The Godslayer's Claim

CHAPTER 1

Danica

“Ashes and Ale”

The smell of grease and old saltwater clings to everything in the Freedom and Necessity tavern like a second skin. It’s baked into the wooden floorboards, stitched into the stained curtains that never quite hang straight, and it curls beneath my fingernails no matter how often I scrub them raw. 

Gods, I love this place.

“Oi, Danica, pour me another! My throat’s drier than a dragon’s ass!”

I roll my eyes but grin as I slide a fresh mug of bitter down the bar to Greel, one of the older dockhands who smells like low tide and stale pipe smoke. He catches it without spilling a drop—miracle of the evening, really—and raises it in a mock salute. His knuckles are still bloodied from whatever fight he crawled out of this time.

“Try not to die tonight, Greel. I’m not in the mood to mop up your teeth again.”

Laughter ripples down the bar. It’s a full house tonight—well, as full as a human tavern in Freeport can be without drawing too much minotaur attention. That means half the tables are packed with off-duty sailors, street scamps, and servants from the merchant villas up the ridge. The other half sit empty, as if waiting for ghosts.

The hearth crackles, trying its best to warm the wide stone-walled room. Above it, the Freedom’s battered old crest still hangs—chipped wood painted with a shattered sword and a crooked anchor. Father says it’s supposed to mean “strength in chaos,” but honestly it just looks like someone lost a bet with a blacksmith.

I thread between tables, balancing a tray stacked with stews and mugs. A sailor pinches my backside. I slap his hand with the edge of the tray hard enough to make him wince. He grins like it was a gift.

“Touch me again and I’ll break all your fingers—before I tell my father.”

That gets more laughs. He backs off, rubbing his hand. I flash him a sweet, sunshiny smile. Bastards like him only ever learn when you fight back.

In the far corner, beneath the flickering oil lamp, old Tilda plays a wheezy tune on her string-box. Her voice rises above the clatter of mugs and muttered bets:

 “In Freeport’s hold, the dead don’t rest—
They drink, they laugh, they curse the blessed…” 

I mouth the words under my breath, moving with the rhythm as I set another bowl of greasy stew in front of a table of tusker-folk who nod thanks without looking up. The air is thick with sweat and smoke and the scent of a dozen lives trying not to fall apart.

Behind the bar, Papa wipes a mug with a threadbare cloth, his brow furrowed in that way that means something’s wrong again.

I duck under the counter and press my shoulder to his. “You’re grinding your teeth, old man. Don’t think I don’t hear it.”

He glances at me, eyes tired and sunken in his weathered face. “I heard talk today. More riots up near the ridge. Another protest. Minotaurs shut it down fast. Too fast.”

I stiffen, then force my tone light. “Nothing new there. The Watch thinks clubs and chains solve everything.”

He doesn’t laugh. Just sets the mug down with a little too much force. “Danica, they’re looking for an excuse. One excuse. One fire in the wrong alley and they’ll sweep through the Wildflower like a damned plague.”

I rest a hand on his arm. “And what? You want to board the place up? Turn away every poor soul who wants a warm drink and a bite to eat?”

“No. But I want you to be safe.” His voice cracks just a little on that last word.

I blink the sting from my eyes and smile through it. “I’m not the one picking fights, remember? You’re the one who threw a broom at that minotaur tax inspector.”

He chuckles under his breath. “He insulted your mother’s cooking. He had it coming.”

“Exactly.” I lean in, kiss his cheek, and pat his shoulder. “I’ll close up tonight. Go upstairs. Try not to read the old news scrolls ‘til your eyes bleed.”

He hesitates, then nods. “Lock the cellar after the barrels come up. And if he shows up—”

“I’ll handle it.”

He searches my face, worry etched into every line. But he nods again and disappears up the creaky staircase behind the bar.

It’s past midnight when the tavern finally empties out, leaving only the flickering hearth and the low groan of the sea pressing against the dockstones outside. I stack chairs on tables, humming Tilda’s tune, trying not to listen for footsteps. But I know he’ll come. He always does.

