Page 10 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

We don’t talk for a while. We just sit. The food gone. The light fading. The Ash Tower breathing around us like it remembers what it once was.

Maybe I’ll let myself be a little full. A little quiet. Just for tonight.

Maybe tomorrow, I train until my bones scream.

But for now—

“Thanks,” I say, barely above a whisper.

Kellen doesn’t ask what for.

He just says, “Anytime.”

And I almost believe him.

- x -

Kellen watches me like I’m about to shift into something else. Not dangerous—different. Like he’s taking a reading not of what I say, but what I radiate.

My heat. My edge. The way the chain hums just beneath the surface when I hold still too long.

“You said you’ve been trying,” he says. Not accusing. Just… waiting.

There’s a tension between us now that doesn’t feel like mistrust. It feels like pressure. Like touch might be the only way to relieve it.

“Show me,” he says.

I arch a brow. “You want to spar?”

“I want to see if you’re still pretending you’re fine.”

The chain stirs.

I should laugh. Should toss him a clever line and wave him off. But I don’t. Because part of me wants the same thing he does.

“I’m bruised,” I warn, stepping into the open.

Kellen’s smile is low and lethal. “I’ll be gentle.” Gods, that smile. It almost undoes me right there.

I roll my shoulders, slow and deliberate. Let him see the heat under my skin. “If I break your ribs, I’m not apologizing.”

He tips his head, eyes dark with something that’s not fear. “If you break my ribs, I’ll be impressed.”

We clear the space by instinct. The old ash-tiled floor still bears marks from older fights—burns, scrapes, blood. A training hall, once. Or a chapel of war.

Fitting.

Kellen shrugs out of his cloak. I shed mine. Beneath it, my shift clings damp to my spine, salt-slick from nervous heat. The chain is cool against my wrist. Waiting.

We circle.

No counting. No salutes .

I move first.

My footwork’s off, but my instincts aren’t. I jab, feint left, twist low to avoid his sweep. He’s fast—faster than I remember—but I’ve been fighting ghosts for days. He’s solid. Predictable.

We trade blows. Elbow, dodge, palm block. I catch his forearm. He breaks my grip. Our feet scrape the ash-stone floor, dust rising around us like smoke from an old pyre.

“Still favor your right,” he pants.

“Still talk too much.”

He grins.

Then he lunges.

I twist, but not fast enough. He catches my side, and pain flares bright under the bruises. I hiss, fall back. He doesn’t press. He waits.

“You done?”

I charge.

We hit the floor together. His back slams into cracked tile, mine lands on top of him. I straddle his hips, knees pressed to stone, palms braced on his chest. Sweat slicks our skin.

I don’t move.

Neither does he.

His chest rises beneath my hands. The chain pulses low and warm at my wrist.

“You’re stronger,” he murmurs.

“So are you.”

I shift my weight just enough to notice the line of his thigh between mine. Just enough for both of us to notice what that does to him.

His jaw clenches. His breath catches. My body goes still. He lifts a hand—slow, slow—trails his fingers over my cheek. I should flinch. Should roll off. Should run.

I don’t.

His hand curls around the back of my neck. His thumb brushes the edge of my jaw.

His mouth finds mine.

It isn’t sweet. It’s salt and bruises and flame.

I kiss him like I want to punish him for everything he didn’t do. He kisses me like he wants to offer penance for everything he couldn’t.

We burn.

He flips me, and my back hits the stone. The air rushes out of me. He braces above me, one knee between my legs, one hand at my waist.

The chain coils. Not tight. Not angry. Just… aware.

“Freya.”

I drag him down.

Clothes go slow. Me first—pulling my shift over my head, letting it fall without ceremony. He watches like it’s sacred. Like I’m the spell and he’s just trying to learn the words before I disappear.

He drops to his knees like he’s done it before—but not for this. Not for me.

“Kellen,” I whisper. It comes out cracked.

He looks up, mouth already brushing my thigh. “Tell me to stop.”

I bury my fingers in his hair and pull.

Not hard. Not soft either.

“I’ll kill you if you stop.”

His grin is wrecked. Wrecking. “Understood.”

Then he buries his mouth between my thighs.

I jerk. Fist tightening in his hair. He groans against me and the vibration damn near undoes me. He’s slow at first—tongue flicking, teasing—but that doesn’t last. I roll my hips. He answers. Hungry. Rhythmic. Like he’s trying to draw my name out of me syllable by syllable.

The chain lights faintly against my ribs. Silver. Warm. Watching .

I come fast. Too fast. It hits like something sacred. My back arches. My hand tightens in his hair. He doesn’t stop until I physically pull him up.

I’m panting. Shaking. Staring at him like I’ve never seen him before.

“Now,” I whisper.

His eyes darken. “Now?”

“Inside me. Now.”

Clothes fall the rest of the way. His fingers trail up my thigh, over my hip, across the curve of my breast. He doesn’t ask again. Just presses forward, thick and slow. When he enters me, it’s slow. Reverent. Not because he’s afraid I’ll break.

Because we both already have.

He moves like he means every inch. My body takes him greedy, aching. I clutch at his back, bury my teeth in his shoulder. He gasps my name. Again. Again.

But it’s not the chain I’m thinking of.

It’s him.

All of him.

And what I’ll do if he ever stops.

The chain lights. Not bright. Not loud. Just a whisper of heat. A tether.

Kellen groans. His hand slides under my knee, lifts my leg higher. The angle shifts. I choke on a moan. My spine bows. He presses deeper, harder. We lose the rhythm. Then find a better one.

His forehead rests to mine. His hands are shaking. Mine are not.

“Don’t stop,” I whisper. “Not yet.”

He doesn’t.

