Page 102 of Godbound
Kaelzar hasn’t spoken in some time and the silence only makes the words I should say scream louder in my head. Would my apology even matter? Would he care?
I glance back at him, then away. It’s now or never. “I wanted to apologize.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Finally, his voice comes. “For what?”
I hesitate, my gaze dropping to my fingers again. “For how I acted earlier. For what I said.” My throat tightens, but I force myself to continue. “I was angry, but it wasn’t fair to threaten you like that. I didn’t mean to—” I falter before exhaling the last words. “To hurt you.”
The reins shift slightly in his hands, a faint movement that draws my attention. For a long moment, I think he won’t answer at all.
“You’re not the first to try,” he finally replies.
I flinch. Not at the words themselves, but at the emptiness behind them. As if he’s already accepted that pain is inevitable.
“I built my whole life around the wrong thing,” I say, the truth scraping its way out.
An awkward beat of silence follows, as if my tongue has forgotten how to move. But then I force the words out. “For years, I believed that if I was good enough, if I ruled well enough, I could erase everything horrible that had happened to my family. My mother’s shame. The whispers about her. About me.”
I let out a short, bitter breath. “I thought if I was perfect, the court would forget. That it would all just go away.” My hands clench, and the ache tightens in my throat. “But every choice I made in service of that dream only made things worse. I chose to push my mother away. Then came Ryker. I don’t even know if what I had with him was real, or just another lie I clung to in order to survive. I made him start changing things the moment he put the crown on his head and it immediately backfired. Then Mael drugged me. Stripped me of choice. And I realized…”
My voice thins.
“Maybe my mother never had a choice either. Maybe she was coerced. Hurt. Forced.”
Saying it out loud shatters something in me.
“And I’ll never know, because I didn’t ask. I just judged. I turnedmy back on her. And now she’s gone, and I can’t take any of it back.”
Kaelzar’s hands adjust on the reins, drawing me subtly closer, as if without realizing it, his body is steadying mine while I spill this painful truth, offering comfort he may not even know he’s giving.
“And then my choices led to the curse. And I gave myself to a goddess who might be the worst monster of all... because once again, I chose the wrong thing.”
My voice catches. “Then there was you.” I don’t turn to look at him. “You challenged me. Matched me. You didn’t obey like the other Godbeasts, and you didn’t fear me like so many others. You made me feel like I had a partner. Like maybe, for once, I wasn’t walking into battle alone.”
I pause to take a deep breath, before speaking again.
“But when you shut me out... when you pull away or make decisions without me, it feels like everything starts unraveling again. Like I was foolish to believe we were building something different. And when that happens... I lash out. I try to hurt before I get hurt. I hate it. But I don’t know how to stop."
I swallow the lump in my throat.
“It scares me. Because I don’t want to destroy this, too. I hope... maybe this time, I’m finally making the right choice.”
Silence folds around us again.
When Kaelzar speaks, his voice is low, as if he’s turning my words over in his mind. “Hope,” he says. “It’s dangerous. It blinds you to the things that will hurt you most.” His words carry a grim, practiced cynicism, the kind repeated so often it’s become reflex as if the very mention of hope triggers his instinct to deny it.
I tell myself he’s probably right. I should let go of it the way he’s learned to.
Then he exhales slowly and adds. “But maybe, even if what we hope for comes too late to save what we were, it’s still not too late to build something better.”
So I decide to hold on to it a little longer.
The city gatesgroan as they swing open, revealing the bustling streets within. Morning light spills over the cobblestones, setting the world alight in gold. But something else catches my eye.
At first, I barely notice them. A flash of red here. A thread of crimson there. But as we move deeper into the city, the color spreads.
Tied around wrists, looped through braids, fluttering from belts like silent declarations.
The baker unloading trays of bread. The boy running past, a strip of red trailing from his pocket. The woman at the market stall, twisting a crimson cloth into her hair.
