CHAPTER THIRTYݍSEVEN
A REáECTION OF OWNERSHIP
woke to early-morning darkness and the taste of divinity lingering on myI tongue.
Golden and copper flavors mingled in my mouth like warring armies, each fighting for dominance over territory neither truly owned. My body ached in places I’d forgotten could feel, muscles strained from desperate writhing against stone floors, throat raw from screaming. The madness had receded like the tide, leaving behind only the wreckage of what I’d allowed myself to become in its grip.
I stared at the ceiling, letting clarity wash over me in merciless waves.
Everything that had happened—every word, every touch, every desperate plea that had fallen from my lips—stood stark and unmistakable in my memory.
Heat flooded my cheeks as shame threatened to drown me. I had begged.
I had crawled. I had offered myself to two gods as if I were nothing more than a vessel for their pleasure, their power, their divine games.
No.
I clenched my fists against the stone floor, digging my nails into my palms until the bite of pain pushed back against the encroaching shame. I would not bow beneath the weight of these feelings. I would not apologize for surviving the madness they had inflicted upon me.
Because that’s what it had been—an infliction. A punishment. A game played by immortal beings with their mortal pawn.
I sat up, the movement smooth despite the protests of my aching body.
They had used me. Both of them. Valen with his blood and his bite and his calculated abandonment. Death with his commands and his voice and his
presumptuous claim.
Your soul will belong to me.
The memory of his words ignited a fury inside me so pure and perfect it burned away the last vestiges of shame. How dare he? How dare either of them think they could own me, could stake a claim on me as if I were territory to be conquered?
My fingers found Valen’s collar still fastened around my throat, and I tugged at it uselessly, knowing it would not yield to my mortal strength.
I wanted to scream.
At least Valen’s cruelty was brutish and honest, allowing no illusions about his intentions. He broke me down again and again, but did not pretend it was anything more than power over me. He reveled in my degradation as it fed some monstrous hunger deep within him. There was no comfort wrapped around his actions, just the cold certainty that I existed for him.
But Death… oh, Death was far more insidious. His voice dripped with intimacy, an illusion of comfort interlaced with the promise of domination.
He wrapped his truths in soft words that soothed while still coiling around my heart like serpents, leading me into temptation under the guise of understanding. He offered solace while withholding the true depths of what he would demand from me—my willingness to surrender not just flesh, but soul.
Yes, he told me I wasn’t insignificant to him. Yes, he’d said he wanted to speak with me. But actions spoke louder than words through a stone wall.
He’d shown his true self when I’d asked for his help. After I’d been driven mad by Valen’s blood, after I’d been abandoned to suffer in that madness alone, Death had the audacity to mock my desperation. To tell me my begging was entertaining. To make me beg him for his assistance. To claim me like I was his to claim.
I was no one’s possession. I was no one’s entertainment.
I moved to the corner where Death and I had made our exchanges, where his hand had held mine. The space where, just hours ago, I had taken his bleeding finger into my mouth with desperate hunger.
“Enjoying the silence?” I asked, my voice emerging rough from sleep and screams. “Or is this part of the entertainment? Waiting for me to wake up and
call for you?”
The words hung in the air between us, brittle with accusation. For a moment, I thought he might maintain his godly silence, might dismiss me as unworthy of response now that my usefulness as diversion had ended.
Then chains rattled against stone, a sound that had become as familiar to me as my own breathing.
“You think I found entertainment in your suffering?” Death’s voice emerged from the darkness like a blade wrapped in silk, soft but no less dangerous for its gentleness. “That I derived pleasure from watching Vharok’s poison work through your veins?”
“Didn’t you?” My torn gown lay in a heap of black silk nearby, but I made no move to retrieve it. Let him hear my nakedness in my voice, if he couldn’t see it through stone. Let him know I had nothing left to hide. “You waited until I was desperate enough to beg. Until I had nothing left but surrender.”
A sound emerged from his cell—not quite a laugh, not quite a growl, something that lived in the space between amusement and fury. “Is that what you believe happened? That I listened to your torment with cold detachment, waiting for the perfect moment to swoop in and play savior?”
“Didn’t you?” I repeated, the question sharper now, edged with the hurt I was trying to transform into anger. “You heard everything.”
“Yes.” The word dropped like a stone into still water. “Yes, I heard everything. I heard you scream his name. I heard you beg him to return. I heard you offer yourself to him in ways you never would have offered yourself to me.”
