Chapter 56
brYONY
DID YOU REALLY think,” Alexios says, voice soft, “that I’d let you walk without testing you myself?”
Of course not. This was his plan all along, wasn’t it? I’d waived my protection in Scillari as the Wolf’s Chosen and agreed to face any challenger. Might as well have trussed myself up with a pretty bow and laid my head on the chopping block for him.
The crowd roars. Hundreds of voices howling for blood—my blood. They know I’m not walking away from a challenge with an Eternal. They’re going to watch me die, and they’re going to savor every second of it.
Evander hurls against his chains. Metal screeches. His wings spread wide, and power flares around him before the magic-suppressing shackles choke it down, again and again.
“Stop,” Alexios commands him. “You’re only hurting yourself.”
“Let her go.” Evander’s voice is ragged. “You agreed the trials had to be possible for a human to win.”
“I agreed my trials had to be possible to win. She asked for this one. Came up with it all on her own, in fact. I exploit loopholes, and your Chosen practically drew me a perfect map right to this moment.”
A calm settles over me as I catalog the damage from my previous skirmishes—the cuts and bruises, the exhaustion dragging at my limbs. Even if I could fight, it’s pointless against Alexios.
But I don’t care if I lose. I’m done kneeling. Done letting males with crowns carve me into shapes that suit them. When Idris gutted me on the Duehavn, that was the last time I’d ever die on my back.
So I raise my head and meet Alexios’ stare. “I accept.”
“Bryony, don’t—”
Evander’s shout is cut off with a flick of Alexios’ fingers. The god-king’s attention doesn’t waver from mine, and some dark and hungry emotion flickers in those crimson depths as he watches me.
“Then let’s go over a few lessons first.”
The air thickens. Pressure builds in my skull. With another casual movement of his fingers, power coils around my neck, squeezing until I gasp. Black spots dance in front of my eyes.
“Lesson one,” the god-king says. “Human bodies are fragile. The Wolf’s soulbond gives you his lifespan, but it doesn’t make you a god. You’re still breakable.”
Just before darkness can drag me under, he releases me, and I fall to my knees in the dirt, heaving air into my burning lungs. The reprieve lasts exactly three heartbeats.
Then his boot slams into my ribs.
Zephyr’s armor buckles beneath the impact. The pain eclipses every thought until I’m left with only animal instinct—curl into a ball, knees to chest, shrink down, make yourself small. Maybe then he’ll lose interest.
But he’s holding back. He could have pulverized my bones with that kick if he’d wanted. This is restraint for a creature like him.
He kneels beside me. “You know what I love about knives?” He trails the knife down my neck, shoving away bits of broken armor. “They’re intimate in a way powers can never be. Personal.” The steel bites into my skin. “Almost like foreplay. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I don’t react. I refuse to give him the satisfaction.
“To kill with steel, you have to get up close and dirty.” He begins to carve into me.
I choke down a cry, blinking back bursts of light.
“You understand that intimately, don’t you?
It’s how you killed your uncle. How he tried to kill you.
When you shove a blade into someone and watch the light leave their eyes, you learn something about them.
And about yourself. Like you’re both peering into each other’s souls.
The way a person bleeds shows you who they really are.
” He drags the tip of the weapon lower, leaving a burning trail in its wake.
I’ll never forget this moment. This lesson. Even if I lived a thousand years, I’d remember the shape of this powerlessness.
“Fuck you,” I manage through gritted teeth.
He laughs. “Ah, there it is. There are the sweet words I used to hear through my Claim.” The blade sinks deeper. “I’ve been dying to make you pay for every time I heard them.”
Darkness dances at the edges of my vision, begging me to slip under. Some distant part of me hears Evander’s shout.
And still, the god-king carves his lessons into my skin. He doesn’t hit bone or pierce anything vital. Because this is a message, isn’t it? This is a reminder for the human who foolishly believed she could win a game with the God of Storms.
“Lesson two.” His voice stays conversational. “When a stupid little girl dreams of ruling beside a god, that fantasy comes with a price.”
Think of something else. Think of Evander’s hands on your skin, his wings wrapped around you, the heat of his mouth when he kisses you. The way he looks at you like you’re cherished.
As if Alexios senses my mind going elsewhere, he grips my hair hard.
“You want to wear a crown in this realm and rule by an Eternal’s side for the rest of eternity?
” There’s a stinging pain at my shoulder blade as he cuts away the decimated parts of the armor there.
Making room for more marks. “Then you’ll have to bleed for it. Break for it. Beg for it.”
Agony whites out coherence, and I can’t I can’t I can’t—
“Look.” Alexios uses his grip on my hair to wrench my head around.
