CHAPTER TWENTYݍTHREE
OF BLOOD & DEFIANCE
heard them before I saw them—boots scraping against stone, the jangle ofI keys, the low murmur of men who’d been ordered to prepare a woman for torture.
I sat with my back against the cold wall, knees drawn to my chest beneath the thin fabric of my shift, and watched the shadows stretch across the floor as torchlight flooded the corridor. Sleep had eluded me since my conversation with my harbinger. Instead, I’d spent the night mapping every crack in the floor, every chip in the stone walls, anything to distract from the knowledge that today, the God of Blood would begin his revenge in earnest.
I would not surrender.
Three guards appeared at my cell door, their faces obscured by the dancing shadows cast from their torches. One fumbled with the lock while the others stood with hands resting on their weapons, as if I—a lone woman in a stone cell—might somehow overpower them all.
“On your feet,” barked the one who’d unlocked the door. The other two entered, moving toward me with practiced efficiency.
I didn’t move. “I’m quite comfortable where I am, thank you.”
One guard lunged forward, grabbing my arm. “The king doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“How unfortunate for him,” I said, jerking away from his grip. My resistance earned me a backhand across the face that sent my head snapping sideways, the taste of iron blooming in my mouth.
“Release me,” I hissed, spitting blood onto the floor at their feet. “I’m already in a cell. What more does your master want?”
They didn’t answer. Instead, they hauled me up by my arms, my bare feet scraping against the uneven stone floor. I thrashed against their hold, landing a kick to one guard’s shin that drew a satisfying grunt of pain.
“Fucking bitch,” he snarled, twisting my arm until I felt something in my shoulder strain dangerously close to breaking. “Hold still or I’ll break it.”
The third guard approached with iron manacles attached to chains that hung from the ceiling—chains I hadn’t noticed in my previous examinations of the cell. When had they been installed? The thought that Valen had been planning this, preparing my cage specifically for torment, sent a chill down my spine that I refused to let show on my face.
“String her up,” ordered the guard who seemed to be in charge.
Their hands were rough as they positioned me in the center of the cell, shoving me onto my toes as they wrenched my arms upward. The cold metal bit into my wrists as they secured the manacles, pulling the chains taut until I was stretched uncomfortably, my toes barely brushing the floor. Every muscle in my shoulders and arms immediately protested the unnatural position.
I refused to give them the satisfaction of hearing me plead, so I turned my contempt into a smile. “Is this the best your king can do? Hang me like a side of beef?”
One guard snorted. “You won’t be so smart-mouthed when he’s done with you.”
“We’ll see.” I tilted my chin up, the gesture of defiance costing me as the movement shifted my weight and sent a jolt of pain through my strained shoulders.
They stepped back to admire their handiwork, and I caught one of them running his eyes over the thin shift that was my only covering. I stared back coldly until he looked away. No matter what indignities Valen had planned, I would not cower before his lackeys.
The sound of approaching footsteps silenced them. These steps were different—measured, deliberate, the stride of someone who never needed to hurry because the world would wait for him. The guards straightened, their earlier bravado replaced by something that looked uncomfortably like fear.
King Valen appeared in the doorway, his tall frame nearly filling it. He wore no crown, but he didn’t need one—power radiated from him like heat
from a forge. Unlike the rough soldiers, he was dressed impeccably in dark clothing that absorbed the torchlight. His face, with its sharp aristocratic angles, betrayed nothing of his thoughts as his eyes swept over the scene before him.
“Leave us,” he said, his voice quiet but carrying an edge that made the guards practically trip over themselves in their haste to obey.
He didn’t enter immediately. Instead, he stood at the threshold, watching me as the guards’ footsteps receded down the corridor. The silence expanded between us, thick enough to choke on.
“Your hospitality continues to be exemplary,” I said into that silence, my voice steadier than I had any right to expect.
Valen’s lips curled into something that resembled a smile. He stepped into the cell but left the door wide open behind him—a taunt, I guessed. A notion that bound as I was, I would have no option to escape.
“Did you sleep well, Princess?” he asked, circling me slowly, his footsteps nearly silent on the stone.
“Splendidly,” I lied, sarcasm bleeding from my tone. “The accommodations are so very warm and peaceful.”