The latch on the cellar door clicks open on its own.

I whirl, already holding the poker from the hearth, even though it’s more for show than anything. “You could knock, you know.”

From the darkness steps the Grey Ghost.

Tall. Lean. Wrapped in grey leather like mist clinging to bone. His mask is smooth and featureless, save for the slits where his eyes glow faintly blue, like oil on water. He never speaks first. Just watches.

“You’re late,” I say, voice flat. “We had a shipment today. Ale barrels. You want the new crates or not?”

Still silent.

I move to the bar, unlocking the hatch behind it that leads to the cellar stairs. “Get what you came for. Be gone before my father sees you.”

He steps past me. I catch the faint scent of iron and incense—burned herbs and cold steel. My stomach knots.

But he doesn’t go to the barrels. He stops by the bar and places something on it.

A scroll. Rolled tight. Sealed with black wax.

I stare. “We had a deal. No manifestos. No leaflets. No stirring the pot from my tavern.”

His voice is quiet, distorted. “You take my protection. You pay my price.”

The hairs on my neck rise. “I never asked for protection. You shoved it down our throats.”

His head tilts. “And yet you’re still breathing.”

That’s when I hear the sound upstairs. A thud. Then a groan.

My blood freezes.

I rush around the bar and bolt up the stairs, two at a time. “Papa!”

He’s on the floor of the hallway outside our room. Clutching his ribs. Blood on his lip.

I fall beside him. “What happened?”

He wheezes. “He… said I was talking too much. About the cellar. About you.”

My eyes burn with fury. I grab the poker again and storm back downstairs.

The Grey Ghost is already halfway into the shadows. I hurl the poker, but it clangs uselessly against the wall.

“I swear,” I growl, “if you touch him again—”

He vanishes into the cellar like smoke. The door shuts behind him.

I stand there, trembling, fists clenched so tight my nails dig into my palms. The fire crackles behind me. It feels… close. Like it wants out.

I swallow the rage, shove it down deep, and lock the cellar hatch.

By the time I return to Papa’s side, I’ve plastered a smile on my face. I joke about how the bastard’s lucky I didn’t burn his cloak. I help him to bed. I fetch him water and tell him stories to make him laugh.

And when he finally falls asleep, I curl into the chair by the window, arms wrapped around my knees, staring out into the Wildflower night.

I am not afraid.
I am not afraid.
I am not—

I smile.

Because if I don’t… I might burn this whole damn city down.

***

I wake with my neck kinked and my cheeks sticky with dried tears. The sky outside our window is the color of bruised peaches, morning thick with harbor fog and the stink of boiled fish and chimney smoke. Somewhere below, a gull screeches like it just lost a bet.

Papa’s bed is empty.

I blink, rub the grit from my eyes, and stumble to his room, expecting him hunched over tea and porridge. But no fire burns in the hearth. No clatter from the stovetop. No grumbling about aching joints or missed deliveries. Just stillness. And silence.

My gut coils like a whip.

“Papa?” I check the privy. The tavern floor. Even the cellar door, but it’s still locked from the outside. My fingers hover over the latch. I don’t open it. Not yet. Not alone.

The bar looks worse in daylight. Chairs stacked like crooked bones, the smell of old beer soured overnight. The air hangs thick and quiet, like it knows something I don’t.

I wait until noon. Sweep the floor twice. Burn the stew. Snap at Greel when he makes a joke about me looking like a ghost. Still no sign of him.

By sundown, my worry’s no longer a whisper—it’s a scream clawing the inside of my ribs.

And then, just after twilight, he walks in.

Not through the front, but the back, slipping in through the alley door with his hood low and a look that sours my breath. His coat’s dusty, boots mud-caked, and there's a tear across his sleeve like it tangled with barbed wire.

“Where the hell have you been?” My voice cracks, high and tight.

