Chapter 23 Of Blood & Defiance #2
“Is this meant to impress me?” I asked, my voice hoarse from thirst but steady with defiance. “That you murdered men for doing exactly what you brought me here to endure?”
Valen’s eyes narrowed, as he circled me again, careful to maintain his distance. The air between us seemed to vibrate with his power, but he did not breach it to touch me.
“They were not worthy to inflict your suffering,” he said, his voice a rumble that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his chest.
I tracked him with my eyes, refusing to strain my neck to follow his movements. “How considerate of you to reserve the right to my pain for yourself.”
Valen stopped his circling, positioning himself directly before me. His eyes traveled from my face down to my toes, which still barely scraped the floor, then back up again. A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he kept his hands clasped behind his back.
“You are my wife,” he said simply. “My prisoner. My instrument of justice against a man who imprisoned gods. You, your pain, everything about you, is mine.”
“I do not belong to you,” I hissed, lifting my chin despite the fire it sent through my shoulders.
“No?” Valen’s voice dropped to a silken whisper. He stepped closer—not touching me, but near enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body. “Then to whom do you belong, Princess? Your father? He’s dead. Your kingdom? It burns. Your people? They’ve forgotten you already.”
He leaned in, his breath brushing my ear. “You are adrift in the world, Mireille. A queen without a throne, a daughter without a father, a wife bound to a husband she despises. Unfortunately for you—“ his eyes flicked between mine, “—we are bound, whether you want to accept it or not.”
I refused to let him see how his words cut. Instead, I met his gaze steadily. “I belong to myself. That’s something you can never take from me.”
“Can’t I?” That terrible smile once again spread across his blood-spattered face. “Let me show you what it means to belong to the God of Blood and Conquest.”
I expected him to touch me. He didn’t need to.
He simply raised his hand, palm toward me, and flicked his fingers in a casual gesture.
Pain lanced across my skin—sharp, precise lines of fire that bloomed on my arms, my shoulders, down my ribs and across my thighs. I looked down in shock to see my skin parting, thin red marks appearing as if drawn by an invisible blade.
The cuts weren’t deep—mere scratches, really—but they burned as if traced with acid rather than steel. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, determined not to make a sound.
Valen watched my face, his own expression rapt with concentration as he hummed in appreciation. “Most scream at my first touch.”
“Disappointed?” I managed, the words strained but steady.
“No.” He circled me again, examining his handiwork from every angle.
“Pain is an art form, you know. The application of suffering requires precision, an understanding of thresholds and limits.” He paused behind me, where I couldn’t see his face, his breath ghosting over the nape of my neck.
“You can scream if you want to, Mireille. No one will blame you.”
“I wouldn’t dare give you the satisfaction,” I said, focusing on a crack in the wall opposite to anchor myself against the stinging pain that radiated across my skin.
“It’s not about satisfaction.” His voice was closer now, near my ear, though I recognized he still hadn’t touched me. “It’s about honesty. We can be honest with each other, can’t we, Princess?”
I gritted my teeth at the question. “What would you like me to be honest about, Butcher?”
“Everything,” he hissed as he moved back into my field of vision, his eyes searching my face with his wicked smile still in place.
“I want to hear your screams. I want to taste your tears. I want to know that your father is suffering from beyond the void as he watches his precious daughter succumb to me.”
A bitter laugh escaped me, sharp enough to cut. “Then you’re wasting your time and mine. I will not succumb to you. And my father valued nothing about me except my silence and obedience, both of which I failed to provide with any consistency.”
Something like interest flickered in Valen’s eyes as he considered me. “You speak of your father with such hatred, now that he is no longer. One might think you’d thank me for removing him from the world.”
“Thank you?” I stared at him, incredulous despite the pain still burning across my skin. “You slaughtered my family in front of me. You butchered the palace staff, people who never harmed you. You didn’t kill my father for justice, you did it for power and revenge. You are no better than he was.”
His expression hardened, and with another casual flick of his fingers, the shallow cuts on my body deepened. I couldn’t suppress a gasp as blood began to flow, tracing warm paths down my legs and dripping onto the stone floor below.
