Chapter 9: The Grizzly's Awakening
The bell tower still stood.
That was the thing that stuck with her—not the bodies, not the ash, not the way the chapel had collapsed in on itself like a dying man clutching his chest. The bell tower still stood, blackened and cracked, its bronze chimes warped into silence. The fire had licked every inch of it, scorched the stones until they split, but it hadn't fallen.
Leliana respected that.
She walked through the wreckage of the trading village with her boots crunching over charred timber and shattered bone. The dead had done their work well. Forty-three souls, if her count was right. Maybe forty-four. The miller had tried to hide his daughter in the grain silo, but the smoke had found them both. They were still there now, curled together like sleeping animals, their skin cooked to leather.
The smell was something else.
Burnt flesh had a sweetness to it that never quite went away. It clung to the inside of her nose, coated her tongue, settled into her lungs like a sickness she didn't want to cure. She'd smelled it before—years ago, when the goblins had burned her village, when she'd hidden in the roots of a fallen oak and listened to her mother scream.
She didn't think about that.
She thought about the Codex instead.
It pulsed in her skull, slow and steady, like a second heart. The power was still there, still humming beneath her skin, waiting to be used. She could feel it reaching out toward the corpses scattered across the square—could feel the potential in their broken bodies, the way their dead flesh could be twisted and remade into something useful.
But she didn't need more soldiers.
She needed something faster.
Something that could track.
She found the bear near the edge of the village, half-buried under a collapsed wagon. It had been a massive thing—easily eight hundred pounds, with claws like daggers and a skull thick enough to crack stone. The fire had killed it, or maybe the smoke, or maybe one of her dead had gotten lucky with a spear. Didn't matter. What mattered was that it was still mostly intact.
She knelt beside it.
The fur was singed, patchy in places, but the flesh beneath was still whole. She could see the muscles, the sinew, the thick layer of fat that had once kept it warm through winter. She could see the potential.
She placed her palm on its chest.
The Codex surged.
It was like plunging her hand into ice water—cold, sharp, electric. The power flowed out of her, through her, into the dead thing beneath her fingers. She felt its heart stutter. Felt its lungs twitch. Felt the bones knit together, the torn flesh seal, the burnt fur slough off to reveal new growth beneath.
The bear opened its eyes.
They were green. Not the green of living things—not the green of leaves or grass or the sea—but the green of witchfire, of corruption, of something that should not be. They burned in their sockets like twin emeralds, and when the bear opened its mouth, the sound that came out was not a roar.
It was a whisper.
Leliana smiled.
"Find them," she said.
The bear rose.
It was wrong, the way it moved. Too smooth. Too deliberate. Its joints bent in ways they shouldn't, its massive head swiveling to fix its burning eyes on the treeline. It was a puppet, and she was the hand inside it, and it would do exactly what she commanded.
"Fox," she said. "Arielle. Hunt."
The bear didn't hesitate.
It turned and charged into the forest, its massive body crashing through underbrush, its claws tearing gouges in the earth. Within seconds, it was gone—swallowed by the darkness between the trees, leaving only the sound of breaking branches in its wake.
Leliana watched it go.
The Codex settled back into its usual rhythm, content for now. She could feel the bear's presence at the edge of her mind, a distant pulse of hunger and purpose. It would find them. It would tear them apart. And when it was done, she would raise whatever was left and send it after the next target.
She turned.
Xander was standing by the well.
He'd been quiet since the massacre began—quieter than usual, which was saying something. He'd done what she asked. He'd put his axe through the skull of a man who'd tried to flee, had held a woman down while Piet slit her throat, had watched the chapel burn without flinching. But there was something in his eyes now that she didn't like.
Something that looked like doubt.
She walked toward him.
The blood on her hands had dried to a crust, flaking off in dark red pieces as she moved. Her hair was matted with ash and sweat. Her armor was cracked in three places, and there was a gash on her thigh that she hadn't noticed until now.
She didn't care.
She wanted him.
Not because she loved him. Not because she needed comfort. She wanted him because she was alive, and he was alive, and the world was burning around them, and she needed to feel something other than the cold pulse of the Codex in her skull.
She reached him in three strides.
He opened his mouth to speak.
She didn't let him.
She grabbed him by the collar and shoved him backward, hard enough that his spine cracked against the burning wagon behind him. He grunted, more surprised than hurt, and she was already on him—her hands tearing at his belt, his trousers, her mouth on his throat.
"Leliana—"
"Shut up."
She got his cock out.
He was already hard. He was always hard, around her. The fear and the violence and the blood turned him on as much as it turned her on, and she loved that about him. Loved the way his body betrayed his conscience. Loved the way he couldn't help himself.
She stroked him once, twice, spreading the pre-cum down his shaft.
"Look at me," she said.
He looked.
His eyes were dark, stormy, conflicted. She could see the thoughts churning behind them—the questions he wanted to ask, the objections he wanted to raise. She didn't give him time to voice any of them.
She hiked up her tunic.
She wasn't wearing anything underneath. Hadn't been for days. The dead didn't care about modesty, and neither did she. Her thighs were slick with sweat and blood, and when she straddled him, when she guided the head of his cock to her entrance, she could feel the heat of him against her skin.
She sank down.
He filled her completely.
"Fuck," he breathed.
She didn't answer.
She rode him.
Not gently. Not slowly. She fucked him like she was trying to break him, like she was trying to pound the doubt out of his skull and replace it with blind, mindless obedience. Her hips slammed against his, her nails raked down his chest, her teeth found his shoulder and bit down hard enough to draw blood.
He groaned.
His hands found her hips, gripping hard enough to bruise. He tried to slow her down, tried to find some rhythm, but she wasn't interested in rhythm. She was interested in release. In the white-hot oblivion of coming on a cock that belonged to her, with the taste of smoke and death on her tongue.
She imagined Fox beneath her.
His face. His eyes. The way he'd looked at her when they were children—before the goblins, before the fire, before everything went to shit. She imagined him begging. Imagined him bleeding. Imagined the moment of recognition in his eyes right before she killed him.
She came with a snarl.
Her body clenched around him, milking him, dragging him over the edge with her. He spilled inside her with a broken cry, his hips bucking, his fingers digging into her flesh.
She stayed on top of him for a long moment.
Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her heart hammered against her ribs. The Codex pulsed in her skull, satisfied, content.
She looked down at Xander.
His eyes were closed. His chest was heaving. There was blood on his shoulder where she'd bit him, and it was smeared across her mouth like war paint.
"You still doubt me," she said.
He opened his eyes.
"No," he said. His voice was hoarse. "No, I don't."
She smiled.
It wasn't a kind smile.
"Good," she said.
She climbed off him, adjusted her tunic, and turned to face the east. The bear was still out there, somewhere, hunting through the darkness. The dead were waiting for her command. The world was still burning.
And somewhere, far to the west, a man she'd once loved was running for his life.
She hoped he could run fast.
She hoped he could run far.
Because when she caught him—and she would catch him—she was going to make him watch while she burned everything he loved.
Starting with the girl.
Starting with Arielle.