Chapter 6: The Unbreakable Oath

“Send him down!” Vex yelled gleefully.

The door above creaked open. The sound that followed was sickeningly visceral—a series of wet, heavy thuds, punctuated by the sharp crack of what might have been bone, as a body tumbled down the old wooden steps. It landed in a broken heap. It was Steve.

A sound escaped my throat that was not human. It was a raw, primal sound of a predator seeing its mate savaged. My entire body surged forward, a tidal wave of useless muscle slamming against the unyielding gold of the Lasso. The cord bit deep, the only pain I could feel beyond the agony in my soul. My nails, which could scratch diamond, dug into my own palms as my hands clenched into fists of pure, impotent rage.

“There he is!” Vex clapped his hands. He circled Steve’s body, prodding him with the toe of his shoe. He produced a small, high-tech camera and placed it on a dusty crate, carefully framing both Steve’s broken form and my kneeling one. A small red light began to blink. “Now… for posterity,” he said softly, his voice full of mock reverence. “The world loves you, Wonder Woman. They see you as a symbol. I think they deserve to see the real truth.”

He straightened up, his tone shifting, becoming more direct, more base. “So let’s simplify it for you. Here’s the deal. First, the promise. You promise not to hurt me or hunt me down, and I’ll let you and lover boy go. Simple. We’re square.”

My mind reeled. The casual, demeaning term “lover boy” dripped with contempt. He was framing this as a squalid negotiation over broken bodies.

“But first,” he said, gesturing to the camera’s blinking eye, “the performance. The price of his life. All you have to do is say on camera, ‘I am Wonder Woman and I have been defeated by Master Vex, he is my master and I love him more than Steve Trevor.’ You say all that, you make your little promise, and this all ends.”

I stared at him, my heart a frozen stone. It was a perfect trap. A blasphemy constructed of simple words, made impossible by the very magic that bound me. He saw my horrified silence and his eyes hardened. “What’s the matter? At a loss for words?” He walked over and delivered a sharp, vicious kick to Steve’s ribs.

The sound was a sickening, wet thud. Steve’s body jolted, and a choked grunt of pain, thick with blood, escaped his lips. I felt the blow in my own chest, a phantom impact that stole my breath. “That’s for your silence, Diana,” Vex said calmly. “Let’s see if we can get you to be a little more… cooperative.” He kicked him again. And again. Each thud was a drumbeat counting down the seconds of Steve’s life. “Do you hear that, Diana?” Vex asked conversationally as he continued his brutal work. “That’s the sound of your principles breaking his bones.”

He stopped and walked to a corner of the basement and returned with a wooden baseball bat, swinging it lightly. “Kicking is so… impersonal, don’t you think? This… this has a bit more character.” He stood over Steve. The first blow landed on Steve’s thigh with a sound I will never forget—a dense, wet crack that was not merely bone breaking, but shattering. Steve cried out, a sharp, broken sound that tore through me. My mind, the warrior’s mind, screamed a diagnosis: femoral artery at risk, massive internal bleeding, shock imminent.

“Every moment of your proud silence,” Vex lectured, “a new piece of him breaks.” He swung again, the bat connecting with Steve’s shoulder. I heard the clear, sharp snap of the clavicle. “You are holding the bat, Diana. Not me. You can make this stop.”

The smell of blood was thick in the air. Steve was no longer making sounds, only twitching feebly on the floor. Vex raised the bat high, preparing for a blow to the head.

That was the breaking point. The world narrowed to that upraised bat. All philosophy, all duty to the world, all sense of self, it all burned away in a firestorm of pure, primal terror for the man I loved.

“I’LL SAY IT!” I screamed, my voice shredding, a raw sound of total surrender. “I’ll say whatever you want, just STOP! Please, just stop hurting him!”

I turned my tear-streaked face to the blinking red light. My body trembled, but my eyes were fixed on the lens, a proxy for the world I was about to betray. I took a shuddering breath, the words tearing their way out of my throat.

“I… I am Wonder Woman… and I have been defeated… by Master Vex.” The words, though true in this moment, felt like acid on my tongue. Each syllable was a betrayal of everything I was meant to be.

He nodded slowly, a hungry look in his eyes, waiting for the rest. But when I tried to form the first lie—”He is my m—”—my diaphragm seized. My body convulsed as the divine magic violently rejected the blasphemy. “I CAN’T!” I shrieked. “I’M TRYING! The magic won’t let me lie!”

“Say the words, bitch!” he spat, his calm facade finally cracking to reveal the ugly rage beneath.

In that abyss of despair, a new path appeared. A different truth. A final sacrifice. “A NEW DEAL!” I cried, my voice broken. “A TRUTHFUL ONE! I will be your prisoner forever. I will be your trophy. I will never fight you, never try to escape. I swear it! Take my freedom. Take my life. Just let him live.”