“I am nothing like your father,” Valen said, his voice deadly quiet. “Aeldrin was a mortal man playing at godhood, stealing power he couldn’t comprehend. I am real, power incarnate, blood and vengeance given form.”
My jaw clenched as I fought to keep my breathing even. The cuts weren’t life-threatening, but they burned with an intensity that suggested something more than physical damage—as if his power tainted the wounds, making them burn from within.
“You claim to be a god,” I said, forcing the words through the haze of pain, “yet here you are, torturing a helpless woman for revenge against a dead man. How divine of you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re hardly helpless, Mireille. Even strung up and bleeding, you wield that tongue like a blade.”
“It is the only weapon you have left me.” I met his gaze steadily, refusing to look away despite the tremors now running through my strained muscles. “Though, if this is the extent of your divine retribution, I’m less than impressed. Are minor cuts the limit of the Blood God’s power?”
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes—a glimpse of the creature beneath the human mask. His fingers curled slightly, and the cuts across my body pulsed in response, sending fresh waves of pain radiating outward.
“I could drain every drop of blood from your body with a thought,” he said, his voice dropping.
“I could boil it in your veins or freeze it solid. I could pull it through your pores until you wept crimson tears. All without touching you.” His eyes fixed on mine, searching for fear.
“But that would end our game too quickly. And we wouldn’t want that, would we? ”
Blood trickled down from my wrists, dripping from my elbows in a steady, hypnotic rhythm.
Each drop hitting the stone floor echoed in the silence between us.
My shoulders screamed from the unnatural position, and the cuts burned like fire, but I refused to break.
Instead, I gathered my strength and offered him a smile that felt like baring teeth.
“You don’t scare me.”
The words emerged raw and ragged, coated in the copper taste of my own blood, but they carried that truth he so wanted.
Life terrified me. Loss haunted me. But Valen himself—the god wearing a king’s face—did not.
Perhaps it was because I had already lost everything that mattered, or perhaps it was simply that death had become more friend than foe in the darkness of my captivity.
Whatever the reason, I watched the impact of my defiance crack something within him—a hairline fracture in the control he’d barely maintained until that moment.
The fury that swept across his face wasn’t the calculated anger of a king, but something older and wilder—the rage of a god who’d been denied proper worship.
In that moment, as his nostrils flared and his eyes darkened to pitch, I understood I had made a terrible mistake.
Not because I feared death—death would be a mercy—but because I’d awakened something in him that wouldn’t be satisfied with mere pain.
“Then perhaps,” he said, his voice lowering to a whisper that seemed to scrape along my bones, “I’m not trying hard enough.”
He moved toward me with his predatory grace, closing the distance between us in two measured steps.
I couldn’t back away—the chains held me fast. All I could do was meet his gaze and refuse to flinch as he raised his hand to my face, still, not touching, but close enough that I could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his skin.
“You stand before me bleeding and bound,” he said, “and yet you speak as if you hold power.” His eyes traveled down my body, taking in the blood-stained shift that clung to my skin where the cuts had soaked through the thin fabric. “Let’s strip away that last vestige of pride, shall we?”
Before I could respond, he reached for me, fingers curling into the fabric of my shift. With a single, brutal motion, he tore it apart, ripping it down the middle until it hung in tatters around me. The force jerked my body against the chains, and I bit back a cry as pain flared bright and hot.
Cold air hit my exposed skin, and I fought the instinct to curl in on myself.
I couldn’t move my arms to cover myself.
I could only hang there, naked and vulnerable, blood trickling from dozens of shallow cuts across my body.
The humiliation burned hotter than the pain of the wounds, but I refused to let it show on my face.
Instead, I held his gaze, jaw tight, silently daring him to think this would break me.
“Better,” Valen said, his eyes taking in every inch of exposed flesh with clinical detachment. “No more barriers between us now.”
“If you think nakedness is my weakness, you understand nothing about me,” I said, my voice tight but steady. “I was raised in Aeldrin’s court, where humiliation was the morning meal and shame the nightly wine. This is nothing new.”