Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
The cave was silent but for the breath of the fire and the soft, choked sounds of the twins crying in their sleep.
Elowen lay between them, one arm curled protectively around Kalen, whose bandaged head rested on her chest. His small face was blotchy, cheeks wet with salt and blood. His twin clutched at her other side like he no longer trusted the world.
She hadn’t spoken much since the forest. Her voice was cracked, her throat too raw. Her wrists were bruised, her back bloodied again. But her body was still here, and so were her sons.
Midas had not left their side. He’d returned to his smaller human form and sat motionless on the stone floor, just beyond their nest of furs. His hands were clenched tightly in his lap, as though he didn’t trust himself to touch them.
Elowen stirred.
Her head turned toward him. Her voice was nothing but a whisper. “They hurt my boys.” He looked at her then, eyes bright with molten gold scorching beneath the surface. “They took his horn,” she said, her voice ready to weep again.
Midas moved closer, watching her gently trace patterns on Kalen’s tender brow.
She didn’t flinch when Midas reached out—only leaned into the hand he placed on her shoulder.
He was steady and warm against the frigid chill of fear and anger in her veins.
She closed her eyes and exhaled through cracked lips.
“I didn’t know people could be that cruel to children,” she murmured.
“I did,” Midas said.
She stared at him for a long moment. “Is this what they did to your siblings?”
Midas nodded. “Our horns were their trophies. Some humans still wear them around their necks like jewelry.”
Elowen shuddered at that, her mind racing with the thought that her own kind would slaughter her children and wear their bones around their necks.
Midas placed his hand on her back, fingers feather-light, brushing over the welts there, raised over healed flesh from the last time they whipped her. She didn’t react, her mind and body too lost in concern for her son to register the pain.
Elowen ran her fingers gently over Kalen’s hair, avoiding the fresh bandage across his temple. She hadn’t looked beneath it since Midas applied the salve and wrapped it. She couldn’t. She was not ready to see what they had done to him.
She held him tighter. And finally, the words broke loose from her throat—shaky and breathless and soaked in guilt and rage.
“They didn’t do it because they were afraid.
” Her voice cracked on the last word. Midas lifted his head slowly.
She looked down at her son’s bruised cheek, her tears falling soundlessly onto his curls.
“They didn’t cut his horn to protect themselves.
They didn’t think it would stop him from becoming like you. They just…wanted him to suffer.”
Midas said nothing. He didn’t need to. She could feel the tension rolling off him like smoke. But she couldn’t stop. The words kept coming, hot and shaking.
“I should’ve stopped them. I should’ve fought harder. I should’ve let them kill me before they touched him.” Her body began to shake. “I couldn’t move—I couldn’t save him—” She bent over, folding protectively over Kalen’s small body, sobbing silently. “I let them hurt our baby.”
Midas finally moved. He closed the space between them and held her to his chest much in the same way she cradled Kalen. His long tail curled around them all.
“I flew so fast I tore the wind apart, but too slow to stop his suffering.” His gaze went to the children, his breath shallow.
“I failed to protect. It is what I was made for but when they needed me, I wasn’t there.
They knew it would not grow back. They knew it would mark him.
They knew it would remind us how cruel they are.
” Elowen flinched, her hand pressing over Kalen’s curls again.
“They wanted him to feel the missing bone, to feel shame for how he was born.” Midas’ voice trembled.
“That is not justified fear. That is evil.”
Elowen whispered, “Will he remember it? The pain?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed hard.
“But not just that,” Midas said. “He will remember that you held him. That I came. That he is ours. That he survived.”
Her lips trembled.
“You gave him love,” Midas said. “I gave him fire. They may take his horns, but the world cannot take those things away from him.”
“I want to kill them,” Elowen whispered suddenly, shaking. “I want to tear them apart.”
“You will not have to,” Midas said, softly. “Watch over our boys. Rest. When you wake, there will be nothing to fear.”
Midas left just before dawn. The air was still. The stars beginning to fade into the violet-blue veil of morning.
When he reached the edge of Elowen’s old village, he did not speak.
He did not land. He did not offer warnings.
He simply flew over the gates and unfolded his fury on a village he should have wiped out the day he rescued Elowen from them.
His wings tore through the sky like the unfurling of judgment.
His roar cracked the hills. Doors slammed open, and people screamed.
He came down like the ancient God of Flame, claws slicing through wood and bone alike. Fire bled from his mouth in torrents, licking across rooftops, sweeping through crops, searing flesh from fleeing bodies.
He spared no one. Not the men, not the women, not the children.
They burned. They all burned. And by the time the sun crested over the trees, the village was gone; reduced to ash. Buried. Erased.
Midas did not linger to revel in the carnage, for there was nothing left to see but scorched grass and crumbled stones.
He returned to his den before his family woke, his wings black with soot. His claws stained dark. But his eyes were soft again the moment they saw Elowen and his children.
She stirred as he entered the cave, blinking awake, her body still aching and raw. Her eyes flickered to the evidence on his wings and claws, but she did not speak. She knew what he had done, felt it in her bones.
And she was proud.