Something shifted in his voice on those last words, a crack in the marble façade, a glimpse of something raw and bleeding underneath. It made my breath catch, made my heart stutter against my ribs in a rhythm that felt dangerous.
“I didn’t—“ I began, but he cut me off with a sound that might have been a snarl.
“Do not lie to me, little fawn. Not now. Not after what passed between us.” Chains clinked as he moved, and I imagined him pacing the confines of his cell like a caged predator. “You begged for him. You crawled for him.
You would have given yourself to him completely if he hadn’t walked away.”
“And you?” I shot back, ignoring the truth in his accusation because it was easier than facing it. “What did you do while I suffered?”
“I listened.” His voice dropped lower, rougher. “I felt the madness of his blood working through you. I felt the hunger it created. Hunger not for release, but for him. For his touch. For his approval.” Another sound, this one pure frustration. “And when you finally called for me, it wasn’t because you wanted me. It was because you wanted to forget him.”
The words landed like a punch to the gut, leaving me winded. Because they were true. Because in the grip of Valen’s blood-madness, I had reached for Death not out of desire for him, but out of desperation to escape the need Valen had created in me.
“Is that what this is about?” I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.
“Your divine pride? That I didn’t worship at your feet with sufficient devotion?”
“This isn’t about pride.” Death’s voice had changed again, becoming something ancient and terrible that seemed to resonate directly beneath my skin. “This is about choice. About you using me to erase the taste of another god from your tongue.”
I flinched, grateful for the wall between us that hid my reaction. Because he was right again. Because I had used him, had taken what he offered without thought for what it might cost him. Because even now, some part of me still thrummed with the memory of Valen’s teeth at my throat, still wondered what might have happened if he’d stayed.
And because, beneath the righteous anger in Death’s voice, I heard something else. Something that sounded dangerously like hurt.
The thought that I could wound a god was terrifying. That I might matter enough to cause him pain meant I mattered enough to be more than entertainment during his eternal imprisonment. It meant that whatever existed between us was real, was significant, was dangerous.
Fear flooded through me, cold and clarifying. Fear of what it might mean to matter to a god. Fear of what he might expect, what he might demand, what he might take. I had spent my life being used by those with power over me. I would not willingly place myself under another’s dominion, even one who had shown me moments of tenderness.
So I did what I had always done when cornered. I lashed out, deliberate and calculated, aiming for the place I knew would hurt most.
“Don’t pretend you did me a favor,” I snapped. “You waited until I was broken. You listened to me writhe in agony and did nothing until I had humiliated myself completely by begging for your help. What was it you
said? That you wanted to hear me beg for you?”
His silence lasted long enough that I wondered if my words had finally struck home. When he spoke again, his voice was colder than I’d ever heard it, edged with something brittle and venomous.
“And what would you have had me do, Mireille?” The use of my name rather than his usual endearment felt like a slap. “Tear the wall down with my will alone? Shatter the chains that bind me, just to soothe your wounded pride?” A low, dangerous laugh followed. “You think yourself the only suffering creature in these dungeons?”
I pressed my forehead against the cold stone, letting its chill seep into my skin, counterbalancing the heat of my rage, numbing me to how my words might ruin any chances of us happening again. “I think you want me to want you,” I whispered, each word carefully chosen to cut. “I think you found it entertaining to hear me reduced to nothing, and actually need you for something.”
The temperature in my cell plummeted, frost forming on the bars from the dungeon’s perpetual dampness. When Death spoke again, his voice held the gravity of eons, the authority of endings made manifest.
“Let me tell you what I found entertaining, Mireille.” Each word fell like stones into a bottomless well. “I found it entertaining to watch you discover exactly how weak you truly are. How easily corrupted. How quickly you abandoned every principle you claimed to hold sacred.”
The words struck deep, finding the tender places where my own doubts festered. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing how they affected me.
“I warned you, Mireille. Warned you what would happen,” his voice turning ragged. “And still, you wanted his blood. The madness shows what already lives inside. It doesn’t create desire from nothing. It merely strips away the lies we tell ourselves, the masks we wear.” A pause, his next words releasing on a low rumble. “And you, my little fawn, have been lying to yourself for a very, very long time.”
My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a protest against the truth he laid bare. I knew, deep down, Valen’s blood hadn’t created desire from nothing. It had amplified what already existed, had torn away the careful walls I’d built around my own darkness, my own hunger. The realization sent shame coursing through me anew, hot and thick as blood.
