CHAPTER TWENTYݍTWO
A FEVER'S AWAKENING
woke to the unfamiliar sensation of cleanliness, my skin no longer cakedI with weeks of grime and sweat.
The awareness came slowly, filtering through the fog of fading fever dreams. My eyes remained closed as I catalogued each new discovery—the rough fabric of a clean shift against my skin, something yielding beneath my back instead of bare stone, the absence of that burning heat that had consumed me from within. But beneath these surface changes lurked something more profound. A hollowness behind my ribs, as if something essential had been carved away, leaving only an echo where once there had been substance.
My fingers drifted to my chest, pressing against bone as if to confirm that physical structure remained intact despite the strange emptiness. The movement sent a dull ache radiating through my muscles, a remnant of fever lingering in my joints.
I finally opened my eyes to the familiar darkness of my cell, now made slightly more bearable by the thin mat beneath me and the meager blanket pooled around my waist. Such simple comforts, yet they felt almost decadent after weeks of nothing but stone and filth. My hair, too, felt clean—still damp at the ends, as if someone had washed it while I slept. The thought of unseen hands touching me during unconsciousness made my skin crawl.
Fragments of memory surfaced—disjointed images and sensations from the height of my fever. Valen’s voice, urgent and strained. Strong arms lifting
me. A different cell. The clink of chains and a bargain struck in the darkness.
Then pain, unlike any I’d ever known. A tearing not of flesh but of something deeper, more fundamental. A rending of self.
My harbinger. Death. The other prisoner. The memories cohered around him—his voice, his touch, the sensation of being cradled against him as something was torn from within me. He had healed me, it seemed, but at what cost? What piece of myself had I surrendered in exchange for this unwanted continuation of my suffering?
As I pushed myself into a sitting position, the emptiness in my chest shifted like liquid shadow, sending a wave of vertigo through me. I steadied myself with one hand on the floor, and when my vision cleared, I found I was not alone.
Valen sat on a wooden stool just beyond the bars of my cell, watching me with patient intensity. His stillness was unnatural, a reminder of the immortal creature that wore the skin of a king. He didn’t blink quite often enough, didn’t shift his weight as a mortal would. Only his eyes moved, tracking my every twitch and tremor with calculated interest.
I met his gaze, refusing to look away despite the exhaustion still weighing my limbs. The silence between us stretched, vibrating with unspoken threats and promises. His face remained impassive, but I could sense something lurking behind that careful mask—perhaps satisfaction at my continued existence, or anticipation of the suffering yet to come.
“Why wouldn’t you let me die?” My voice emerged as a rasp, scraping against my throat like sand as I broke our silence.
The corners of Valen’s mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but an acknowledgment of the blow landed. “Would you have preferred it?” he asked, his tone light, as if discussing the weather rather than my fervent wish for oblivion.
“You know I would have.” I shifted on the mat, testing my still-weak limbs.
Valen tilted his head, birdlike in his curiosity. “Then that is precisely why I kept you alive.” He leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees, his black eyes locked on me.
I almost laughed at the petty cruelty of it. Of course. What had I expected from this God? Mercy was never part of his domain. But something seemed wrong in his tone, his answer ringing hollow like a false note in a familiar melody.
The memory clarified then—Valen’s voice cutting through my delirium, the barely contained rage beneath it as he’d spoken to the prisoner. I remembered the desperation, so at odds with the controlled cruelty he usually displayed. There had been genuine fear in his demand that the prisoner heal me, as if my death would rob him of some vital purpose.
“You were afraid,” I said, the realization pulling up the corner of my lip in an unamused smirk. “You were afraid I would die before you could extract whatever revenge you’ve planned.”
His expression didn’t change, but something flickered in the depths of those ancient eyes. “I was concerned,” he conceded, “that our time together would be cut short. That would have been... unsatisfying.”
I laughed, a brittle sound that threatened to shatter me like glass. “So that is why you begged him to save me? Why you offered to remove his chains?
You seemed quite desperate for a god.”