He completed his circuit, coming to stand before me again. His eyes traveled over my suspended form with clinical detachment, as if assessing a particularly interesting specimen. I forced myself to meet his gaze, refusing to show the fear that twisted my stomach into knots.
“I’m pleased to hear it,” he said, his voice soft and dangerous. “Rest is important before undertaking... strenuous activities.”
My muscles were already screaming from the unnatural position, but I kept my face neutral. “Is this where you tell me what horrors you have planned? A continuation of your grand speech about vengeance and justice?”
Valen tilted his head, studying me. “Would you like that? A detailed accounting of what awaits you?” He stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his skin. Close enough that I could see the pupils in his dark eyes begin to expand. “Would you like me to talk you through every single thing I will be doing to your body?”
“Some might mistake that for mercy,” I said, trying not to flinch from his proximity. “Giving me time to prepare myself.”
He laughed then, the sound sharp and biting. “There is no preparation for what I have planned for you, Princess.” His dark, humored eyes studied my face, then narrowed, his fingers coming up as if to touch my lips. They
hovered there, just shy of my mouth, and I realized he wasn’t looking at my lips but at the bruise blooming across my cheek.
“Who?” The word was rigid, cutting through the silence with a violence that made me flinch.
The change in him was instant and terrifying—his cold amusement vanished, replaced by a fury that darkened his features and seemed to swell within the cramped cell. His hand dropped to his side, clenching into a fist as if crushing something fragile and insignificant.
“Who dared lay a hand on you?” he demanded, each syllable like a lash.
I stared at him, bewildered by his anger. This was… unexpected. “Aren’t you supposed to be breaking me?” I spat back. “I assumed pain was part of the process.”
His eyes were completely black now, and they pinned me with a force that was suffocating. He growled, his voice low and dangerous, “I do not share my toys.”
Without another word, Valen turned and stalked out of the cell, his footsteps echoing with violent purpose down the corridor. The door remained open, a mockery of freedom that only emphasized my helplessness as I hung suspended from the ceiling, my mouth dropped open in surprise.
Time stretched like a thread pulled too tight. Minutes or hours, I couldn’t tell which passed as my muscles screamed in protest. The strain on my shoulders became a constant, throbbing agony that radiated down my spine.
My fingers grew numb, then painful, then numb again as blood struggled to reach them. I tried shifting my weight, rising on my toes to relieve the pressure, but each small movement sent fresh waves of pain through my overtaxed limbs.
The hollow emptiness in my chest seemed to pulse in time with the pain, as if the missing piece of my soul might have helped me endure this torment.
I closed my eyes, focusing on my breath. In, out. In, out. Each breath carefully measured, carefully controlled.
When I heard footsteps again, I forced my eyes open, schooled my features into a mask of indifference despite the pain radiating through my joints.
Valen filled the doorway once more, but he had changed. His immaculate appearance was disrupted—hair disheveled as if he’d run his hands through it repeatedly, clothing rumpled. But it was his eyes that sent ice through my veins. They glittered with a feverish light, pupils blown wide until only a thin
ring of iris remained visible. His breath came in quick, shallow pants, and a faint tremor ran through his hands as he absently wiped them against his thighs.
Blood. Dark and viscous, it stained his palms, was smeared across the rich fabric of his clothing. Droplets splattered across his face like macabre freckles.
“Your guards won’t be bothering you again,” he said, his voice pitched low and deep, before a smile spread across his face as he stepped further into my cell.
His smile was a terrible thing—a rictus that stretched his lips too wide, showing teeth that seemed sharper than they had before. “Justice,” he hissed, stepping close enough that I could smell the metallic tang of blood on him.
“Divine retribution. It is the only path that truly matters. It comes for all, and it does not discriminate.”
I refused to flinch, though every instinct screamed at me to recoil from the blood-soaked god before me. The way he looked at me—a mixture of rage and satisfaction—told me everything I needed to know about what had happened to the guards who had dared to mark my face.
“Is this meant to impress me?” I asked, my voice hoarse from thirst but steady with defiance. “That you murdered men for doing exactly what you brought me here to endure?”
Valen’s eyes narrowed, as he circled me again, careful to maintain his distance. The air between us seemed to vibrate with his power, but he did not breach it to touch me.
