Chapter 10
Pain.
My ribs are screaming, this deep grinding ache that flares every time I breathe. My throat burns. My face throbs in at least three separate places, maybe four—hard to tell when everything hurts whether I'm counting or not.
I'm not dead. Low bar, but I'll take it.
The ceiling is wrong.
Stone. Not gilded panels, not the elaborate gold-leaf bullshit Coin put me under. Just stone, gray and rough, with iron fixtures holding oil lamps that burn steady instead of flickering.
I turn my head and the room tilts, goes dark at the edges, stabilizes. Slowly. My neck doesn't want to cooperate. The bruises there pulse hot every time I move, and I can still feel the shape of Kairis's hand.
Kairis. Past tense.
My stomach flips before I can finish the thought. The memory surfaces in pieces—floor shaking, the door exploding inward, white eyes, wet sounds, a body hitting the ground and not moving again.
He's dead. Kairis is dead.
I should probably feel something about that. Relief, maybe. Satisfaction. Instead I file it away with all the other things I don't have time to process and keep looking at the ceiling.
The bed is too soft. Silk against my skin, mattress giving under me in ways I don't trust. When I shift my weight to test whether sitting up is possible, my ribs answer that question with a hard no.
Fine.
Horizontal it is.
The sheets that smell like him. Clean, musky, something underneath that's just—warm. Male. The scent curls into my lungs before I can stop it and my whole body flushes hot.
Ugh, come on.
No.
I'm injured.
I'm confused.
I'm not going to lie here getting worked up over bedding.
I scan the room without lifting my head. Stone walls. A desk in the corner, covered in papers. A chair no one's sitting in. Shelves. A door—heavy, iron-banded, closed. No windows.
No windows.
My chest locks up. Different cage. Same bars. Same—
Fantastic. Really. An upgrade in décor and a downgrade in natural light. Father would be so proud of my trajectory.
Movement. My whole body goes rigid before I locate the source—a shadow in the corner I missed, a figure sitting so still I didn't clock it as alive.
White eyes catch the lamplight.
Discord.
My heart slams once, hard, and keeps going too fast. He's slouched in the chair, long legs stretched out, shoulders loose.
Watching me. His jaw is sharp in the low light, his throat a column of shadow, and my eyes track down before I can stop them—the breadth of his chest, the way his shirt pulls across it, hands resting on his thighs.
Calm. Stay calm. Don't stare, don't—
"You're awake." His voice is low. Rough. Not threatening, just present in a way that fills the room.
"Apparently." My voice comes out scraped raw. Kairis really did a number on my throat. "Unless this is a very detailed hallucination. In which case, I'd like to request better scenery."
He doesn't laugh. Doesn't smile. Just watches me with those colorless eyes, and the weight of his attention sits on my skin. Presses there. Makes me aware of how thin these sheets are, how much of me they're not covering.
"Where am I." My voice doesn't have the energy for question marks.
"Discord territory. My private chambers."
His private—
A god's private chambers. The Mad God's private chambers. I'm in his bed, which is either very bad or very confusing and I don't have enough information to know which.
Wonderful.
From one powerful man's property to another's. At least this mattress is more honest about being uncomfortable.
"Why."
"Because Coin's medical wing wasn't an option."
I laugh, probably sounded more unhinged than anything.
"That's not what I meant, my lord. Why am I here. Why did you—"
He moves.
His hands are on either side of my head, his face inches from mine, those white eyes filling my vision.
The mattress dips under his weight. His body cages me in—arms braced, chest hovering, close enough that I feel the heat radiating off him.
My whole body locks up, breath caught somewhere in my chest, and I can't—I can't move, can't think, can't do anything except stare up at him while my heart tries to beat out of my throat.
"Don't." The word comes out low. Rough. Almost a growl. "Don't call me that."
I can't find my voice. He's too close. I can see the silver flecks in his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his breath comes uneven. His forearms are rigid where they bracket my head and if he dropped an inch, just one inch—
"You don't call me my lord." His voice drops lower, this dark scrape of sound that I feel in my stomach. Lower. "You don't bow. You don't use titles. You say my name. Koshin. That's it. That's all you will ever call me."
My pulse is pounding so hard I can hear it.
His face is right there—close enough that I could count his eyelashes if my brain was working, close enough that his breath hits my lips when he speaks.
