Reborn As A Slave: The Fallen God's Revenge

Chapter 13

Libradon had never visited Teresa's room without a clear reason.

Not because he lacked the right, this was his palace, every corner and every room belonged to him, including the room he had allowed Teresa to occupy since many years ago. But there was an unwritten boundary between them that had formed not from rules, but from a habit maintained so long it had come to feel like an agreement. Teresa did not enter his study without an invitation. He did not enter her room without a purpose that could be stated plainly.

This morning, he broke that.

He walked along the corridor of the east wing with steps he kept looking unhurried, not rushed, not like someone who had been thinking about this since before dawn and had only found sufficient reason somewhere between his first sips of wine. Two guards followed behind at a comfortable distance. As usual. As though this were a visit he had not planned at all.

Libradon stopped before Teresa's door.

Through the wood that had not been fully shut, he could hear voices, two of them. One was Teresa's. The other was lower, quieter, more deliberate in the way its words came out. Faint, but enough to confirm one thing Doran had reported to him that morning with a face that could not conceal its own surprise.

Still alive. And apparently conscious enough to speak.

Libradon pushed the door open.

Teresa was sitting in her usual chair, her body angled slightly forward, her hands clasped around her knees in the manner of someone listening to something with genuine attention. Across from her, on the cot with his back resting against the wall, God Mervous sat upright. Far more upright than someone with wounds that deep ought to have been able to manage, with bandages that had only been changed the night before and bones that had not yet fully made peace with the damage they had taken three days ago.

Both of them stopped talking when the door opened.

Teresa rose to her feet, genuine surprise crossing her face before she could conceal it. "Your Majesty." She bowed quickly. "I wasn't expecting,"

"At ease." Libradon stepped inside with an easy smile, his voice warm in the manner of a host visiting an old guest, not a king who had just walked in unannounced into the room of a woman who had lived in his palace for years. "I only came to see how you both are doing. I haven't seen you all day, Teresa. You were starting to worry me."

But his eyes had already moved.

Briefly, quickly enough to appear casual to anyone not paying close attention. That gaze landed on God Mervous and swept from top to bottom with a precision that did not require much time. A face that was pale, but not the pallor of a dying man. Eyes fully open, not heavy, not clouded the way they would be in someone who had just come through a high fever. The bandaging at the shoulder was clean, no fresh blood seeping through to the surface, no sign of the infection that would normally have begun showing by the third day.

A body recovering at a rate that made no sense for an ordinary person.

Libradon noted all of it and filed it neatly behind his unchanged smile.

"Your Majesty needn't have troubled himself." Teresa shifted slightly to the side, a small movement she may not have been aware of herself, but one that placed her body exactly half a step between Libradon and the cot behind her. "Everything is fine here."

"Of course." Libradon moved unhurriedly toward the table in the corner, studying the clay jars and the folded bandages arranged there with the expression of someone simply passing the time. His hand picked up one of the small jars, lifted the lid, brought it close to smell. "Vethara oil." He set it back down slowly. "Quite expensive to use on a slave."

"It's the most effective for deep wounds."

"It is." Libradon nodded, his tone unchanged. "You always know best when it comes to things like this."

He turned around.

This time his gaze went directly to God Mervous, not briefly anymore, but a look that was direct and unapologetic. Libradon's eyes, trained over years of reading people, moved across the man's face with care, searching for something he could not yet name but had been sensing since the night in the hall when this slave had stood before him and had not bowed.

God Mervous returned the look without flinching.

Nothing changed in his face, no fear igniting behind his eyes, no small shift in posture of the kind that nearly always happened when someone realized they were being assessed by a person who held full power over their life. He sat there with his hands on his knees, looking back at Libradon in precisely the same way as when he had first stood in that hall, calm, measured, and entirely unmoved.

Like someone who had already faced something far greater than a king, and who could no longer find reason to feel threatened by anything smaller than that.

Something bit at the inside of Libradon's chest.

Not anger. Not offense. Something closer to a curiosity that refused to be quiet, one that grew louder precisely when he tried to set it aside.

"You look better than I imagined," Libradon said at last. His steps brought him closer to the cot, stopping three paces away. "Far better than you ought to, truthfully."

God Mervous did not answer.

"I know exactly how severe the punishment I ordered was." His tone was still light, still like ordinary conversation, but its outermost layer had begun thinning little by little. "This is not the first time I have ordered a punishment of this kind. I know very well what a human body can and cannot endure afterward." He tilted his head. "Yet here you are sitting upright on the third day. That is not something I am accustomed to seeing."

"Your Majesty." Teresa's voice came in, measured and careful. "He is still recovering. His appearance might,"

"I know." Libradon raised one hand, a small gesture that stopped Teresa without feeling harsh. His eyes did not leave God Mervous. "I am not questioning your care, Teresa. I never have." The corner of his mouth moved slightly. "I am simply curious."

That word landed differently from everything he had said before it. More honestly. Like something that had come out without being filtered first.

God Mervous finally opened his mouth. "Curious about what."

Not a question that needed a rising inflection, said flatly, directly, by someone who genuinely wanted to hear the answer.