“Entertaining.” The word rolled off his tongue like poison. “Yes, I
suppose it was... entertaining to watch you discover what you truly are beneath all that royal breeding and wounded pride.”
I recoiled from the wall as if physically struck, his words carving into me with surgical precision. My hands curled into fists against the stone floor,
nails biting into my palms.
But he wasn’t finished.
“And if you wished to be entertainment, a toy to the gods, you have done an excellent job of it.” He scoffed, the sound almost deliberately amused.
“Perhaps that is why we find mortals so diverting, so fun to play with—your capacity for self-deception is truly without equal.”
The words struck deeper than I’d expected, finding the vulnerable place at the center of me that had never quite healed. The part that had always been an outsider, had always been a secret, had always been watched and judged and found wanting. The part that had never been enough for my father, for my stepmother, for anyone.
Fury welled up within me, sudden and vicious, obliterating any lingering vulnerability. If Death wanted to see me as entertainment, as a diversion, as nothing more than a mortal toy to be played with and discarded, then I would show him exactly how sharp my edges could be.
“You’re so certain you understand me, aren’t you?” I whispered, the sound low and furious. “The all-knowing god, peering into the soul of a simple mortal toy. How easy it must be to judge from your lofty position.”
The temperature dropped further, frost creeping across the stone floor in delicate patterns. Death’s silence felt weighted, dangerous.
“Shall I tell you what I found entertaining, my harbinger?” I moved to the center of my cell, where the dim light filtering through the grate above caught my skin, illuminating the map of bruises and bites that marked my body. “I found it entertaining to discover that gods can be just as petty as mortals. Just as jealous. Just as desperate for validation.”
A sound like distant thunder rumbled through the stone, but I pressed on, reckless in my rage.
“You speak of his corruption, but what is your own claim on me but another form of the same poison? You offer comfort with one hand while wrapping chains around my soul with the other.” I began to pace the confines of my cell, energy crackling through me like lightning seeking ground. “At least Valen is honest about what he wants. He doesn’t dress his cruelty in pretty words and call it salvation.”
The silence that followed was absolute—no chains, no breathing, nothing.
The frost on the floor began to spread more rapidly, climbing the walls in crystalline patterns that caught what little light filtered down from above.
But now, I was not finished, and this infuriating god would listen to me.
“If I am to be mere entertainment during this endless imprisonment,” I said, my voice cold and precise, each word calculated for maximum impact, “do not pretend to care when I prefer Valen’s attentions to yours. At least he does not hide behind false kindness or pretend compassion.”
The quiet that fell was the kind of silence found in tombs. Deep.
Unmoving. Eternal.
Then, a sound like the earth cracking open, like mountains shifting in their ancient sleep. Not chains this time, but stone itself, groaning under the pressure of divine rage barely contained.
“That is what you are choosing to believe?” Death’s voice had changed again, become something I barely recognized. Not the sweet darkness that had comforted me on countless nights, not the sensual command that had guided me to pleasure, not even the righteous anger of moments before.
“After everything, this is what you want?”
No, this was something older, something that existed before time itself had a name. This was the void between stars, the silence after the last heartbeat, the eternity that waits for all living things.
“Then by all means, mortal,” he continued, and I could hear eternity in each syllable, could feel the pressure of ancient power pressing against my skin. “Crawl back to him on your knees. I hope you find what you seek in the Blood God’s embrace.”
A pause, pregnant with unspoken thoughts, unspoken truths, with words that hung in the air between us, too dangerous to voice.
“When he tires of you—when he has broken every part of you that remains whole, when he has drained you of blood and tears and hope—do not call for me again. I will not answer.”
“Good,” I hissed. “I do not wish to speak with you anyway.”
I turned away from the wall, trembling with my fury.
I was done asking. Done begging. Done placing my fate in the hands of gods who used me as a pawn in their ancient games.
From this moment forward, I would take what I wanted. If Valen sought to break me, I would break him first. If Death thought to abandon me, I would show him exactly what he was forsaking. If they believed they could
toy with me, pass me between them like a plaything to be used and discarded, they would learn the error of their assumption.
I would belong to no one but myself.
Not to the God of Blood who had taken everything from me and left me behind bars.
Not to the God in chains who had offered comfort with one hand while acting as my marionette with the other.
And when they finally realized their mistake, when they understood that they had created not a victim but an adversary, they would learn what I had always known.
There are fates worse than death, hungers deeper than blood, and no chains—mortal or divine—can hold the prey that has decided to become the monster.