“Look at him.” Evander thrashes, muscles straining as he tries to tear the bolts to his shackles out of the rock.
“Look how desperate he is. How hard he’s fighting for his human.
How far do you think he’ll go to keep you breathing? What piece of his soul will he trade?”
The blade stops and withdraws.
Then Alexios is hauling me up, dragging me across the sands to Evander.
“Heal her, Wolf,” he says, tossing me at my Chosen’s feet.
Alexios releases the shackles. The instant they fall away, Evander holds me against his chest. His power rushes into me in a wave of light and heat, seeking out every wound, stitching me together from the inside out.
His hands roam as he checks for any injury he might have missed. Erasing the evidence of Alexios’ brutality.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers against my hair. “You’re okay. I’m so sorry. I’m so—”
But before he can finish, the cuffs snap closed on Evander’s wrists again. Alexios’ power seizes me around my waist and reels me in until we’re pressed chest to chest.
“You sick fuck,” Evander snarls, lunging against the chains.
“Do you see now, Princess?” Alexios tips my chin up, forcing me to meet his gaze.
“This is what happens when a human bonds with a god. He’ll put you back together, and I’ll rip you apart.
And we’ll do it over and over and over because he’d rather watch me shatter every bone in your body than lose you. Tell me something. Is that love?”
I look up at him. “You don’t know anything about love.”
His smile is cruel, mirthless. “Oh, I know all about sacrifices for love, Princess. More than you, I think.” He wraps his fingers around my wrist. “Lesson three. When gods play with mortals, we do it because we’re bored. Because we like the sounds you make when we hurt you.”
He wrenches my arm and snaps the bone. A scream slips out of me before I can stop it, my vision blurring as bile scalds my throat.
“There it is.” Satisfaction thrums through his voice. “Scream for me. Beg if you want to make it interesting.”
He shoves me away, and it’s only stubborn will that keeps me standing. I grit my teeth against the pain.
“This game only ends when I lose interest,” he continues, circling me slowly.
“Or when you decide the Wolf isn’t worth it.
How long would you last if we gave you the choice?
If I broke you, and he fixed you, how many times do you think it would take before you begged him to end it?
A hundred? A thousand?” He snags my chin between his fingers and whispers, “When every kiss comes with a fist, how long would your love last? Would you start to resent him and count all the ways he’s complicit in your suffering? ”
Something snaps inside me—the last thread of restraint.
I draw my last dagger from its sheath at my hip with my uninjured hand, and I let him see every dark, howling thing inside me.
Every ugliness and hidden hurt, the broken bits and pieces he carved his claim into.
The monstrous parts that can shove aside the agony of my body to make room for cold purpose.
“Four hundred and sixteen,” I tell him.
His brow lifts in a silent question.
“That’s how many times an Oracle shoved a knife into my heart from ages five to twenty-one. How many times I spilled my blood on your altar, crossed into the Void, and told you to get fucked.”
I slash my dagger across his chest. The blade parts fabric and flesh, leaving a thin crimson seam behind. And he lets me, standing there without so much as blinking—as if I’m beneath his notice.
“No one taught me how to be brave,” I hiss, hacking at him again. Graceless. Brutal. “No one asked if I was okay. No one held my hand through the pain or told me to be strong. I did it because my people needed me to. I did it even as you used me up and threw me away like garbage.”
Slash. Slash. Stab.
My blade carves into his skin. I hurl all my strength and impotent fury against him like waves crashing against stone.
And he heals and heals and heals.
“You think I haven’t proven myself?” My voice echoes through the quiet arena. Hundreds of eyes are riveted on me. On us. “I proved it every single day I woke up in a world that wanted to butcher me on the altar. That saw me as someone to carve into.”
I force myself to keep going. If these are the last words I ever say, I’m going to make them count.
“I proved it by walking into your palace with my head high while everyone here waited for me to break. I went to Nyholm and played games with a fucking death god to be with Evander.” An exhale shudders out of me.
“I can’t change what my ancestors did. I can’t bring back the people they butchered any more than you can resurrect everyone who died in the war. ”
Alexios goes rigid. His face gives nothing away.
“But I’m done paying for the sins of a dead dynasty with my pain.
” My eyes fall on Evander, this god I’ve learned to love more than anything.
“I just want him. I love him. And that doesn’t change whether I’m breathing or a corpse on the pyre.
So you can rip me apart or put me back together, but it won’t make a difference.
He’s mine, and I’m his. That’s the only truth that matters. ”
I let my dagger hit the sand. My chest heaves with each breath, but I won’t bend or kneel.
“So do your worst, you bastard.”
Alexios smiles, and the bottom drops out of my stomach. Then his hand closes around my throat.
“Then prove it. Give your life for his freedom.”