Libradon looked at him for several seconds. Then he let out a short, brief laugh, unperformed, which made Teresa glance from the corner of her eye because that kind of laugh rarely left this man without something deliberate behind it.

"About you," Libradon answered. Simple. "About who you actually are."

Silence spread through the room like a drop of ink on white cloth.

Teresa did not move from where she stood. God Mervous did not answer right away. And Libradon stood between them with his hands folded behind his back, his smile thin, his eyes far sharper than anything his face chose to show.

"An ordinary slave does not survive a punishment like that." His voice dropped by half. "An ordinary slave does not speak before Libradon the way you did in the hall. An ordinary slave does not look at their king the way you are looking at me now, as though weighing whether I am worth your attention or not." He did not tilt his head this time. He simply looked straight ahead. "So I ask once. Who are you?"

God Mervous looked at him.

Inside his mind, the question echoed in a way that was different from what Libradon intended. Who am I? The same question he had carried since first opening his eyes in this body, in a cramped room that smelled of straw and blood that was not his, in a world that felt too small and too loud compared to the place he had long since left behind.

"Nothing you need to know," said God Mervous at last.

Libradon gave a slow nod, not because he was satisfied, but like someone who had already anticipated that answer before asking, and who had decided that the refusal to answer was itself sufficient information about who stood before him.

He stood there one second longer than necessary, his eyes still on God Mervous, before finally turning to Teresa.

"Take care of yourself." Then, almost as a casual afterthought, without the pause that would suggest the next sentence carried different weight, "And take care of him as well. I want him kept alive."

Teresa opened her mouth. Closed it again.

Libradon was already stepping toward the door before she had managed to formulate any response. At the threshold, his steps paused, but he did not turn around.

"When he can stand properly, bring him to the hall." Light. Like the most ordinary of requests. "I want to speak further."

His footsteps disappeared into the corridor. The door was left half open behind him.

The silence that followed felt different from all the previous silences in this room.

Teresa stood where she was, looking at the empty doorway. Not moving. Not speaking. Her thoughts were moving too quickly to be followed with words.

Finally she turned toward God Mervous.

The man was no longer looking at the door. His eyes were on the window, on the clean blue sky outside, on the treetops shifting slowly in the morning wind that did not know what had just taken place in this room and had no need to know.

But Teresa saw his hands.

The ones that had been resting easily on his knees were now closed, not tightly, but enough to whiten the edges of his knuckles. Enough to say something that his face was unwilling to say any other way.

Teresa drew a slow breath. "Did you know him before?"

God Mervous did not answer immediately. His eyes were still on the window. "No."

"But you know what he's doing."

Not a question. And God Mervous did not treat it as one, he did not say yes or no, only let the sentence remain in the air between them.

Teresa pulled her chair closer to the cot and sat down. Elbows on her knees, back not resting against anything, the posture of someone who had decided this conversation needed to be finished, whether they liked it or not.

"Libradon is never curious without reason." Her voice was low, not from fear of being heard, but because some things felt more fitting when said quietly. "Once he starts asking questions about someone, he will not stop until he gets an answer that satisfies him. By whatever means."

God Mervous finally turned from the window. His eyes found Teresa's face, and for several seconds both of them simply looked at each other, two people who both knew that something had just shifted in this room, in this palace, even if the shift was not yet large enough to see with ordinary eyes.

"I know," said God Mervous at last.

Two words spoken in the manner of someone who genuinely already knew, not because he was familiar with Libradon, but because he had lived long enough to recognize a certain kind of person when he saw one. The kind that was dangerous not because of their cruelty, but because of their intelligence. The kind that was hardest to contend with not through force, but through cunning.

Teresa looked at him. "And then?"

God Mervous turned his gaze back to the window. The wind moved outside, the leaves shifted, and far below there, beyond the palace walls that could not be seen from this angle, the world continued without waiting for anyone to finish their respective wars.

"Then we see how patient he can be," said God Mervous quietly.

Teresa did not answer immediately. She studied the profile of the man from the side, the line of his jaw unchanged since the first time she had seen him on the cross, eyes looking far out as though calculating the distance between himself and something no one else could see.

"And if he isn't patient enough?"

The corner of God Mervous's mouth moved, almost imperceptibly, too small to be called a smile, but enough to give an answer that did not need to be spoken in words.

Teresa let out a short breath.

She rose, picked up the cup that had gone cold on the tray, set it back down because there was no longer any point in offering it. Her hands moved because they needed to move, because stillness was too full of things she had not yet decided how to face.

"Sleep again," she said finally, her voice returning to its usual flat, direct daily tone. "If Libradon wants to speak with you, he needs you to be able to stand and speak properly first. That means you need rest, not to spend the morning staring at windows."

God Mervous did not comply immediately. But he did not argue either.

After a few seconds, he shifted his body slowly, lying back down on the cot with movements more careful than he wanted to show. His eyes closed, not from drowsiness, but because sometimes closing one's eyes is the easiest way to give someone what they are asking for without having to admit that you actually need the rest.

Teresa sat back down in her chair.

Outside, the wind continued to blow. In the corridor, Libradon's footsteps had long since disappeared. And in this small room, two people each carrying far too many unresolved things sat and lay in a silence that felt like ground after a small tremor.