“They were not worthy to inflict your suffering,” he said, his voice a rumble that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his chest.
I tracked him with my eyes, refusing to strain my neck to follow his movements. “How considerate of you to reserve the right to my pain for yourself.”
Valen stopped his circling, positioning himself directly before me. His eyes traveled from my face down to my toes, which still barely scraped the floor, then back up again. A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he kept his hands clasped behind his back.
“You are my wife,” he said simply. “My prisoner. My instrument of justice against a man who imprisoned gods. You, your pain, everything about you, is mine.”
“I do not belong to you,” I hissed, lifting my chin despite the fire it sent
through my shoulders.
“No?” Valen’s voice dropped to a silken whisper. He stepped closer—not touching me, but near enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body. “Then to whom do you belong, Princess? Your father? He’s dead. Your kingdom? It burns. Your people? They’ve forgotten you already.”
He leaned in, his breath brushing my ear. “You are adrift in the world, Mireille. A queen without a throne, a daughter without a father, a wife bound to a husband she despises. Unfortunately for you—“ his eyes flicked between mine, “—we are bound, whether you want to accept it or not.”
I refused to let him see how his words cut. Instead, I met his gaze steadily. “I belong to myself. That’s something you can never take from me.”
“Can’t I?” That terrible smile once again spread across his blood- spattered face. “Let me show you what it means to belong to the God of Blood and Conquest.”
I expected him to touch me. He didn’t need to.
He simply raised his hand, palm toward me, and flicked his fingers in a casual gesture.
Pain lanced across my skin—sharp, precise lines of fire that bloomed on my arms, my shoulders, down my ribs and across my thighs. I looked down in shock to see my skin parting, thin red marks appearing as if drawn by an invisible blade.
The cuts weren’t deep—mere scratches, really—but they burned as if traced with acid rather than steel. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, determined not to make a sound.
Valen watched my face, his own expression rapt with concentration as he hummed in appreciation. “Most scream at my first touch.”
“Disappointed?” I managed, the words strained but steady.
“No.” He circled me again, examining his handiwork from every angle.
“Pain is an art form, you know. The application of suffering requires precision, an understanding of thresholds and limits.” He paused behind me, where I couldn’t see his face, his breath ghosting over the nape of my neck.
“You can scream if you want to, Mireille. No one will blame you.”
“I wouldn’t dare give you the satisfaction,” I said, focusing on a crack in the wall opposite to anchor myself against the stinging pain that radiated across my skin.
“It’s not about satisfaction.” His voice was closer now, near my ear, though I recognized he still hadn’t touched me. “It’s about honesty. We can
be honest with each other, can’t we, Princess?”
I gritted my teeth at the question. “What would you like me to be honest about, Butcher?”
“Everything,” he hissed as he moved back into my field of vision, his eyes searching my face with his wicked smile still in place. “I want to hear your screams. I want to taste your tears. I want to know that your father is suffering from beyond the void as he watches his precious daughter succumb to me.”
A bitter laugh escaped me, sharp enough to cut. “Then you’re wasting your time and mine. I will not succumb to you. And my father valued nothing about me except my silence and obedience, both of which I failed to provide with any consistency.”
Something like interest flickered in Valen’s eyes as he considered me.
“You speak of your father with such hatred, now that he is no longer. One might think you’d thank me for removing him from the world.”
“Thank you?” I stared at him, incredulous despite the pain still burning across my skin. “You slaughtered my family in front of me. You butchered the palace staff, people who never harmed you. You didn’t kill my father for justice, you did it for power and revenge. You are no better than he was.”
His expression hardened, and with another casual flick of his fingers, the shallow cuts on my body deepened. I couldn’t suppress a gasp as blood began to flow, tracing warm paths down my legs and dripping onto the stone floor below.
“I am nothing like your father,” Valen said, his voice deadly quiet.
“Aeldrin was a mortal man playing at godhood, stealing power he couldn’t comprehend. I am real, power incarnate, blood and vengeance given form.”
My jaw clenched as I fought to keep my breathing even. The cuts weren’t life-threatening, but they burned with an intensity that suggested something more than physical damage—as if his power tainted the wounds, making them burn from within.
