Chapter 51 Earned #2
“My yshera,” he murmured, nuzzling deeper into my neck, his lips brushing against my pulse point with deliberate softness.
My skin blazed where he touched it, not with pain but with a pleasure so acute it bordered on agony.
How had I ever looked at any man with desire while this god existed?
It felt like a missing piece of myself had clicked into place, a hollow I hadn’t known existed suddenly filled to overflowing.
His scent enveloped me, even more potent than before. It was dizzying, making my head spin and my knees weaken. I clutched at his shoulders, fingers digging into the firm muscle there, feeling the power that lay coiled beneath his skin even after decades of imprisonment.
In the periphery of my awareness, I heard Valen’s continued struggle against his restraint, the frustrated growls and curses growing more desperate.
But his voice seemed to come from miles away, from another world entirely.
In this moment, there was only Death and me, locked together in an embrace that felt both new and impossibly familiar, as if my body remembered something my mind had forgotten.
I pulled back, just enough to look up at him again.
The movement cost me dearly—separating myself from him even by inches felt like tearing open a wound.
But I needed to see his face again, to confirm that this was real, that he was real, that I hadn’t somehow conjured him from my desperate longing for escape and connection.
His face… gods, his face was devastation carved into marble.
He looked at me as if I were water after an eternity of thirst, light after endless darkness, home after millennia of wandering.
It was too much to bear, too heavy a weight of expectation and need.
Yet I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t escape the magnetic pull of his gaze, the silent promise it contained.
Slowly, I released my grip on Death to get a better look at him, though he did not let me go far.
His hands slid to my waist, maintaining contact as if breaking it completely might cause him physical pain.
I leaned back just enough to see the full extent of his imprisonment, and what I saw made my heart catch in my throat.
The chains coiled around his limbs and chest like serpents, all converging at a single rune over his heart—an elaborate network of bondage that spoke of fear rather than mere restraint.
These were not the simple manacles that had held me for Valen’s entertainment.
These were the desperate attempts of a king to contain something he knew he could never truly control.
The chains themselves were unlike any metal I had seen—not iron or steel or silver, but something darker, shining with a dull sheen.
Each link was inscribed with minute runes, symbols so ancient they predated any language I had ever known.
They pulsed with a faint luminescence that matched the rhythm of my own heartbeat, a synchronicity that did not feel like coincidence.
I reached out, my fingers hovering just above one of the chains that crossed his shoulder. “Do they hurt?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Death’s lips curved in a mirthless smile. “Always,” he said simply. “Though one grows accustomed to pain, given enough time.”
My eyes traveled over his body, taking in what his imprisonment had done to him.
His clothing was so tattered, so filthy, I wondered how he did not smell.
The remains of what might once have been a fine shirt hung in shreds from his shoulders, revealing more of that pale, scarred skin beneath.
His trousers were in little better condition, worn through at the knees where he must have knelt on the stone floor countless times over the years.
Yet despite these rags, despite decades in this lightless cell, he exuded a dignity that transcended his circumstances.
There was nothing broken about him, nothing diminished.
If anything, the contrast between his divine beauty and his squalid surroundings only emphasized his otherworldliness, like finding a star trapped in mud.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Death’s eyes never left my face as he replied, “Since you were born.” His hand reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, the gesture achingly tender.
My attention was drawn to the rune at his chest. It was, I realized, the heart of his imprisonment—the lynchpin that held the entire network of chains together.
And around it, weaving through it, binding it in place, were my threads.
They glowed against the dark metal, forming a counterpoint to the rune’s inherent magic, as if two different powers were locked in eternal struggle.
I knew instinctively, bone-deep, what would happen if I plucked the thread that lined that rune. All his chains would dissolve, just as the bars had, just as the manacle in his realm had. Drawn by an impulse I couldn’t name, I lifted my hand, fingers hovering just above it.
Death suddenly gripped my wrist, his fingers firm but not painful around my skin.
A soft shock ran through me at his firm touch, not just from the contact itself but from the restraint it represented.
This was a being of immense power, capable of crushing my bones with a thought, yet he held me with the gentle care one might show a wounded bird.
His eyes searched mine, looking for comprehension, for certainty.
“Tell me again that you are sure,” he murmured, his grip on my wrist tightening fractionally.
“I need you to be sure. Because once I am free, I will not stop, Mireille. Not in my vengeance. Not in my hunger. Not in my claim on you.” He paused, jaw tense, as if the next words pained him more than any chain ever could. “I cannot let you go.”
I looked from his face to the rune on his chest, to the chains that had bound him for as long as I had been alive.
Then I looked back to his eyes—those ancient, ice-blue eyes that had seen the birth and death of stars, that had witnessed suffering beyond comprehension, that looked at me with something approaching possession.
I will not break.
“I am choosing this,” I said softly, looking directly into his eyes, letting him see my resolve. I moved my hand, not looking away from his gaze, and slowly extended my fingers toward the central rune. “I choose you.”
Slowly, Death released my wrist, allowing me to make my choice freely. His eyes never left mine as my fingers found the silver thread woven through the iron rune, as I grasped it, as I gently pulled it free from the metal.
The entire castle shuddered as Death’s chains dissolved, the stone walls groaning as if under immense pressure.
The rune at the center of his chest flared blindingly bright for an instant, then crumbled into dust that sifted through my fingers like dark sand.
The chains followed, link by link, disintegrating from the center outward, falling away from his body in a cascade of metallic particles that vanished before they hit the floor.
Valen’s voice rose in a howl of fury. “What have you done?” he yelled, yanking at his own restraint with renewed desperation. “What have you done?”
But I couldn’t answer him. All I could do was stare at the god I had just unleashed upon the world.