, blood-slick stones, broken glass that crunches underfoot. Some of the bodies have been cleared. Others still wait.
There is no singing in the aftermath.
But there are eyes.
They follow us through the silence. People, dazed and dirt-streaked, their clothes torn and their eyes wide, emerge from hiding. They come slowly, blinking at the light like animals crawling from a den. Their gazes latch onto us—onto Barsok, tall and battered, blood dried along his side. Onto Sharonna, her sword still in hand, her chin raised high despite the tremble in her limbs. Onto me.