“You claim to be a god,” I said, forcing the words through the haze of pain, “yet here you are, torturing a helpless woman for revenge against a dead man. How divine of you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re hardly helpless, Mireille. Even strung up and bleeding, you wield that tongue like a blade.”
“It is the only weapon you have left me.” I met his gaze steadily, refusing to look away despite the tremors now running through my strained muscles.
“Though, if this is the extent of your divine retribution, I’m less than impressed. Are minor cuts the limit of the Blood God’s power?”
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes—a glimpse of the creature beneath the human mask. His fingers curled slightly, and the cuts across my body pulsed in response, sending fresh waves of pain radiating outward.
“I could drain every drop of blood from your body with a thought,” he said, his voice dropping. “I could boil it in your veins or freeze it solid. I could pull it through your pores until you wept crimson tears. All without touching you.” His eyes fixed on mine, searching for fear. “But that would end our game too quickly. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Blood trickled down from my wrists, dripping from my elbows in a steady, hypnotic rhythm. Each drop hitting the stone floor echoed in the silence between us. My shoulders screamed from the unnatural position, and the cuts burned like fire, but I refused to break. Instead, I gathered my strength and offered him a smile that felt like baring teeth.
“You don’t scare me.”
The words emerged raw and ragged, coated in the copper taste of my own blood, but they carried that truth he so wanted. Life terrified me. Loss haunted me. But Valen himself—the god wearing a king’s face—did not.
Perhaps it was because I had already lost everything that mattered, or perhaps it was simply that death had become more friend than foe in the darkness of my captivity.
Whatever the reason, I watched the impact of my defiance crack something within him—a hairline fracture in the control he’d barely maintained until that moment. The fury that swept across his face wasn’t the calculated anger of a king, but something older and wilder—the rage of a god who’d been denied proper worship. In that moment, as his nostrils flared and his eyes darkened to pitch, I understood I had made a terrible mistake. Not because I feared death—death would be a mercy—but because I’d awakened something in him that wouldn’t be satisfied with mere pain.
“Then perhaps,” he said, his voice lowering to a whisper that seemed to scrape along my bones, “I’m not trying hard enough.”
He moved toward me with his predatory grace, closing the distance between us in two measured steps. I couldn’t back away—the chains held me fast. All I could do was meet his gaze and refuse to flinch as he raised his hand to my face, still, not touching, but close enough that I could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his skin.
“You stand before me bleeding and bound,” he said, “and yet you speak as if you hold power.” His eyes traveled down my body, taking in the blood- stained shift that clung to my skin where the cuts had soaked through the thin fabric. “Let’s strip away that last vestige of pride, shall we?”
Before I could respond, he reached for me, fingers curling into the fabric of my shift. With a single, brutal motion, he tore it apart, ripping it down the middle until it hung in tatters around me. The force jerked my body against the chains, and I bit back a cry as pain flared bright and hot.
Cold air hit my exposed skin, and I fought the instinct to curl in on myself. I couldn’t move my arms to cover myself. I could only hang there, naked and vulnerable, blood trickling from dozens of shallow cuts across my body. The humiliation burned hotter than the pain of the wounds, but I refused to let it show on my face. Instead, I held his gaze, jaw tight, silently daring him to think this would break me.
“Better,” Valen said, his eyes taking in every inch of exposed flesh with clinical detachment. “No more barriers between us now.”
“If you think nakedness is my weakness, you understand nothing about me,” I said, my voice tight but steady. “I was raised in Aeldrin’s court, where humiliation was the morning meal and shame the nightly wine. This is nothing new.”
Something flickered in his eyes—a moment of genuine curiosity perhaps, quickly masked. “Yet another cruelty to lay at your father’s feet,” he murmured. “Though it served to make you strong, I’ll grant you that.”
“Your approval means less than nothing.”
His laugh was soft and cold. “It’s not approval, princess. Merely observation.” I felt his gaze touching my skin, cataloging every scar, every vulnerability. “You’ve been beaten before,” he noted, pausing behind me where I knew the old scars from Ira’s whip criss-crossed my back. “Your father allowed this?”
“My father did not care to know,” I said flatly. “Another fact that should make you question the effectiveness of your revenge. You’re torturing someone he already tortured.”
