Page 61 of Godbound
Zyrel clicks his tongue, urging the beast to stay calm, no doubt to avoid the public embarrassment of seeing his Godbeast tumble to the ground in defeat.
“My Champion has spoken,” Kaelzar’s voice booms over the crowd. “You would be wise to put your faith in her word or you woulddeserve what you will endure under the likes of him.”
He turns in a slow deliberate motion, forcing Zyrel to watch as he steps away without a second glance.
I move with him, matching his stride, not failing to note that he called me his. A private, foolish grin wants to surface at this, but I bury it. It would hardly be appropriate.
The Red Hunter’s presence still clings to my skin as we return to our place next to the other Champions. But Kaelzar’s unwavering presence stands as a shield between me and the man who would see me buried.
When Zyrel rejoins the line of Champions, the Spectra Judicium continues.
Alaric takes to the sky, his form a blur of motion, while his dragon leaps effortlessly from one invisible perch to the next, despite its deformed wings.
Liona, Champion of Zoya, Goddess of Water and Life, steps forward next.
She is short, her white hair slicked back, her movements compact and sharp, like a current surging through the riverbanks. She lifts a hand, and the water pooled in the cracks of the plaza stirs at her command, tendrils of liquid rising into the air like serpents weaving between her fingers.
Her Godbeast, a sleek, pale pink dragon, its frame nearly blending into the growing twilight, moves beside her.
Then comes Seraphina.
She goes last, spacestepping through the plaza, her voice like silk as she promises Calcatra a golden age of prosperity unlike any before. Her dragon follows, obedient, poised, yet as it watches the Alaric’s still-airborne Godbeast with glittering, sorrowful eyes, something about the creature’s stillness unsettles me. I have to look away.
Then, it is over.
The Sibyls give the command, and the plaza begins to empty. As the crowd peels away, whispers trail behind them.
And still, my Godbeast stands behind me. Unmoving. A silent shadow at my heel, no more than a breath away.
Even when I whirl on him, my voice cuts sharp from the ache of having been left. “You’re free to leave again,” I say. “Your job is done. I’m safe. You don’t need to follow me.”
He doesn’t waver. He doesn’t argue. He simply stays.
And when I turn away, expecting silence I hear footsteps. Falling into rhythm with my own.
Always at my back.
If I had the magic of fire, the earth would burn under my feet.
I march through the streets of Viele, fuming at how complacently the crowd received Zyrel’s proposed future and how dreadful that future will be if it’s allowed to happen.
And all the while, I would’ve been buried in stone if Kaelzar hadn’t saved me. The whole plaza saw how helpless Iwas unless I unleash my destructive magic.
Every so often, I catch a sideways glance from a passerby, their eyes sliding down my gloveless arms, then away the moment I meet them. They recognize me. They saw what happened.
I should have been the one controlling that moment. I should have silenced him with power, with confidence.
Instead, I was buried. Weak. That’s the worst part. The whole kingdom saw it.
And now, no matter how I fight, no matter what I do, the memory of that failure will cling to me. It doesn’t matter that I would have most likely died without him, only that now the whole kingdom knows it too.
It will shape how they see me. How they doubt me. How they assume I am not worth following.
I’m so infuriated with him, my Godbeast, yet at the same time, so painfully grateful that he appeared when he did. In public, he’s loyal and fiercely protective. But in private, he’s nothing but cold, distant, and hateful thorn lodged in my spine.
And now, of all times when I need him the least, when all I want isto be alone with my misery, he chooses to glue himself to me.
At the very least, he used his shadow magic to veil the guards trailing us from the plaza. I hadn’t asked him to, but when his gaze flicked to my face and caught the irritation there, his brows furrowed. His jaw tightened. Shadows bled from his fingers. They pooled across the stone path, and the instant the guards stepped into them, the darkness surged upward and swallowed them whole, like a breath of black air condensed into a large ball.
