Chapter 44 Of War and Hope #4
Valen’s lips curved into a smile that held no humor.
“Although, dying wouldn’t have freed you from me.
” He leaned closer, his breath warm against my cheek.
“Even if you had died in that cell, you wouldn’t have escaped.
Your soul would have been trapped in the void, unable to pass on to whatever comes after.
And I would have followed you there, claimed you there, made you mine in that endless darkness just as I have made you mine here. ”
I couldn’t look away from him, staring at the absolute conviction in his eyes, the casual certainty with which he spoke of claiming me even in death.
The contradiction of him, of him not willing to risk my soul, but would follow me to the void to ensure I stayed his possession…
This was not passion or desire—this was ownership taken to its most fundamental extreme.
“You’re mad,” I breathed, but even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. He was a god. What seemed like madness to me was simply the natural order of things to him—power taken, souls claimed, eternity bent to his will.
“Perhaps,” he agreed, his thumb tracing my lower lip with devastating gentleness. “But I am your madness. Just as you have become mine. Now, dunk.”
“What?” I breathed, not able to drag my eyes from his unfathomable gaze.
His lips twitched. “Dunk under the water. You need to rinse.”
Oh.
I complied, sliding beneath the surface, feeling the soap slip from my hair in cloudy tendrils.
The water around me had turned a rusty brown from all the blood, but I didn’t mind.
There was something satisfying about watching the evidence of Valen’s violence dissolve away, as if it could be so easily undone.
When I resurfaced, pushing my hair back from my face, Valen was watching me with an intensity that sent a shiver across my skin despite the heat of the bath. Water dripped from my eyelashes, blurring my vision momentarily. When it cleared, I found his hand extended toward me, offering the soap.
“Would you like help with the rest as well?” he asked, his voice low and careful, as though he was treading on ground that might collapse beneath him.
What an odd question for him to ask me. He had touched every inch of my body—with blades, with whips, with calculated cruelty and, yes, with desire. But this was different. This request for permission, this offer of care rather than pain.
I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said simply. Not a refusal born of fear, but of choice. I was not ready to trust him with my body, not like this, not tenderly. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
I expected anger, even a return to the Valen I knew—demanding, taking what he wanted regardless of my wishes. But he only nodded, his expression unreadable, and handed me the soap without another word.
This acceptance of my refusal was more unsettling than any rage would have been.
It spoke of change, of something shifting between us that I couldn’t yet define.
I took the soap from his hand, our fingers brushing briefly, the contact sending another silver thread spinning into existence before fading just as quickly.
He remained sitting by the bath, his back to me now, giving me some measure of privacy as I began to wash the rest of the blood from my skin.
It flaked away in rust-colored pieces, floating on the water’s surface before sinking slowly to the bottom of the bath.
With each patch of clean skin revealed, I felt lighter, as though I was shedding more than just the physical remnants of violence.
The silence between us had stretched into something almost peaceful—a strange reprieve in our storm of pain and power. When he finally spoke, his voice was different—softer, older somehow, as though he was reaching back through centuries to find the words.
“When I was created, I was merely the God of Flesh,” he said, gaze fixed on some distant point beyond the stone walls. “Not blood, not conquest. Just flesh and the making of it.”
I stilled in the water, my hands pausing in their work of cleaning away the blood.
“I thought of creatures,” he continued, “and they came to be, just from my thought. Birds, with their hollow bones and fragile wings. Beasts that crawled and swam and burrowed.” His hands moved in the air, as though shaping these creatures from nothing, an unconscious echo of his ancient power.
“Creation was effortless then. Pure. I filled the world with living things because I could, because the emptiness needed filling.”
I watched the profile of his face, the strong line of his jaw, the downward curve of his mouth.
It was strange to imagine him as a creator rather than a destroyer.
The water around me had cooled slightly, but I made no move to leave the bath, afraid that any sudden movement might shatter this unexpected moment of truth.
“But immortality is horribly boring,” he said, a bitter smile twisting his lips.
“Endless years watching creatures live and die, following the same patterns, generation after generation.” He glanced at me then, something almost vulnerable in his gaze.
“So I created mortals—humans with minds that could dream and question, bodies that could feel pleasure and pain with a fleeting intensity gods can never know.”
I realized with sudden clarity what he wasn’t saying—that this god must have been incredibly lonely to create beings in his own image, companions to fill the void of his eternal existence.
The thought was unsettling. I had never considered gods as lonely, had never thought of Valen as capable of such a mundane emotion as loneliness.
I sank deeper into the water, letting it lap at my chin, my eyes never leaving his face.
“I watched you—mortals,” he said, turning back to stare at the wall.