“Ah, but there’s a crucial difference.” His voice came from directly behind me now, close to my ear. “I don’t torture to punish you.”
With that declaration, his power lashed out again—not the shallow cuts from before, but deeper slices that opened across my skin with deliberate precision. They formed patterns now, I realized through the haze of pain—
controlled lines that curved and intersected, as if he were writing in my flesh.
A cry built in my throat, but I swallowed it, biting down hard on my lower lip. The pain was different—sharper, more intense, each cut placed where it would cause maximum sensation without risking fatal blood loss, although it ran freely down my legs, pooling on the stone beneath my feet.
“You truly have such remarkable control,” Valen commented, as if discussing a particularly challenging piece of needlework.
I couldn’t respond. It took every ounce of concentration to remain silent as another wave of cuts opened across my stomach and thighs. My body jerked involuntarily against the chains, metal cutting into my wrists as I fought to maintain some semblance of composure.
My muscles trembled with the effort of remaining still. Cold sweat mingled with blood, making the cuts sting all the more. My vision had narrowed to a tunnel, with Valen’s face at the end of it—pale and perfect and utterly merciless.
He struck again, every cut on my body deepening simultaneously, and I could no longer keep quiet—a cry tore from my throat, high and broken and unmistakably genuine.
The moment it escaped my lips, Valen went still. His eyes fixed on mine, pupils expanding until only a thin ring of darkness remained. I saw it then, clear as day… satisfaction at breaking my silence, yes, but something else beneath it. Something hungry and hot that did not care for revenge.
He leaned closer, his breath warm against my bleeding cheek. “There it is,” he murmured, his voice transformed—lower, almost reverent. “That’s the honesty I’ve been waiting for.”
I tried to jerk away, straining my neck to keep distance between us, but the chains held me, keeping me fixed in place.
“Go to hell,” I managed, but the defiance in my voice was thin, worn through with pain and exhaustion.
His smile was slow, almost intimate. “I’ve been. It’s highly underwhelming.” His free hand rose, thumb catching the blood trailing from a cut below my eye. He studied it for a moment, then, as I watched in horrified fascination, brought it to his lips.
Something passed between us in that moment. A current of sensation that had no place in a dungeon cell, no place between torturer and victim. My stomach twisted with revulsion, of course, but beneath it lurked something darker, more disturbing. A heat. A hunger. As if some part of me, some
traitorous, broken part, responded to the monster before me.
The memory of our wedding night flashed through my mind. How his hands had been surprisingly gentle despite everything that had come after.
The way my body had betrayed me by responding to his touch.
This was different, yet the same.
Another form of surrender I didn’t want to give but couldn’t seem to withhold entirely.
He must have seen it in my face—that moment of confused heat. His eyes darkened further as they dropped to my lips, and for a heartbeat, I thought he might kiss me. Instead, he stepped back, maintaining the careful distance he’d kept throughout, a cruel smirk spreading across his face.
“Princess, if you like the image of me tasting your blood from my thumb,” he said, his tongue flicking over his digit with maddening slowness, “just imagine how it’ll look when I’m tasting it from your pretty little cunt.”
I gasped, hoping he heard the revulsion instead of the heat that flared through every limb. “You are disgusting,” I spat, my anger returning to overtake my confusing emotions.
He laughed, his head tilting back to expose his strong, corded neck. Oh, how I wanted to rip his throat out with my teeth. “Enough for today, I think.
We’ve established a baseline.”
I felt my body sag against the chains in relief, the last reserves of my strength depleting. As much as I wanted to keep up my defiance, blood loss and pain had left me light-headed, the edges of my vision growing fuzzy. I knew I wouldn’t remain conscious for long.
He raised his hand once more, and I tensed, expecting fresh pain. Instead, I felt a strange tingling sensation across my skin as the bleeding from my cuts slowed and then stopped. The wounds didn’t close entirely—they remained raw and painful—but they no longer threatened to drain me of life.
“I can’t have you dying after I had just had you healed,” Valen explained, noting my confusion. “That would be... inelegant. And we’ve only just begun.”
I wanted to respond with defiance, to tell him I would never break, but the words wouldn’t come. My body had reached its limits, and consciousness was becoming a fragile, flickering thing.
Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked toward the cell door. He paused at the threshold, looking back over his shoulder. “Until tomorrow, Princess.”
Then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving me hanging in the silence, naked and trembling.
I drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to find the oblivion of true sleep in my painful position. My shoulders burned from supporting my weight, my wrists raw where the manacles bit into them. The cuts Valen had carved into my skin throbbed, although they no longer bled due to his last minute healing.
In one of my more lucid moments, I became aware of the presence radiating from the darkness of the adjacent cell. I couldn’t see him, my harbinger, but I felt him as surely as I’d felt Valen’s power lashing against my skin.
“This is your fault,” I muttered, my voice a rasp in the darkness. The words seemed to echo in the emptiness of my cell, bouncing off stone walls before dissolving into nothing. “You should’ve let me die.”
My fingers had succumbed to numbness hours ago. Even my shoulders had passed beyond pain into a strange, detached agony that seemed to belong to someone else’s body. I hung like a broken puppet, held up only by the chains that tethered me to the ceiling.
“He’s enjoying this,” I continued, speaking to the silent presence I couldn’t see. “He’s finding pleasure in my pain.”
I didn’t expect an answer. Yet I found myself wishing for his voice, desperate for any connection that wasn’t soaked in my own blood.
“Is this what you imagined, my harbinger?” I asked, growing louder, more desperate. “When you kept me alive?”
Only silence greeted me. No rustle of movement, no mocking response.
Just the usual drip of water and scurry of rats.
“Answer me,” I demanded, but my voice broke on the words, revealing the need I’d tried to hide.
Nothing. The prisoner, my promised death, remained as silent as the grave he’d failed to deliver.
I closed my eyes, letting my head drop forward as far as my position would allow. The movement sent fresh waves of pain through my shoulders, but I hardly noticed. A single tear escaped, tracking through the dried blood
on my cheek before falling to join the dark stains on the floor beneath me.
“Coward,” I whispered, though whether I meant him or myself, I couldn’t say.
Morning arrived like a thief, stealing what little comfort darkness had provided. Pale light crept through the high, narrow grate above my cell, illuminating the dried blood that painted the stone floor beneath me in rusty patterns. I hung in a half-conscious daze, my body having long since passed beyond pain into a numb detachment that felt dangerously close to surrender.
When I heard the sound of boots in the corridor, I couldn’t summon even a flicker of defiance. All that mattered was the promise of release from the chains that had become my world overnight.
The cell door creaked open, allowing entry to three guards—different ones from yesterday, I thought, though their faces blurred together in my exhaustion. They stopped short at the sight of me, and I wondered what I must look like—naked, bloodied, suspended like a broken marionette with intricate patterns carved into my flesh.
“Gods above,” one of them muttered, his voice carrying a note of something almost like sympathy. “He really worked her over.”
“Eyes on the floor,” snapped another. “Get her down. The king wants her kept alive and unharmed.”
The mention of Valen sent a tremor through me that had nothing to do with the cold or pain. Memories of his face as I’d finally cried out, that look of hunger and satisfaction mingled together, threatened to surface. I pushed them down, focusing instead on the immediate promise of relief from the chains.
Two guards approached, the movement around me barely registering until the first shackle opened with a metallic click. The sudden shift of weight sent pain lancing through my shoulder—a preview of what was to come.
When the second manacle released, my knees buckled. I collapsed like the puppet I was, my strings severed, unable to catch myself without the foreign appendages attached to my body. The impact with the stone floor knocked what little breath I had from my lungs, and for several seconds, I could do nothing but lie there, my face pressed against the cold stone.
Then the true agony began.
Blood rushed back into my arms, bringing with it a pain so intense that the world narrowed to pinpoints of light behind my tightly closed eyes. A sound escaped me—not quite a scream, but a high, thin keening that seemed to come from somewhere outside myself. My fingers spasmed uncontrollably as circulation returned, each heartbeat sending fresh waves of fire through nerve endings awakening from their numb sleep.
“Get her covered up,” ordered the new lead guard, his voice seeming to come from a great distance.