My back wants to arch. My hips want to shift.
My whole body is straining toward him and I have to lock every muscle I have to stay still.
"Do you understand?"
I don't understand anything. I don't understand why he's this close or why his voice sounds like that or why my body is going liquid instead of rigid, why the heat pooling low in my belly has nothing to do with fear.
Traitor. My body is a traitor.
"Yes," I manage. It comes out breathy. Pathetic. Wonderful. Really selling the dignity here.
"Say it."
"Koshin."
His eyes close. Just for a second. A muscle in his jaw jumps and he exhales slow, like the sound of his name in my mouth is something he needed to hear, something he's been waiting for. His whole body shudders, just barely, and I feel it everywhere we're almost touching.
Then he pulls back. Settles into a crouch beside the bed, distance restored, like he didn't just pin me down and demand I use his name while my whole body forgot how to function.
The air where he was goes cold. I want to reach out and drag him back. I want—
No. Fuck. Stop.
"Good." His voice is almost normal again. "That's better."
I stare at him. My heart is still racing. My skin is still flushed. The ache between my thighs has nothing to do with my injuries and everything to do with how badly I want him back on top of me.
What the fuck just happened.
"You're insane," I hear myself say.
"Yes."
No hesitation.
"You were saying. Why are you here."
I have to reboot my entire brain before I can remember what we were talking about.
Right.
Questions.
I was asking questions before a god decided to climb on top of me and have a moment about honorifics.
"You were hurt." He says it flat. Simple. Like he didn't just—like that was normal. "He was hurting you."
"People hurt me all the time. Gods don't usually start wars over it."
"I'm not most gods."
No shit.
I knew that before I knew his name. Before I saw him stand up in the Concord with his—
Don't think about that. Focus.
"Coin's going to retaliate." My mind is spinning back online even though my body is still catching up. "You just took their property. There are treaties, contracts—"
"Fuck the treaties."
"That's not how this works—"
"It's exactly how this works." He's still crouched beside the bed, eyes level with mine. "Coin had something I wanted. Now they don't. Everything else is noise."
My pulse kicks up again. He's still too close. I can smell him—the same scent that's in the sheets, but stronger, headier. My shoulders want to drop and that's wrong, that's backwards, my body doesn't relax around threats.
Except apparently it does now. Apparently my survival instincts have decided to take the day off. Great. Love that for me.
"What do you want." Even. Good. At least my voice is working even if the rest of me has lost its mind.
He doesn't answer right away. His eyes track over my face—the bruises, the split lip, the marks on my throat—and his jaw tightens.
"I want to put my mouth on every place he touched you." Low. Matter-of-fact. "I want to make you forget anyone else has ever had their hands on your skin. I want to keep you here where I can see you breathing."
My brain stops.
Just—stops. White noise. Nothing.
But my body doesn't stop. Static floods through me, sudden and consuming. My nipples tighten under the silk. My thighs press together without permission. I'm flushed all the way down my chest and he can probably see it, can probably see exactly what those words did to me.
What the hell am I supposed to do with that.
"That's not an answer," I manage. Too breathless. Too obvious.
"It's the only honest one I have."
The door opens.
Another man steps through—shorter than Koshin, ash-white hair, gray eyes that sweep the room once before landing on us. He looks at Koshin crouched by the bed, looks at me flat on my back, and his mouth curves.
"Heartwarming," he says. "Really. I might weep."
"Renan." Koshin doesn't turn around. Doesn't stop looking at me. "She's awake."
"I can see that. Can she talk, or did you scare her mute?"
"I'm not mute." The words come out sharper than I intended. Good. Sharp is better than whatever the fuck just happened to my brain. "I'm trying to figure out whether I've been rescued or kidnapped."
"Can't it be both?" Renan crosses the room, leans against the wall with his arms folded.
His posture is loose but his eyes are careful.
"He broke into Coin's territory, killed their enforcer, collapsed half their lower wing, and carried you back through the tunnels.
Whether that's rescue or kidnapping depends on your perspective. "
"My perspective is that I don't know what's happening and everyone keeps speaking in incomplete sentences."
"Welcome to Discord." His grin sharpens. "We're all incomplete here."
Fantastic. I've been rescued-slash-kidnapped by a madman and his comedian. My life just keeps getting better.