The subtle shift in his posture was the only warning before his power surged through the cell. It didn’t touch me directly, but I felt it like a change in air pressure—a heaviness that made breathing difficult, that reminded me of exactly what manner of creature sat watching me.
“I don’t beg, princess,” he said, his voice soft, but carrying the weight of mountains. “I negotiate. I offer terms. And I made a lucrative offer to ensure your continued survival.”
“For what purpose?” I pressed, knowing I was treading dangerous ground but unable to stop myself. Death might be denied me, but I could still provoke him, still exercise what little agency remained to me. “What grand revenge requires me to live rather than joining my family beyond the void?”
Valen’s smile was slow and terrible, like a wound opening across his face. “Death is a gift,” he said simply. “One I do not yet wish to give you.”
A chill raced through me at his words, at the casual cruelty they contained.
“So am I still to be your entertainment?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice steady. “Your revenge on a dead man, played out on the body of his bastard daughter?”
“Yes,” Valen smiled, rising to his feet in one fluid motion. He approached the bars but did not touch them, keeping a careful distance that I hadn’t noted before. “I wonder, does it bother you to suffer for a man who never suffered for you?”
The question struck deeper than he knew, piercing the armor of hatred I’d
constructed around my heart. I knew my father had never loved me—had used me as a tool, nothing more. Yet here I was, paying the price for his sins, carrying his legacy in the form of this divine punishment.
“It matters not how I feel, my father is dead,” I said flatly. “Whatever you do to me, he will not see it.”
“Won’t he?” Valen’s smile widened, showing too many teeth. “Your mortal understanding of death is so... limited. Trust me when I say that your father is quite aware of your suffering. In fact, I’ve ensured it.”
I took in a sharp breath. What did he mean, that he ensured it? How could he possibly make my dead father witness my torment?
Valen chuckled, the sound echoing off the stone walls like distant thunder. “Surely your royal tutors taught you something of what happens after death? Your essence does not simply vanish when your body fails.” He moved closer to the bars, his fingers hovering just shy of touching them.
“You must be shepherded beyond the void, guided to whatever awaits.”
A cold understanding began to spread through me, as insidious as frost claiming a windowpane.
“And I,” Valen continued, satisfaction dripping from every syllable, “have ensured that no souls—not your father’s, not your siblings’, not a single soul from this realm—can be guided along that path.”
My mouth went dry. “What have you done?”
“I’ve merely allowed the disruption of the natural order.” He shrugged, as if discussing nothing more consequential than changing dinner plans. “Your father sought control over the Gods. I’ve simply... extended his ambition.”
“You’ve caged their souls,” I whispered, horror tightening my throat.
“Just as my father caged you.”
“Poetic, isn’t it?” Valen’s eyes gleamed with malicious delight. “Aeldrin watches you suffer, unable to intervene, unable to escape. The perfect punishment for a man who valued control above all else.”
I pressed my hand against my mouth, fighting the urge to retch. The cruelty of it was breathtaking—not just my torment, but the torture of countless souls denied their final rest.
I struggled to breathe through the unbearable gravity of this revelation, my free hand digging into the thin mat beneath me. “So that was why you married me? To use me as an instrument of torture for my father’s ghost?”
“Among other reasons,” Valen said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“You’re being rather dramatic about all this, aren’t you?”
“Dramatic?” I echoed, incredulous. “You’ve imprisoned the souls of my entire family, are forcing my father to watch the torments you have planned for me, and I’m being dramatic?”
Valen laughed, the sound like shards of glass in my ears. “Yes, quite dramatic. Though I suppose it runs in the family. Your father was equally theatrical when I told him exactly what I planned to do with you, just before I separated his head from his shoulders.”
I winced, remembering my father’s screams before the thud of his head hitting the floor. But Valen was continuing, his tone suddenly, horribly serious as it dropped to a low growl. “Everything he did to me, I will do to you. Every. Single. Thing.”
I was stunned silent. My heart beat faster, my breath came harder, as I began to remember snippets of Valen’s earlier comments. Decades of imprisonment. Questioning. Methods that were “thorough.” The hollowness in my chest seemed to expand, threatening to consume me from within.
