Page 24 of Bought by the Broken Beast
18
BELLA
Days pass in the cold, damp silence of the crypt. Time loses its meaning, marked only by Lyra’s furtive visits. She brings water, stale bread, and grim news that tastes like ash in my mouth. Wanted posters with a crude sketch of my face and a terrifyingly accurate depiction of Votoi’s are plastered on every corner of the city. We are no longer fugitives. We are the faces of rebellion, the architects of the “Dockside Massacre.” Malacc’s narrative is swift, brutal, and effective.
The intimacy we forged in the fire and heat of the forge is another casualty of that bloody dawn. It’s gone, incinerated by our failure. The space between Votoi and me is a vast, silent chasm, filled with the ghosts of the men who died for our hopeless cause. We do not speak of it. We do not speak of anything. We are two wounded animals, sharing a cage, each lost in our own private agony.
He spends his hours staring at the stone door, his jaw set, his amber eyes clouded with a grief so profound it is a physical presence in the tomb. I spend my time staring at the evidence we managed to save, the parchments a flimsy testament to a truth no one will ever hear. We have no right to comfort, no right tothe fragile connection we built. Not when Grak and Zorn and the others lie cold in the city morgue, their honor stained by our failure.
On the third night, Lyra arrives later than usual. Her face is pale, her movements frantic. She carries a small lantern, and the sudden, flickering light is a violation of the gloom we have become accustomed to.
“They’re sweeping the Fiepakak district,” she murmurs, her voice a raw, urgent thing. “House by house. Vorlag’s men. They are looking for you. For anyone who helped you.”
Votoi is on his feet in an instant, his massive form a wall of contained violence. “Are you safe? Were you followed?”
“I am careful,” she snaps, but there is a tremor in her hand as she sets the lantern on a stone sarcophagus. “But this cannot last, Votoi. You cannot stay here forever. You are trapped. A beast in a hole. This is a repeat of the past.”
I retreat into the deepest shadows of the crypt, making myself small, invisible. This is not my conversation. This is something older, something I have absolutely no right to witness.
“I know,” his voice is a low, guttural rumble of frustration.
“What is your plan?” Lyra demands, her voice rising, cracking with a desperate, furious energy. “Do you have one? Or are you just going to wait for them to find you? To findus?” She takes a step closer to him, her scarred face a mask of raw, pleading anguish. “Let me help you. Truly help you. Send her away.”
My blood turns to ice.
“What?” Votoi’s voice is a low warning.
“The human!” Lyra’s voice is a venomous hiss. “She is a liability. A weakness. Every guard in the city is looking for her face. As long as she is with you, you are a target. Send her away.Let me hide her somewhere, and then you and I, we can find the other survivors. We can regroup. We can fight. Like we used to.”
The silence that follows is deafening. I can feel the heavy weight of her words, the terrible, irrefutable logic of them. She is right. I am the reason they were on that rooftop. I am the reason Grak is dead. I am a chain around Votoi’s neck, dragging him down into the abyss.
“No,” Votoi says, the single word a stone wall.
“No?” Lyra’s voice breaks, a sound of pure, unadulterated heartbreak. “After everything… after all this time… you choose her? A human slave you have known for a short while?” Her voice drops, becoming a raw, intimate whisper that tears at something deep inside me. “I warmed your bed for years, Votoi. When the Zu Kus spat on your name, when your Vakkak brothers turned their backs, I was the one who was here, in the dirt with you. I was the one who soothed the nightmares. And you throw it all away forher? Come on, we’re just the same. We’re around to warm your bed.”
The world tilts. The cold stone floor seems to fall away beneath me.I warmed your bed for years.The words are a physical pain, a dagger of ice that slides between my ribs and pierces my heart. The tenderness in the forge, his promise of the sea, the way he looked at me as if I were something precious… it was all a lie. A comfort. A moment of weakness after a battle, sought in the arms of the nearest willing female. And I, the naive, foolish, human slave, had mistaken it for something real.
“What was between us was a comfort, Lyra,” Votoi says, and his voice, though not unkind, is stripped of all warmth. It is the voice of a judge delivering a sentence. “Nothing more.”
“A comfort?” she chokes out, a sound of pure, strangled agony. “You call years of my life a comfort?”
“You knew what it was,” he says, his voice sounding grim. “We were two broken people, finding a moment of warmth inthe dark. That is all it ever was. She…” He hesitates, and in that single, infinitesimal pause, my entire, fragile world shatters. “She is different.”
Different. Not better. Not precious. Not the future he promised. Just… different. A different kind of tool. A more useful asset. A key to the vengeance he craves. The thought is a cold, brutal clarity that burns away the last of my sentimental foolishness.
“She is a death sentence!” Lyra snarls, her voice thick with a venomous jealousy. “And I am the only one who can help you now, Votoi! I am the only one who has the connections, the safe houses, the loyalty of the Fiepakak! Her presence alone will kill you. She will be the end of you!”
I do not hear his reply. I cannot. I push myself deeper into the shadows, my hands pressed against my mouth to stifle the sob that threatens to betray my presence. The darkness of the crypt is a comfort, a reflection of the vast, empty space that has just been carved out of my soul.
He never told me. He let me believe that the intimacy we shared was unique, that the connection was real. He let me hope. And all the while, he had a history, a life, a woman who had shared his bed and his grief for years.
I retreat, my movements as silent as a ghost. My mind, the cold, analytical scribe, takes over where my shattered heart has failed. I replay the events of the past week, re-examining them through this new, horrifying lens. The transaction in the alley. The protection in the sewer. The claiming in the forge. It was never about me. It was about him. His vengeance. His honor.
The tenderness they shared was a lie. A moment of weakness. A comfort he sought, just as he had sought it with Lyra for years.
I am a complication. A liability. A transaction.
And I will remember that. I will lock my foolish, hopeful heart in a cage of cold, hard logic, and I will throw away the key.This is not a romance. This is a contract. And from this moment on, I will treat it as such.