When I come again, it’s not soft. It’s raw. Too much. Perfect.

I shatter around him, gasping, sobbing into his skin. The chain floods with heat—flaring from my collarbone down to my wrist.

He follows.

Not with a cry. With a growl .

Like a beast finally given permission to want.

He collapses to my side, breath ragged, skin slick.

We don’t speak.

For once, the silence doesn’t hurt.

Until the chain stirs.

One pulse.

Two.

A third—deeper than before.

Then the whisper, coiled tight behind my ribs: Link Two: Stirring.

Not now. Not now.

I repeat it like prayer, like a plea. But the voice isn’t listening.

It leaves, eventually. But not without leaving something behind.

I turn my head toward him.

He’s already watching.

And somehow—gods help me—I think he heard it too.

- x -

The Ash Tower doesn’t wake. It remembers.

It remembers flame on stone. It remembers the sound people make when they’re too far gone to scream. It remembers what happens when power slips the leash.

The light this morning doesn’t cleanse anything. It just exposes what never healed. Dust glints in the air like ash too old to burn. My breath clouds and fades. Kellen’s heat radiates steady behind me, even in sleep. But I don’t turn .

Every part of me aches, but not from battle.

Not from bruises I earned swinging a blade.

It’s a different kind of sore—deeper. My thighs, my back, the arch of my spine where he pressed his hand to hold me steady.

My neck is raw where his mouth lingered, and I swear I can still feel the scrape of his teeth when I breathe too hard.

He didn’t mark me in the way people can see, but gods, he left something behind.

The chain hummed through it all, quiet and knowing, like it could feel every inch of him inside me.

Like it approved. And now—I’m still me. Just more.

More his. More mine. More than I was before I let him touch me like that.

I sit up slow. The stone’s cold against my bare feet. There’s no ceremony to it—just the way my body moves when it’s survived something it wasn’t meant to.

Kellen shifts behind me but doesn’t wake.

I watch him breathe. Watch the rise and fall of his chest, the furrow still caught between his brows.

There’s a scar low on his ribs, half-hidden in shadow.

Not clean. Not surgical. A wound someone gave him close and deliberate.

I’ve never seen it before. But it feels familiar anyway.

I don’t touch him.

Because if I do, I might soften. And if I soften, I might forget what tomorrow is.

I pull my tunic on without sound. The cloth chafes in places where the bruises haven’t settled. My boots are still damp from the stone, and the chain around my wrist presses like it’s counting the seconds I take.

The manual’s never left my side.

I crouch to the bedroll and pull it from beneath my cloak—still wrapped in the same sun-bleached cloth I used the night I took it. It smells like old ink and heat. The corners are curling now. The spine’s cracked from being opened too much, too fast.

It’s not just a book anymore .

It’s the record of everything I’ve become since the chain claimed me. It’s the part of me that still believes in knowing over fearing. And I’m about to hand it to someone else.

The chain doesn’t pulse. But it tightens, faint and warning.

Kellen’s voice behind me is quiet. Rough. “You’re up early.”

He sits slowly, eyes still heavy with sleep. His shirt’s halfway twisted, and there’s a smear of soot along his jaw where he must’ve rubbed it last night. He doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t ask questions.

“You’re leaving?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No. Not yet.”

He nods, slow. Like he knows there’s more I’m not saying. I turn and hold up the cloth-wrapped manual.

“I need you to take this.”

Kellen’s gaze sharpens. He shifts onto his knees. “Freya…”

“Don’t argue.” My grip tightens. “If they—if I don’t come back—I need it out of reach. I need this out of reach.”

There’s a pause. He stands. Steps forward barefoot, slow like I might vanish if he gets too close. His voice stays low, but it’s not calm. Not anymore.

“They’re not going to kill you.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Yes, I can.”

“No,” I say, quieter now. “You really can’t.”

The silence stretches. Not awkward. Not cold. Just heavy with everything we haven’t said since the chain took root.

He reaches out—slowly, deliberately—and I let him take it.

The weight in his hands seems to register all at once. His fingers flex around it. Not tightly. Just enough to tell me he knows what this means .

I watch him cross to his cloak and wrap it again—layer over layer, reinforced like it’s something sacred. He tucks it into his satchel. Fastens it. Not once looking at me.

“You trust me with this?” he asks, back still turned.

“No.” I pause. “But I trust you more than I trust anyone else.”

When he turns, I see it in his eyes. Not pride. Not fear. Just awareness. That this—this right here—is the closest I’ve come to a goodbye.

We don’t speak for a while. The tower creaks above us. Wind hums low through a broken windowpane. Somewhere below, the floor groans under its own memory.

Kellen’s voice comes from a place I don’t see.

“You know I’d burn the whole damn Council down before I let them kill you.”

I believe him.

And maybe that’s the part that scares me most.

Because if he fights for me—and still fails—

It won’t feel like strangers who let me die.

It’ll feel like him.

And I know that isn’t fair.

But fear isn’t fair.

And trust has never been kind.

I cross the room. My boots scuff dry stone. He stands still, arms loose at his sides, like he’s ready for an order I don’t know how to give.

I reach up. Rest my hand at the base of his neck.

Not pulling him closer.

Not pushing him away.

Just… reminding myself he’s real. That we both are. Even now.

Then I let go. And he lets me .

Outside, the sky’s gone silver with dawn. The Ash Tower stays behind me. Watching. Waiting. The cold doesn’t bite like it used to. But I feel it in the soles of my feet, in the hollow place just under my ribs.

Tomorrow is the trial.

Today, I gave away my only shield.

But I gave it to the one person who might carry it for me.

And if he fails—if he hands it over, or lets them take it—I hope he remembers the weight of it. Not just the manual.

Me.