“And we begin tomorrow,” he said, stepping back. His gaze traveled over me, taking in the clean shift, the mat, the blanket—these small mercies that now seemed like cruel taunts rather than comforts.
His eyes met mine again, and this time, there was no mistaking the anticipation in them.
He stepped further from the bars, his movements deliberately slow, as if savoring my rising dread. “Tonight, I’ll leave you to contemplate your future.
The anticipation can be so sweet, wouldn’t you agree?” He turned to go, then paused, glancing back over his shoulder. “Oh, and Mireille? Do try to sleep.
You’ll need all your strength.”
The silence after Valen’s departure was its own form of torment—thick and heavy as a burial shroud. I sat motionless on my thin mat, listening to his footsteps fade into nothing, leaving only the distant drip of water and the soft scurrying of unseen creatures for company. I drew my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them as if I could somehow hold myself together against the coming storm. But beneath the fear lurked something else—a desperate need for connection, for some voice other than the one inside my head that counted down the hours until Valen’s return.
Death is a gift, Valen had said. One I do not yet wish to give you.
They sliced through me, laying bare the terrible truth of my situation. I wasn’t being kept alive out of mercy or some twisted affection. My continued existence was merely a vehicle for Valen’s revenge—a canvas upon which he would paint his retribution in shades of pain and humiliation. And somehow, impossibly, my father would witness it all.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until stars burst behind my lids, trying to drive away the image of Valen’s smile as he’d spoken of tomorrow.
What tortures had he devised during my confinement? What fresh hells awaited me when the night gave way to morning?
The hollowness in my chest pulsed, a reminder of my continued living.
Perhaps my harbinger would tell me what piece of myself I had lost in exchange for this unwanted healing. Perhaps he could tell me why Valen seemed so invested in my torture.
Decision crystallized through fear, and I pushed myself to my feet. My legs trembled beneath me, still weak from the fever, but they held my weight as I crossed the small confines of my cell. The stone floor was cold against my bare feet, each step sending pinpricks of sensation up through my calves, but at least they no longer hurt. I moved deliberately toward the wall that separated my cell from the one beside it—from him.
The wall between us was rough-hewn stone, cold and damp beneath my palms as I pressed against it. I closed my eyes, trying to sense any presence on the other side, any indication that I wasn’t alone in this darkness. My ear found a spot where the mortar had crumbled slightly between two stones, creating a small crevice that might allow sound to pass more easily.
“Are you there?” My voice was barely more than a whisper, yet it seemed to echo in the silence of my cell. I waited, breath held, for any response from
the other side.
Nothing.
I bit my lip, uncertainty flooding through me. Perhaps he was sleeping, or perhaps he simply had no interest in speaking with me. Yet I couldn’t shake the sense that he was there, listening, weighing whether to acknowledge me.
“Death?” I tried again, using the name I had given him in my delirium.
Still, nothing but silence greeted me.
Desperation crept into my voice as I made one final attempt. “Please.”
The word emerged as a soft plea, naked and vulnerable in the dungeon air.
A long sigh filtered through the small gap in the stones, followed by the
subtle shift of chains. “I am here.” His voice was deep, resonant with power I couldn’t begin to comprehend. “Though I’m not sure what comfort my presence offers you.”
Relief flooded through me at the sound of his voice—proof that I wasn’t entirely alone in this pit of despair. “You didn’t kill me,” I said quietly, pressing closer to the wall as if I could somehow slip through the stones to see him. “Why?”
A low sound followed—not quite a laugh, more like a weary exhale dressed in irony. “Why should I grant you the mercy of death?” His chains shifted again. “Besides, my freedom is worth far more than ending your existence.”
His words stung, but still, I pressed my forehead against the cool stone,
desperate for his conversation.
“You promised,” I whispered.
“I promised nothing.” His voice took on a rough edge that hadn’t been there before. “I merely observed that you were dying. An observation, not a vow.”