Something soft landed beside my face—fabric, I realized dimly. A clean shift to replace the one Valen had destroyed. The thought of moving to retrieve it seemed impossible, let alone the monumental task of clothing myself.
“She needs water,” said the third guard. He sounded like the youngest of them, his voice pitched low as if he didn’t want me to hear the concern in it.
“Then leave her some,” replied the leader impatiently. “We are not to touch the king’s plaything.”
Footsteps moved away, then returned. The clank of a cup being placed on stone, the softer sound of a bowl beside it. The smell of broth reached me— thin but warm, carrying the promise of sustenance.
“She’ll need help,” insisted the younger guard.
“Not from us,” came the curt reply. “Orders were to let her down, leave supplies, and go. I am not meeting the same fate as Brovar.”
A pause, then the reluctant shuffling of feet retreating toward the door. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to see whatever pity or revulsion might be written on their faces.
“She won’t last a week of this,” murmured one, their voice carrying in the stone chamber despite the attempt at quiet.
“Not our problem,” responded another. “King’s got his reasons.”
The cell door closed with a dull thud, and the lock engaged with a metallic click that echoed in the sudden silence. I was alone again, but free from the chains—a freedom that felt like another form of torture as my body screamed with returning sensation.
I remained motionless on the floor, waiting for the worst of the pain to subside. Gradually, the fire in my arms dulled to a persistent throb, and I found I could move my fingers with deliberate effort. My shoulders felt wrenched from their sockets, though I knew they weren’t dislocated—just
strained beyond what any joint should endure. The cuts Valen had carved into my skin burned anew as awareness of my body returned piece by agonizing piece.
When I finally opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the clean shift they’d left for me—white linen, plain but undamaged. The sight of it, this simple courtesy in the midst of cruelty, nearly undid me. Tears pressed hot against my eyelids, threatening to spill over. I bit down hard on my lower lip,
using the sharp pain to center myself.
I would not cry.
Not with the possibility that Valen might be watching somehow, drinking in my suffering like he’d tasted my blood from his fingertips.
With excruciating slowness, I dragged the shift toward me, then began the torturous process of sitting up. Each movement sent fresh stabs of pain through my abused muscles. By the time I managed to pull the garment over my head, sweat beaded on my forehead from the effort, and my breath came in short, sharp gasps.
The shift fell to my knees, covering the worst of the cuts on my body, though some still showed on my arms and lower legs. Valen had healed them enough to prevent infection, as he’d promised, but they remained red and angry against my pale skin—a map of his ownership drawn in my flesh.
I leaned back against the wall, taking inventory of my injuries. Besides the visible cuts and the deep ache in my shoulders and arms, my wrists were raw from the manacles, the skin abraded and weeping clear fluid. My mouth was dry as dust, my lips cracked from dehydration. The broth and water the guards had left tempted me, but they sat across the cell, and the thought of crossing that distance seemed insurmountable.
Still, I would not die of thirst out of sheer stubbornness. After several steadying breaths, I began the slow journey across the stone floor, moving on hands and knees when standing proved impossible. Each movement was a negotiation with pain, each inch forward a small victory against my body’s desire to surrender.
When I finally reached the cup of water, I drank slowly, knowing that gulping it down would only make me sick. The liquid soothed my parched throat, bringing with it a clarity that had been absent in the haze of pain. Next came the broth—thin and barely warm now, but containing enough nourishment to quiet the gnawing emptiness in my stomach.
Strength trickled back into my limbs, not enough to stand or move with
any grace, but sufficient to keep me conscious and thinking. And with thought came anger—hot and clarifying, burning away some of the fog of suffering.
I dragged myself to the wall that separated my cell from the Prisoner’s, leaning my back against the cold stone at the point where I believed he could best hear me.
“I know you’re there,” I said, my voice rough from holding back my screams. “I know you heard everything. Every cut, every drop of blood, every moment of his… pleasure in my pain.”
No response came, but I felt his attention from the other side of the wall —a prickling awareness that I was not speaking to emptiness.
“I hope you’re happy,” I continued, bitterness coating each word. “This is your doing, after all. You could have given me death when I asked for it, but instead, you left me for him—left me to be carved up for his amusement.”