He flinches. That’s worse than if he’d just barked back.

“I had errands. Needed air.” His gaze won’t hold mine.

“Air?” I hiss. “You needed air so bad you skipped town for a whole godsdamned day? I thought maybe the Ghost came back. Or the Watch. I thought you were—”

“I’m fine,” he snaps, sharper than a flint. “Let it be.”

“No.” I cross my arms, chest tight. “I won’t. Something’s wrong, Papa. You’ve been off for weeks. Quiet. Shifty. You come home bleeding one night, then vanish the next. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

He sets a pouch on the bar—coin, heavier than our usual take. “Drop it, Dani.”

But I can’t. Won’t. Not when his hands are trembling.

That night, while he pretends to snore behind a closed door, I slide into his room with bare feet and the hush of a thief. Guilt gnaws at me, but fear swallows it whole. If he’s in trouble, I need to know.

His room smells like pipe smoke and cloves and old regrets. I start with the wardrobe. Nothing but moth-eaten shirts and a rusting saber from when he still thought he’d fight in wars. Then the nightstand. A half-empty bottle of plum wine and an unopened letter from an old friend in Tusker.

Finally, the bed.

I drop to my knees, fingers scrabbling beneath the frame. Dust chokes me. I sneeze into my sleeve. And then—wood. A crate, small and square, tucked so far back it scrapes my knuckles to reach it. It’s heavier than I expect. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, are papers.

Dozens of them.

Pamphlets. Hand-drawn, ink still smelling fresh.

“END THE YOKE!”
“NO CHAINS FOR MORTAL MEN!”
“FREEDOM BURNS IN OUR VEINS—LIGHT THE MATCH.”

My stomach drops into my boots.

Each sheet is scrawled in the same bold hand, phrases etched in fire and fury. There are maps too—routes through the Wildflower, notated in red, marking watch patrol times and guard gaps. There’s even a list of names. Human names.

Resistance.

He’s working with the Ghost. Or at least feeding the flame.

I clutch one of the pamphlets, breath coming fast and shallow. My father—my sweet, gentle Papa—he’s…

A creak behind me. I turn too fast, paper still in hand.

He’s there. In the doorway. Shadowed. Silent.

“Looking for something?”

I stand slowly, guilt blazing like fire under my skin. “Papa—”

“I told you to leave it be.”

My voice shakes. “You didn’t give me a choice.”

He steps into the room, eyes dark and wild. “I was protecting you. That’s what this has always been. Protecting you from this city, from the Watch, from your own damn curiosity.”

“Protecting me by lying?” I hold up the paper. “By hiding this under your bed like a godsdamned criminal?”

“Better a criminal than a corpse!” His roar rattles the windows. “You think they’ll spare you because you smile and play nice? You think that monster in the cellar gives a damn about us? About peace? There is no peace for humans in Freeport! Only survival!”

I’ve never seen him like this. Spit flying from his lips, hands shaking with rage. I step back, heart pounding.

He sees it. And that breaks him more than anything.

His shoulders sag. His voice softens, cracking. “I never wanted this for you, Dani. I wanted you to stay small, stay safe. But the world’s changing. And I—I couldn’t stay out of it.”

Tears prick my eyes. “You’re in over your head, Papa. They’ll kill you. Or worse.”

“I know.”

The silence stretches. Heavy. Final.

I tuck the pamphlet back into the crate, wrap it tight, and shove it under the bed.

When I look up, his eyes are glassy.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I whisper.

He nods once, and then he’s gone. Back down the hall, into the dark.

And I’m left there, heart cracked open, surrounded by secrets and ash.

The next night is quiet in that way the air before a storm is—too still, too tight, like the whole world’s holding its breath.

Papa and I don’t talk. He moves like a ghost around the tavern, refilling the ale kegs with too much force, sweeping the same corner of the bar three times. I avoid his eyes. Mine are still red. My hands still shake when I touch the crate I reburied beneath his bed.