The dismissal hurt. Everything hurt. Not my body, no, my body seemed to be completely healed. But my chest, the place beyond my ribs that now felt
hollow.
It all hurt.
I had wanted to die.
I had wanted to die so desperately that I had reached for him, expecting that end to be delivered by his hands.
How worthless was I, that even death rejected me?
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling tears prick behind my lids. “What did you take from me?” I asked, my voice barely audible even to my own ears.
“When you healed me. There’s a... hollowness. Like something’s missing.”
The silence stretched so long I thought he might not answer. When he finally spoke, his voice had softened, though a slight edge remained.
“A fragment of your soul,” he said quietly. “The price of healing. Nothing is free in this world or any other.”
My fingers pressed against my chest, tracing the outline of my collarbone as if I might find physical evidence of this theft. “You took a piece of my soul?” The words felt strange on my tongue, too mystical for the practical princess I had once been. Yet, after watching my husband transform into the blood god, what was one more impossibility?
“Just a sliver,” he replied, and I thought I detected regret in his tone.
“You’ll hardly miss it.”
But I did miss it. The emptiness ached like a phantom limb, a constant throb of what was no longer there. “Will it... grow back?” I asked, feeling foolish even as the question left my lips.
He released a breath, almost a chuckle. “Souls don’t regenerate, little fawn. What’s taken remains taken.”
“So instead of dying, my body was healed, only for you to rip away a piece of my soul,” I said, pressing my palm harder against the rough stone, wanting to focus on anything but the aching emptiness. “At least in death, I would have been whole.”
A soft rustling of chains, then silence for several heartbeats. “Wholeness is glorified,” he finally said, his tone pitched in a way to almost offer reassurance. “Most souls are fractured things anyway, little pieces given away through love, through hate, through promises and betrayals. You’ve merely done consciously what others do without realizing.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I was not trying to comfort you.”
We fell silent then, the darkness between our cells thick with so many of my unspoken thoughts. I could feel his demeanor softening with each question I asked, but I had one more, and I wasn’t sure he would answer.
“Do you know why Valen couldn’t heal me himself? He’s a god, isn’t he?
The God of Blood. Surely he could have —“ The prisoner’s chains rattled violently against stone at the mention of Valen, making me flinch back from the wall.
“Ask him when he comes next,” Death said, his voice colder than before.
“My patience is not absolute, especially when it comes to your husband.”
“I just want to understand —“ “Why?” he interrupted. “Will understanding change your fate? Will it ease your suffering to know the precise mechanisms of his divine power?”
I bit my lip, stunned by the sudden hostility. The hollow space in my chest throbbed in response to his anger, as if the stolen piece of my soul recognized its captor’s displeasure.
My gaze focused on the stone ground, feeling uncomfortable with this silence. I glanced at my mat, wondering if I should return to it. I had pressed too hard, too insistently. How had I managed to already push my only companion away?
Suddenly, he sighed. A sound of reluctant surrender. I heard his chains rattle softly, as if he was rubbing his face. “Our abilities are not the same,” he finally said, tone clipped. “The God of Blood needs exactly that—blood. It fuels his power, gives form to his will. Without it, he is... limited.”
I pressed closer to the wall, hungry for this knowledge despite his obvious irritation. I said nothing, hoping he would keep speaking.
“Blood is powerful,” he continued, “but it relies on... compatibility. When infection ravages a mortal body, the blood itself becomes tainted, rejecting even a God’s influence. Vharok cannot heal what blood itself refuses to accept.”
“But you could,” I whispered, keeping my voice soft to not ruin this reluctant offering of conversation. “Your power worked where his couldn’t.
You don’t have such limitations.”
His voice softened—fractionally. “Correct,” he said, and a strange pride curled in my gut at the word. “Although, I require physical contact to channel my power in chains such as these. Blood is messy. Unnecessary with my power. But without touch, I am equally limited.”
I remembered the sensation of being cradled against his chest, his fingers tangled in my hair, the intimacy of that healing touch. The memory sent an unexpected warmth through me that momentarily filled the hollow space behind my ribs.