The silence stretched, broken only by the sound of my own labored breathing. I closed my eyes, exhaustion threatening to pull me under. He wouldn’t answer. He must have decided I wasn’t worth his time. That I was to be left alone in this hell, with only the memory of Valen’s hungry eyes for company.
Then, so suddenly it startled me, his voice came through the wall, low and clear, carrying strain I would not expect from one who had taken thrill in my pain.
“Your suffering brings me no joy, little fawn.”
The response sent a jolt through me, my eyes flying open.
“Liar,” I whispered, but my voice trembled, betraying how desperately I needed the lie. Even his voice, cold and indifferent, felt like the closest thing to mercy I’d been granted. “You refused to help when you could have. And now you claim my pain doesn’t please you?”
“I claim only the truth,” he replied, his voice carrying a gentleness that merely irritated me further. “What Vharok does to you serves his purpose, not mine.”
I laughed, the sound brittle even to my own ears. “How convenient.
Meanwhile, I’m bleeding for his entertainment.”
“Yes,” he agreed, the simple acknowledgment more devastating than argument would have been. “You are. And that is...” Another pause.
“Regrettable.”
My gasp was audible in the following silence.
“Regrettable,” I echoed, disbelief coloring my tone. “He carved patterns into my skin while I hung like meat in a butcher’s shop, and you find it regrettable? How very magnanimous of you.”
“Would you prefer I lie?” His voice had changed subtly—a hint of something like frustration threading through it. “Would it ease your suffering if I claimed to be tortured by your pain? If I beat against these walls in helpless sympathy?”
“I’d prefer you had let me die when I asked,” I hissed back. “I’d prefer you hadn’t given me false hope with talk of freedom from this life and then left me to face Valen’s torture. You are no better than he is.”
His laugh was abrupt, cold and ancient, as if his regret had suddenly extinguished. “Do not compare us, Mireille, for you will find I am infinitely worse. Vharok plays at cruelty, but I invented it,” he said, a darkness coiling through his words. “I am not your salvation. I am not your hero. Do not mistake my regret for mercy.”
His words sent ice through my veins, and I had a belated thought that maybe I shouldn’t provoke this strange prisoner beside me.
“You should understand something, my little fawn,” he continued, each word measured and deliberate. “I am not good. I am not kind. That small, insignificant piece of your soul I took? I would take a thousand more. Watch Vharok nearly kill you a thousand times over. As long as it meant another chain removed from my body.”
His words hit me like a slap across the face, the casual admission stealing my breath more effectively than any physical hit. I pressed my palm against the stone wall, as if I could somehow reach through it to strike him.
“You would still deny me death?” I whispered, horror crawling up my throat. “After what he has done to me? After what he has promised to do?”
“For freedom?” My harbinger’s voice dropped lower, intimate in its honesty. “Yes. Without hesitation.”
The hollowness in my chest throbbed, as if the missing piece of my soul recognized the truth in his words. I should have expected this—what loyalty did I imagine existed between us?
“Do not confuse my conversation with concern,” he continued, his voice cooling to that ancient, indifferent tone I’d first heard in the darkness. “I speak to you not out of care for your fate, but merely because I happen to be chained in proximity to your suffering. You are noise in an otherwise endless monotony of darkness. Nothing more.”
The words struck deeper than Valen’s cuts, slicing through what little hope I’d foolishly nurtured.
How pathetic I’d been, seeking connection with this man as if we shared some bond forged in mutual captivity. As if he’d ever seen me as anything but a momentary diversion from his imprisonment. I must have been delusional to think he would see me as something more than insignificant.
“I see.” The words came soft and brittle, unable to hide the hurt beneath them. I shifted away from the wall, wincing as my abused muscles protested.
“Then I won’t trouble you further with my company.”
He said nothing in response. No apology, no retraction. Just silence, as cold and unyielding as the stone between us.
I turned away from the wall, dragging myself toward the thin mat that now seemed a luxury after hanging from chains all night. My body protested every movement, cuts reopening as I stretched abused muscles. By the time I reached the mat, fresh blood stained my new shift, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Laying down carefully, I positioned myself to cause the least pain to my ravaged shoulders. The ceiling above me blurred as exhaustion pulled at my consciousness.
If I was nothing more than noise, let my silence become its own kind of violence.
