Part Two The Bound King #2
A brutal, pounding panic hammered through her chest. Every instinct she’d ever learned screamed at her to get away, to run, but there was nowhere to run. The room had no other door, no window, only stone carved from darkness and the impossible weight of the fortress around her.
Stay in this room. Do not open the door for anyone who is not me.
She pressed her back to the wall, sliding down until she sat on the cold stone floor. Her fingers shook, but she curled them into fists and forced her breath into deliberate rhythm.
In for five. Hold for two. Out for six.
The healer’s mantra steadied her, but only barely. The sounds outside the door changed—less screaming now, more like something tearing itself apart. Flesh and metal. Fire and bone.
And something else.
Whispers.
They slithered under the door like smoke, curling into the room. Words in no language she knew: hissing, overlapping, hungry.
Open. Open. Open the door.
Liora froze. The whispers were inside her head, sliding behind her ribs, trying to pry her open like fingers digging beneath a scab.
Open the door and the suffering ends.
Her breath faltered, a small, betraying hesitation.
Open it and the pain stops. Yours. His. End it.
A shudder ripped through her shoulders. Her hand moved toward the handle of its own accord, drawn as if magnetized.
Open it, child.
The last word hit her like a blow, child, the same patronizing dismissal Elorin had used. The same voice tone priests used speaking to people already condemned.
Anger flared through her, bright and cutting.
“I’m not a child,” she snarled through gritted teeth.
The whispers hissed and recoiled like burned insects.
The fortress lurched violently, nearly throwing her sideways. A crack raced up the far wall, glowing with white-hot light. The candle flame went abruptly still, drawn into a thin straight line as if time itself held its breath.
Outside, Kael roared.
Not in pain.
In command.
It was a sound that detonated through the stone, the voice of something ancient, merciless, and impossibly strong. The chains answered, glowing brighter, the runes flaring like miniature suns.
The whispers shrieked and retreated, dissolving into silence.
Then, suddenly, horribly, everything stopped.
No screams. No rumbling. No whispers.
Only the raw rush of blood in Liora’s ears.
She didn’t move. Her body trembled with leftover terror, muscles buzzing like they’d been shocked awake. Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet.
The candle flame settled, warm and golden again.
The quiet stretched, drawn thin as skin over bone.
Then, soft and ragged, footsteps approached from beyond the door. Not the thunder of chains or the scraping of claws. Human footsteps: uneven, weighted.
Liora stepped back, a sharp jolt of fear snapping through her. For one stupid heartbeat she almost prayed it wasn’t him—that it was anyone else, anything else.
The latch clicked.
The door eased open a hand’s width.
Kael stood in the doorway, barely. His posture sagged as if the air itself were lead. His mask hung askew, cracked down one side, exposing a sliver of his cheek and temple. His skin there burned with faint gold light, sigils etched beneath the flesh like molten veins.
He was breathing hard, each inhale a fracture. Blood dripped from his wrists where the shackles had bitten deep, glowing like liquid fire before fading to deep crimson.
He looked at her without speaking.
Liora’s voice emerged thin. “Are you—”
“No.” His voice was shredded. “Still alive.”
She swallowed. “What was that?”
He braced a hand against the doorframe as though the stone might collapse beneath him. The chains trembled, faint sparks dancing along their length.
“The curse,” he said. “You heard its hunger.”
“It was speaking.”
“No.” His eyes burned brighter. “It was listening. Speaking comes next.”
Liora’s throat tightened. “The Remnants? The things in the chasm?”
“Pieces of what the curse tore apart when it bound itself to me.” His voice was rough, but steadier now. “Pain echoes. It looks for new hosts. That’s why brides . . . break.”
“Break?” The word scraped through her.
He lifted his gaze to hers, brutal honesty in molten-gold eyes.
“They don’t die, Eliora.” His voice barely held. “They become part of it.”
Her breath hitched. “Part of the curse?”
“Yes.”
The floor felt like it dropped away beneath her. “And you let that happen?”
His jaw clenched. “I have spent a century trying to stop it.”
“By sacrificing bride after bride?”
“No.” His voice cracked like lightning. “By taking the burden myself until it rips me apart.”
The walls pulsed with red light, as if the fortress itself reacted to the words.
Liora stared at him, horror and realization tangling in her chest.
“Then why bring brides at all?”
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were burning.
“Because the Oath demands one. And if there is no bride, the curse devours the entire realm instead of just me.”
Silence wrapped the room. For one panicked heartbeat she wished, irrationally, that it could be anyone else.
The story she had carried her whole life shifted under her feet. Every whispered warning, every practiced prayer, every time she had imagined him as the thing to blame. Relief tasted wrong in her mouth. It tasted like being late to the truth.
Liora’s voice was barely audible. “So the King isn’t the monster.”
“No,” he said, weariness dragging the word to its knees. “The god who forged the Oath is.”
He lifted one shaking hand toward her—careful, as if she were something breakable.
“And he’s coming.”