“So that is why you’re in chains?” I asked. “To prevent you from touching anyone?”
A low, bitter laugh echoed through the stone. “Partly. Yes, the chains limit my reach, though they serve other purposes as well.” I heard him release a long breath, as if controlling his next words. “Without these chains, I do not have any limitations. To heal or to harm.”
My eyes widened as I slowly leaned back from the wall, suddenly nervous about this prisoner in the cell beside me.
“Who are you?” The question slipped out before I could consider its wisdom.
For a long moment, he said nothing. I knew then, he was finished speaking with me. I had finally asked one too many questions.
I turned away, about to move back to my mat when I heard the unmistakable whisper of fabric against stone, the subtle shift of his body changing position.
“You may be tired. More than usual.” His voice was weary, tinged with
something that might have been concern, or simple annoyance. “Soul extraction is normally exhausting to the body.”
Shock rippled through me. Was he… inquiring about my well-being? The prisoner who had taken a piece of my soul, who moments ago had snapped at my questions, now asked if I was tired? The sudden shift left me momentarily speechless.
“I...” I hesitated, considering my body’s signals. There was fatigue, yes, but something else too—a restlessness, a need for connection that overwhelmed physical exhaustion. “I feel like I should be. But I can’t bear being alone with my thoughts right now.”
His chains clinked softly. I imagined him on his side of the wall, back against stone, legs stretched before him. The thought was oddly comforting.
“Because of his promises for tomorrow,” Death said. It wasn’t a question.
I moved back to the wall, sliding down until I was sitting, my shoulder pressed against the rough stone. “Yes.”
Another soft shifting of chains, and I imagined him mirroring my position on the other side. “Then talk, if it helps. I have nowhere to be.”
The dry humor in his voice startled a breath from me—a fragile, broken sound, almost a laugh. “How generous of you to offer your time. Was there somewhere you’d rather be? High tea in cell eight, perhaps?”
“Unfortunately, no,” he replied, his voice deepening, rich with dark amusement. “I’ve found the social calendar in dungeons to be disappointingly sparse.”
I smiled, the feeling strange to my own lips after so many weeks of isolation. It felt almost blasphemous with tomorrow’s torments looming, but perhaps that made it all the more necessary.
“What’s your name?” I asked, before I could think better of it. “I can’t keep calling you ‘Death’ or ‘Prisoner’ in my head.”
There was a pause. A soft rattle of metal.
“Why not? Both are fitting enough.”
“Because even Death must have a name.”
A long pause followed, filled only with the steady drip of distant water. I thought perhaps I’d offended him, pushed too far with my familiarity.
“You may continue calling me Death,” he replied finally, voice soft, almost wistful. “It has been... a very long time since anyone has spoken my actual name.”
The admission felt strangely intimate, as if he’d shared a secret rather
than withheld one. I traced my fingertip along a crack in the wall between us, wondering what name could possibly encompass a man of such power. I decided not to press.
“Alright then, Death. What shall we talk about?” I asked, drawing my knees to my chest and resting my chin upon them. “The weather? Court gossip? The latest fashions in prisoner attire?”
His chuckle vibrated through the stone between us. “I’m afraid I’m woefully uninformed on all counts. Perhaps you could educate me on the current trends. Are iron manacles still in fashion, or have they been replaced by something more... avant-garde?”
“Oh, iron is positively archaic,” I replied, falling into the absurd game.
“All the most fashionable prisoners are wearing enchanted silver these days.
Much more flattering against the skin.”
“Ah, how disappointing. It seems I’ve been terribly out of style for the last few decades.”
Decades. The casual mention of time sent a chill through me. How long had he been here, chained in darkness? Longer than I’d been alive, it sounded. The thought was staggering.
“How do you bear it?” I whispered, the playfulness evaporating from my voice. “The time, I mean. The endless days and nights, all the same. How do you not go mad?”
I felt his hesitation, and when he finally spoke, his voice was softer, more intimate, as if sharing something deeply questionable.
“Who says I haven’t?”