“Never understanding how you could flit from emotion to emotion with merely a blink. Love, hate, anger, happiness... these were just emotions for you. Emotions that moved mountains, started wars, built empires, all to wither away with time.” His voice held a note of wonder, as though even after all this time, human passion still mystified him.
I remembered Death’s words about how gods feel differently, deeper. Resistant to change. I wondered if that was why Valen had felt this yearning to create, to experience the fleetingness of life as we did.
“I loved mortals for a time,” he continued, the word ‘loved’ sounding strange in his mouth, foreign and unpracticed.
“Watching you build your civilizations, your kingdoms. The way you carved meaning from chaos, found purpose in your brief lives.” He twisted slightly to look at me again, his eyes reflecting the golden candlelight. “But mortals are greedy.”
I said nothing, letting him speak.
“They prayed, over and over for help in their endeavors, and I began to ensure my favored ones would succeed,” he said, a shadow passing across his features.
“I gave them strength in battle, strategy in warfare, the power to take what they desired. I chose champions, guided them to rule, watched them build their dynasties. I took on the new title of God of Conquest.”
The shift in his tone mirrored the transformation he described—from creator to conqueror, from life-giver to war-bringer. I could see how one had led to the other, how his fascination with humanity had twisted into something darker.
“Unfortunately, mortal greed has no limits. They were never satisfied with what I gave them. They always wanted more—more land, more power, more blood,” he paused, turning his head back to fully meet my gaze.
“Eventually, they turned on me. They captured me, again and again and again. Mortals always think they can control what they don’t understand, bind what they fear.
” His fist clenched at his side, a gesture so human it was startling.
“I always took retribution. Always. Kingdoms burned, bloodlines ended, lands salted and cursed. That was the price of their hubris.”
This was it then, the explanation of how my father had earned this particular brutality of Valen’s vengeance. A vengeance that had consumed his family, his kingdom, and now me.
“And no creature has ever made me terrified of my own power,” Valen said, his voice dropping lower, almost to a whisper. “Until now.”
His eyes searched mine, black and fathomless, looking for something I couldn’t name. In them, I saw not just the cruelty I’d come to know, but ancient loneliness, the weariness of eons, and something like… hope. Fragile and uncertain hope.
“There has not been any being who reminded me of the time before,” he said slowly, each word deliberate, “before mortal greed. One who reminded me why I loved mortals in the first place.”
The implication was clear, hanging in the air between us like the steam from the bath. He was speaking of me. I didn’t know how to respond to this—this wasn’t a threat or a taunt or a punishment. We were starting down a road significantly more dangerous.
A strange, hollow ache spread through my chest as I looked at him—this ancient, terrible god who had created life itself, who had watched civilizations rise and fall, who had spent eternity searching for something he never found.
The loneliness of it crashed over me like a physical wave.
How many millennia had he existed, creating and destroying, hoping each time to find someone who might understand him?
How many disappointments had he weathered, how many betrayals endured, before his heart calcified into the cruel entity I first encountered?
I knew loneliness. I had been unwanted, a bargaining chip. I had learned that duty replaced love, and my value lay only in staying silent. But my isolation was a mere heartbeat compared to his eternal solitude.
“I don’t know if I can be that for you,” I whispered, my voice catching on the words.
I felt a single tear form and slide down my cheek, slow and hot against my skin.
It was a tear full of complexity—of recognition in the terrible loneliness that could drive even a god to such extremes of creation and destruction.
A tear for the lonely god who had created humanity out of emptiness only to be betrayed by his own creation.
Valen reached out, his movement careful and measured, and brushed the tear away with his thumb. The touch was so tender, his skin warm against mine.
“I’m not asking you to be,” he murmured, and for a heartbeat, neither of us moved, locked in this strange, fragile moment of connection.
Then he stood in a single fluid motion, his usual grace returning. “I will see you tomorrow,” he said, his voice back to its normal timbre, though something in his eyes remained different—a door opened that could not be fully closed again.
He turned and left the bathing chamber without another word, the heavy door closing behind him with a solid thud that echoed in the sudden emptiness.
I sank deeper into the now-tepid water, my mind spinning with what he’d revealed. The God of Flesh, lonely enough to create humanity. The God of Blood, betrayed by his own creations. The God of Conquest, searching for something he’d lost centuries ago.
It didn’t excuse what he had done to me, to my family, to my kingdom. Nothing could. But it complicated things in ways I wasn’t prepared for.
I raised my hand, touching the place where he had touched me, where he had wiped away my tear with the same hand that had wielded blades against my skin, that had nearly ended my life in furious passion.
The silver threads flickered at the edges of my vision, the one connecting me to Valen pulsing stronger than before.
Whatever bound us—hatred, vengeance, fate, or something with no name—it had just pulled tighter.
And as I sat alone in the cooling bath, I wondered what price I would pay for seeing the man within the monster.