We don’t talk about the pamphlets. We don’t talk about the bruises on his ribs. We sure as hell don’t talk about the Grey Ghost.

I smile harder than ever at the patrons, cracking jokes until my voice’s hoarse. My laugh rings too loud, and nobody notices. Nobody asks why my knuckles are bloodless from clenching the rag so tight it tears.

It’s near closing when it happens.

I’m humming to myself, wiping down the bar. Papa’s in the back, counting coin. Greel’s half-passed out in a booth with a candle burned low. The only other soul left is Old Tilda, fingering a slow lullaby on her strings.

Then comes the knock.

Three loud pounds on the tavern door—precise, metallic.

Not fists. Gauntlets.

Tilda’s music cuts off like a throat slit mid-song.

My stomach drops.

The door flies open before I can say a word. Wood slams against stone. Minotaurs in gleaming black armor fill the doorway like a tide—eight of them, shoulder to horn. The Watch. Armed and bristling. Eyes sharp as knives.

They don’t speak. They don’t need to.

Papa steps out from the kitchen, hands raised instinctively. “Easy. We’re closed. There some trouble?”

The lead minotaur shoves him against the wall without a word.

“Hey!” I scream, vaulting over the bar. “Get your filthy hands off him!”

Two more guards grab me by the arms, rough enough to wrench. I kick one in the shin and bite the other’s glove hard enough to taste leather and blood. They slam me against the post, not enough to knock out—just enough to remind me who’s boss.

Papa shouts, “Danica, don’t—”

“Shut it,” growls the lead guard. “Daniel Larue, you are under arrest for collusion with the traitor known as the Grey Ghost.”

“No!” I thrash harder. “He hasn’t done anything! You’ve got it wrong—he’s not—he’s not—”

But Papa doesn’t protest. He doesn’t fight. He just sags like his strings were cut. The guards force his arms behind his back and clamp the irons on. Cold metal clicks. My scream rips free and echoes through the rafters.

“Stop it! He’s old! He’s hurt—please!”

He looks at me then, eyes hollow. “It’s alright, Dani. Don’t fight. Just… don’t fight.”

And just like that, he’s gone. Dragged through the threshold like trash. I try to follow, but the guards hold me fast.

And then he walks in.

The world slows.

The Watch parts like fog, and a figure steps through—twice as tall as any man I’ve ever seen. Seven feet easy, broad-shouldered, wrapped in black leather that gleams like oiled coal. His fur is a deep russet, his horns banded in iron and sharp as curved scimitars.

He moves like a shadow but feels like thunder.

One red eye burns beneath a jagged leather patch, and it lands on me like a blade sliding slow between the ribs.

Captain Takana.

The rumors hadn’t prepared me.

They say he once killed a warbeast with his bare hands. That he took out three rebels with a shovel when his sword broke. That he doesn’t speak unless it’s to end a man’s life.

I glare up at him, teeth bared like a cornered dog. “You think you’re some kind of hero, huh? You think this is justice?”

He stares down at me, unreadable. Cold. Not cruel—but carved from stone.

“You fight hard,” he says at last. His voice is a deep rumble, slow and deliberate, like rocks grinding in a quarry. “You love your father.”

“Is that a crime now?” I spit blood and bile at his hooves.

“No,” he says, and the word punches air from my lungs. “But harboring the Grey Ghost is.”

I choke on disbelief. “We didn’t—he didn’t—there’s nothing in that cellar but—”

His red eye narrows.

“I’ll decide what’s in the cellar.”

He turns to the guards. “Clear the building. Search everything. Gentle if you can. Not if you must.”

They move. Like hounds unleashed. I scream again. Kick. Bite. One drags me by the collar to the bar.

Takana watches.

Just watches.

And I hate him for it.

The last thing I see before they drag me outside is Old Tilda standing behind the bar, her eyes rimmed with fire, her fingers tight on her string-box.

She doesn't play a note.

Not tonight.