I pressed my cheek against the cool stone, oddly comforted by his honesty. “Fair point. Perhaps we’re both mad, having a perfectly rational conversation about our shared insanity.”
His breath was a low rumble. “Madness has its advantages. Reality is... negotiable.”
“I could use some negotiation with reality right now,” I admitted, tracing my finger along a crack in the stone floor. “A different bargain than the one I’m currently bound to.”
“And what bargain would you strike, if you could?” His voice had taken on that strange, intimate quality again, like he was whispering directly into my ear rather than through feet of solid stone.
I closed my eyes, allowing myself the dangerous luxury of imagination.
“Freedom,” I said softly. “Not just from this cell, but from him. From Valen.
From this... marriage.” The word tasted bitter on my tongue.
“Nothing more ambitious?” he asked, a hint of mockery returning. But it stayed soft, unassuming, without judgement. “No thoughts of revenge? No desire to see your captor suffer as he has made you suffer?”
“Revenge?” I tasted the word, rolling it on my tongue like sour wine.
“What would be the point? He’s a god. Immortal. Untouchable.” I pressed my fingertips against the hollow space behind my ribs, feeling its emptiness pulse in time with my heartbeat. “Besides, revenge requires power, and I have none.”
A soft, contemplative sound filtered through the stones. “Power comes in many forms, little fawn. Not all of them obvious.”
I snorted, the sound harsh in the damp air. “Is that supposed to be reassuring? Some cryptic wisdom to ease my descent into whatever hell Valen has prepared?”
“No,” he replied simply. “Merely a statement to consider.”
I let my head fall back against the wall, staring up at the darkness where I knew a ceiling existed, though I couldn’t see it. “Revenge,” I repeated the word, my voice barely audible as I considered what I wanted. I did want revenge, and I would get my revenge, but I needed the desire to survive first.
“I just want to stop hurting.”
The silence stretched between us, filled only by the steady drip of water and the distant sounds of the palace above. When he spoke again, his voice had changed—deeper, nearly gentle.
“I can heal your body,” he said, each word measured and heavy with meaning. “I can mend torn flesh, purge infection, knit bone. But the other pain—the wounds that live in memory and spirit—those remain beyond my reach.”
The admission hung in the space between us, stark and unyielding. I traced the outline of a small stone embedded in the floor, following its jagged edges with my fingertip. The hollow space behind my ribs seemed to expand at his words, as if acknowledging their truth before my mind could fully
grasp it.
But he wasn’t finished.
“Only time heals those wounds.” He paused, as if considering his own words. “And sleep, occasionally. Sleep can heal, in its own way.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted, hearing what he wasn’t saying. “I don’t need to sleep.”
“Rest,” he said, even gentler now. “Save your strength for what comes next. Vharok is not known for his mercy, and he has waited a long time for this revenge.”
The reminder of Valen’s promised return with the dawn sent a fresh spike of fear through me. What new torments had he devised during my illness?
What suffering awaited me when the night gave way to morning?
“What will he do to me?” I whispered, the question emerging without conscious thought.
A long pause followed, then, “Nothing that will kill you,” Death said finally. “Beyond that... I cannot say.”
I nodded against the stone, though he couldn’t see the gesture. “Thank you,” I said quietly, “for speaking with me.”
“Go, rest now,” he replied, his chains clinking softly as he moved away from the wall. “I have nothing more to offer you tonight.”
The dismissal was clear, and I knew better than to press my luck.
Whatever fragile connection had formed between us was still tentative, easily broken by unwelcome persistence. I pushed away from the wall, my limbs suddenly heavy with a fatigue that seemed to seep from my bones outward.
I curled onto the thin mat, pulling the blanket around my shoulders as I contemplated the strange alliance forming in the darkness of these dungeons.
Death might not be my friend—might not even be capable of friendship after so long in these dungeons—but he had spoken to me, had shared conversation that Valen would surely prefer did not occur.
Tomorrow, Valen would return with his promised torments. Tonight, I had gained at least the whisper of an ally, albeit one whose true nature and motivations remained shrouded in mystery.
But that would have to be enough.
