Page 99 of Godbound
Unable to contain my disquiet any longer, I close the distance between us and tug sharply on his cloak.
He stops abruptly and turns, question in his expression.
“This is your one and only warning,” I snap, voice trembling with fury. “Next time you try to force me into doing something, I will order you to back off. I’ll make you drop to your knees. I’ll force you to obey, too.”
With every word, Kaelzar’s body grows taut, his shoulders rigid, his hands curling into massive fists at his sides. I know I’m being unfair, but the words keep spilling out and I can’t seem to stop them. Something raw and wounded inside me has its claws out now, and it doesn’t know how to do anything but fight. “Understood?”
He takes a step forward. Just one. Not enough to be threatening, but enough to make my breath stall in my throat. I should take it back. Or maybe I should double down. I don’t know anymore.
“Threaten me all you want, Trouble,” he says, his voice flat and lifeless in a way I’m not used to hearing. “I’ll do whatever I have to?—”
“To make me win!” I cut him off, throwing my hands up. “How about doing something that helps us both win? Why is it so hard for you to see us as a team? Why, after everything, can’t you just see us as…” I hesitate, words raw in my throat. “Friends?”
The word slips out, surprising me more than him.
Kaelzar stills. For a moment, he just stares at me. When he speaks, his voice is so low I have to hold my breath to hear him.
“Is that what you want me to be? A friend?”
My chest tightens, my throat dry, but before I can answer, he continues, his tone colder now.
“Well, friend, let me tell you a story. Once, there was a young woman named Mia. Shewasmy friend. And when she was hurt, when she nearly died in a quarrel between gods, I realized she was much more than that to me.”
I freeze, my pulse quickening as his chains rattle, solidifying against his chest before beginning their usual grinding motion.
“Calista graciously offered to chain me in exchange for healing Mia, then ordered me to stay away,” he says, his voice hard. “As if I could. Calista found out eventually…”
Blood seeps over his vest, staining it in a deep crimson, but he ignores it. “She believed I belonged to her, and in her rage, she decayed Mia, and my mother, along with the rest of my village. She left only one of my friends alive, just so I’d still have someone to lose.”
I stare at him. Knowing he chose this leash of chains to save the woman he loved and it was still for nothing makes my heart bleed.
Kaelzar barks a dry laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “To win back her forgiveness, Calista ordered me to crawl on my knees back to her castle, on a path she littered with shards of broken glass and jagged stones,” he says, his voice tight with restrained anger and pain, as rivulets of blood keep pooling at his feet. “She wanted it that way, so the ground itself would drink my suffering. Every inch of that cursed trail tore at my skin, stripping it down to raw, bleeding flesh. By the time I reached the castle steps, my vision swam from the blood I’dlost. Glass shards embedded themselves deep into my palms and legs, grinding against bone with every movement. The only thing that kept me moving, the only thing that kept me breathing, was the thought of my remaining friends.”
That’s how he got the scars on his palms, I realize, as my fingers curl to feel my own smooth palms.
I remember it, the feeling of the sharp shards beneath my hands when I landed on the crushed glass. The way it sliced into my skin with just one move. I can’t imagine crawling through it. It must have been excruciating.
I swallow hard, wanting to say something, but what words exist for this?
His chains rattle again, the metal biting harder into his flesh as if responding to his words. Rivulets of blood run down his body, but he doesn’t even glance at them. He’s used to it, and that’s the worst part. How easily he bleeds. How little it seems to matter.
“She spelled the trail of my blood from the ruined village to her castle, so it would forever stain the earth, a reminder of my failure and a monument to her dominion.” A mirthless chuckle cuts through his story. “So, friend,” he drawls, “threaten me again with forcing me to my knees. By all means. After all, I’ve been there before. I know the way.”
Blood gathers at his feet, stark against the stone. He turns sharply, his movements stiff, and stalks ahead, leaving me standing in the eerie glow of the fungi.
For a moment, I can’t move. Can’t think.
Calista’s cruelty is so immense it makes my blood run cold with the regret of ever becoming her Champion.
But as I stand in this cave, now seemingly alive with its quiet light and still shadows, I remind myself: if I hadn’t accepted, I’d be recovering from a severe lashing for refusing to surrender or worse, dead from the kind of injuries that kill so many other women every day.
I don’t know what to do with thatthought.
As the scent of iron lingers and the walls seem to narrow around me, once again, I choose to move forward.
The forest is unnervingly quiet, except for the rhythmic crunch of leaves beneath my feet. Kaelzar walks ahead, his broad frame moving through the shadows with an eerie ease.
The waning moon, already paling toward red, trickles through the canopy, dappling him in fractured silver. But the light does little to soften him.
