Page 36 of Godbound
For just a breath, I had let go. Shame curls low in my stomach, spreading like frost beneath my skin. It wasn’t the fire, the water, or even the Challenge itself that had nearly undone me. It was the knowing, the creeping certainty that if I failed here, it would prove that I wasn’t worthy, just like Kaelzar said.
But I won’t think about that. I won’t.
I swallow hard and push the feeling down, stuffing it into the place where all unspoken things go. The part of me that already knows how it ends. The tether pulses between us, raw and open.
And suddenly, I’m drowning all over again. But not in water.
The memory of darkness overtakes me. Stale air. The suffocating press of too-small walls, the ache of held breath, my lungs burning for relief that will never come.
My eight-year-old hands press against the inside of a cabinet, fingers trembling over smooth, varnished wood.
Blood drips down my forehead, the sting sharp where the glass cut me. The scent of whiskey lingers in the air, thick and smothering. Suffocating.
Don’t cry. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.
The day had started with hope—fragile, foolish hope. Morning light spilling through the windows. My father’s silhouette hunched in his chair, his grip loose around the glass he barely lifted.
My mother’s portrait hung above the mantle, its edges warped from age, the paint dull. He stared at it for so long, as if waiting for her tostep out of the frame.
I knocked, quiet but insistent. His head didn’t turn. “I miss her,” I whispered. “Can I visit her in Rust Hollow?”
The glass flew before I saw his arm move. Shattered against my face. I hit the floor. Like I hit the river.
Pain sparked hot along my temple, vision fracturing like the shards scattered across the wooden floorboards.
And then—his hands. Rough, unforgiving. He wrenched me up, shoved me backward, and I hit the cabinet with a thud. The doors slammed shut, sealing me inside.
No air. No space. Nothing but the dark and the press of my own fear.
Time stretched and blurred. His voice rose and fell outside the cabinet as I curled tighter, lungs burning. The weight of the wood against my back was no different from the river pulling me under.
The scent of blood and whiskey thickened with the dust in the cabinet, coiling in my throat. My stomach twisted, hollow and aching, thirst knotting in my throat.
I should not have spoken. Should not have missed her. If he hurt me this much, he must be hurting more. My mother did this to him. She made him do this to me.
Hatred bloomed—small, sharp, and new. I would never speak of her again. Never think of her.
And then it was late afternoon. The lock clicked open. The housekeeper’s shadow loomed over me, stretching into the darkness like an omen. My lips parted, shaping an apology before I could stop them.
The memory fractures. My breath catches. My chest is still too tight, still aching from the water. I’m not in the cabinet. I’m not drowning.
The maze slams back into focus, its air sharp and cool against my skin. I gulp it in, breath after breath, just to remind myself that I can.
Kaelzar says nothing. The quiet of our connection is unbearable.
“No! You don’t get to see that.” I shove the memory away, force myself to my feet, and keep running.
The tether pulls me toward Kaelzar. Stronger. Closer. Urgent.
After a few moments, I see him. He stands in the center of a small space between walls, remnants of his shadow magic flickering around him like dying embers.
His gray eyes lock onto mine, and the connection between us hums alive, electric. But there’s something wrong.
The frost has already crept to his feet. I scramble down the wall, half sliding. Ice splinters across the stone, leaving only a narrow strip of bare ground between us. I lurch for it, balancing on that sliver as I reach him. The moment I do, I press my hand to his chest, my pulse hammering. A few more seconds and the ice would have claimed him.
His skin is already too pale, his breath shallow, his body on the verge of locking in place. I was almost too late.
The air remains thick with biting cold, but the ice stops, frozen in its advance.
