43. Briella #2
It burns. It throbs. It pulses like a living thing. Like lightning is crackling inside my leg.
Every heartbeat sends new shock waves through the muscle, like someone jamming a live wire into raw, exposed nerve endings.
I can feel the slickness of blood mixing with rain, sliding down my skin.
This pain isn’t hollow.
It’s alive. It’s mine. It’s proof that I exist.
They came.
And Raphael will go this far—just to keep me.
And for one sick, jagged second, I savor it.
Because I’d rather bleed beneath his arrow than feel nothing at all.
Writhing in the mud, my weak fists pounding against the soaked earth, I crawl, crying through the pain, through the agony knifing through me. Whatever strength I have…is fading.
Then—I hear them.
Bootsteps. Slow. Measured. Crushing mud and stone beneath their weight.
I lift my head, hair drenching my face, clinging to my lashes, blurring my sight.
But even through the smear of rain and mud, I see him.
Raphael. His mask is still in place, but his hair’s been pulled back, exposing the brutal, beautiful edges of his face.
And god help me—something about him strikes through me like a black blade.
The mask isn’t a mask anymore. It’s fused with him.
I swear I glimpse both the man and the monster in that same face.
I don’t look away. I should. But I don’t. “Why are you here?” I ask, sounding shredded and sharp.
His features beneath the mask are crooked and cruel. “I came for my hat.”
The words hit like a slap. Petty. Cruel. Sharp.
“Take it, you bastard in hell!” The snarl rips from my throat before I can stop it. I don’t rip it from my head. If I do, it will mean the end.
And Raphael…he doesn’t move for it.
He turns to the others. “Cut away everything else.”
Panic spikes adrenaline through me. I thrash, but my body’s nothing now. Their hands fall on me—not rough or cruel, but terrifyingly careful—stripping away what little I have left. Rory and Jude slice through the fabric, and Seth and Vincent remove every last scrap.
Their touch isn’t malicious or lust-filled. Though they’re taking everything, it feels like a claiming, a reclaiming.
The cold hits my skin in waves, crawling up my spine, leaving me raw and exposed. Everything but the hat. The damn hat.
Seth lowers his hand toward it. Before he touches it, Raphael’s there, seizing his wrist, shoving it away. A silent command.
He won’t let them take it.
Why? Why not take it back? Isn’t that what he wanted? Why is he leaving me with this last single thread between us? The questions spark something sharp inside my chest. Not warmth. Not hope.
Curiosity.
I choke down a sob, my body trembling. The pain still burns with fire and ice, but the adrenaline from them courses through my veins.
He watches me, steady and still. Without turning to the others, he directs, “Cover her with her names.”
Jude steps closer, staring me down, carving right through all the bullshit. “My Babydoll.”
Vincent, fists clenched at his sides, gazing inside me, not through me. “My Girly.”
Seth tilts his head with a welcoming smile. “My Briella Darling.”
And Rory? My lungs stall as he kneels close, leers at me, and trails a finger down my cheek, so I shiver. “My Firecracker Lass. Is on-linn maw ay on tuc-ris.” Oh, God, did he just speak…Gaelic?
“Cover her in her high name,” Raphael commands.
Rory rises. They all straighten and speak in sync like they’ve practiced it, “Our Queen.”
Raphael says nothing. Fucking nothing!
Curling up into a little ball with only one side of my face toward him, I spit my last shred of fight. “Finish it! Just finish me, damn you!”
“Do you want death, Briella?”
His words slice sharper than any blade ever could.
The world narrows, shrinks down to that single question, hanging between us like a noose.
And in this moment, I feel it—the bitter lie trying to claw up my throat.
I want to scream yes. My body screams yes.
But my soul is hanging on by a single thread.
The single thread he’s left upon my head.
Whywhywhy? I need to know.
My head lowers. My hair falls in wet, tangled curtains around my face. “Rot in hell,” I whisper, broken. “All of you.”
It’s not defiance anymore. It’s the beginning of surrender.
The air shifts. Heavy. Strange. Like the earth just moved between us.
Raphael kneels beside me, his presence swallowing the cold. A gloved hand lifts my chin. I’m too tired to fight it, too far gone. His black eyes trap me, like they’re taking me to the precipice of the abyss inside him. He leaves me at the edge.
“Answer me.”
I shake my head, trembling. The world blurs and sharpens in turns, his face the only clear thing left.
“What do you want, my Queen?”
It shatters me. Unravels me. The question, the softness of it. The way it splits me open in places I’ve kept sealed for years.
You go back to your old scars, running from the monsters in your mind instead of surrendering to them. Find your home with them.
The home with the monsters standing above you.
“I want…” I almost say you. But that isn’t it.
“I want to be….” with you? But that’s not right either.
It’s more. It’s the thing that’s chased me since the first time I looked into his eyes.
“We are your skin, your flesh, your blood and bones. We are your soul matter.”
The memory from the dungeon slices through the storm like a shard of glass.
“We do not simply possess you. You are possessed by us.”
I tremble, lashes fluttering, my whole body aching, but I slowly lift my head.
“Here there be Gods. You have become divine.”
And when my lips finally move, the words slip like a secret as I fall over the precipice—and surrender to the all-eclipsing abyss.
“I want to be you.”
It’s barely a whisper, but I know he hears it. The grin fades into something quieter, almost reverent.
He drops his bow, lets it fall in the mud. His arms gather me up carefully despite the arrow still lodged in my leg, careful but unrelenting. A cry breaks loose from my throat at the pain, but he holds me steady and solid, like gravity.
I rise up, just like the goddess from that cave. But my scars, their scars, our scars…they are my throne.
“Why?” I whimper into Raphael’s neck, burying my face in his hair, holding onto his warmth. The cap shifts slightly, nudging his jaw. “Why didn’t you take the hat?”
He pauses. Looks down. I look up, letting the splintering, throbbing pain fade to the resolution of my need.
With his gaze riveted on me, unlocking something deep and dark and beautiful in me, he lowers his head until his lips brush mine. “I didn’t want the crown without the Queen who wears it.”
His mouth slams against mine, conquering and consuming. OhgodohgodohgodohgodohGOD! Five of them. And one high god. The King chased the pawn across the board until she turned…into a Queen. And now…their high goddess.
With his mouth still on mine, Raphael carries me down the hill, through the storm with the others like shadows following in sacred silence.
And at the sight of the first thick tree, Raphael drives my back up against it, spreading my legs, taking himself out, and driving inside me.