Page 2 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

I was meant to die at sixteen.

Not by fire. Not by blade. By forgetting.

That is the Severing’s design. It doesn’t end life—it unthreads it until your name collapses in on itself and the people who once spoke it start looking through you like you were never real in the first place.

That’s how they kill us. Not with violence, but with vanishing.

They make the world pretend you were never meant to belong. And you start to believe them.

The Bonding Grove is too beautiful for what’s about to happen.

They built it just beyond Virelle—the capital of Selvarra—so the city can crown its chosen in silk and forget the rest bleed under trees.

Mist hangs low over the carved stone path, catching the weak morning light like it wants to make this moment look holy.

Someone’s lit memory lanterns along the inner ring of trees.

They burn low and white, like teeth. The altar at the center has been polished until it gleams like wet bone, and the air smells thick with phoenix-petal oil and saltwine incense, the kind that gets rubbed into robes before ceremony.

It’s all very sacred. Very important. Very fake .

The whole grove hums with tension disguised as reverence—crowds in silk watching from the shade, high council priests standing too still to be human, and bonded initiates flickering with the first signs of mythic magic. They sparkle. They tremble. They radiate worth.

I do not.

My hands are dry. My breath stays cold no matter how many times I swallow it.

The girl beside me is crying softly from joy and fear, her fingertips already glowing with the shimmer of a forming bond.

She’s being called. Something ancient and magnificent is curling around her bones and deciding she’s enough.

My bones stay silent. They have nothing to say.

Someone calls my name— “Freya Thorne” —and it doesn’t sound like a name at all. It sounds like a verdict. No warmth in the voice. No joy. Just the volume needed to make it official. One more name in a sequence. One more girl to step forward and be sorted into the world’s great divine logic.

I move. Slowly. Not because I’m afraid, but because I want them to watch me do it without flinching.

The crowd murmurs behind their veils. My boots crunch over the path, every step precise.

I’m wearing my father’s bonding sash. It cuts into the side of my neck where it’s been hastily refitted for a daughter instead of a son.

The silk itches. The red dye is already fading, but I kept it anyway.

He was bonded Stonecalled before he fell in the mines.

The sash is the only thing they ever gave back.

I reach the altar and it rises like a challenge—Selvarran moonstone carved with prayers I no longer believe in, wrapped with offerings of bloodfruit and carved feathers, ringed with the same illusion-light they say was a gift from the first phoenix.

This is my home. Selvarra. Land of illusions and forgetting. And they still couldn’t pretend I belonged.

It’s meant to make you feel chosen before the beast even arrives. All I feel is the heat of eyes on my back and the weight of everything I’ve already lost.

Kellen is standing beside the head priest .

He’s Ravellan. Solenne-born. The Flameborn capital sits half a continent away, but of course they sent someone golden to watch our rites. Ceremony liaison, they said. Tradition. Politics. He shouldn’t be here. Not in Virelle. Not today.

He’s in full Flameborn regalia—draped in the red-gold sigils of Ravelle, his collar lined with ash-stained dragonhide, the faint glow of his firebond pulsing beneath his skin like he swallowed a sun and forgot to exhale.

He’s taller than I remember. Sharper, somehow.

And watching me with a look I can’t name.

Not pity. Not interest. Something worse.

We used to talk about our Bondings. Years ago.

We were both prodigies once. The girl with the perfect stillness.

The boy with fire in his throat. Always paired for rites, called up together at every festival like we were already chosen.

I used to think it meant something—that we were being shaped for the same storm.

Turns out I was just standing too close to the sun when it started to rise.

Back when he still looked at me like I was someone who could survive a storm. Back when I believed him. Now he just watches. And I hate how much I want him to look away.

I don’t let myself pause. Not for him. Not for anything.

“Step forward,” the priest says, voice wrapped in silk and disinterest.

I do. I place my hand on the altar. Palm flat. Chin high.

I wait.

The Bonding is not supposed to take long.

If you’re worthy, the beast reaches through the veil almost instantly.

You feel it before you see it. A pull. A heat.

A sound that doesn’t come from outside you but from within.

I’ve watched it happen a dozen times. I’ve memorized the signs.

The trembling. The glow. The scream. The silence.

None of it comes.

I feel the stone.

Just the stone .

Cold. Pitted. Real in the wrong way.

But for half a breath, the altar wasn’t cold. It pulsed. Just once. Like it exhaled something into my palm and changed its mind. I tell myself it didn’t. Just nerves. Just shame. Just a trick my body played to make the silence hurt less.

Seconds pass. Then minutes. I keep my hand there, because I don’t know what to do if I move it.

A rustle behind me. Whispers. A nervous cough from someone in the priesthood.

The head priest shifts. Not in concern—just impatience. My presence is delaying the ceremony. I’m supposed to shine or shatter, not drag it out. Eventually, he speaks.

“Next.”

That’s it. No explanation. No comfort. No verdict. Just a dismissal.

Something breaks under my ribs, but I don’t let it show. I remove my hand. I turn. I do not bow.

The other girls are watching. Some with pity. Some with relief that it wasn’t them. Some with wide, empty eyes that haven’t learned how to look away from ruin yet.

And Kellen—he’s stepped forward. Just slightly. His fingers twitch like he might reach for me. He doesn’t.

“You don’t have to—” he starts, but I slice the air between us with one word.

“Don’t.” My voice isn’t loud. It’s not even angry. It’s just final. And that’s worse. He hears it. He backs off.

The priest is still saying something behind me. Probably the formal language— “Unbonded. Untouched. Unworthy.” The holy trifecta of erasure. I don’t hear the words. I feel them settle like dust.

I leave before he finishes .

I don’t walk back to the crowd. I don’t look for my mother. I head toward the edge of the grove where the trees lean darker and the light thins out. Every step feels too loud. The forest is pretending not to notice me. I pretend not to notice it pretending.

Behind me, another girl is called. She walks up. She glows. She screams in joy or pain or both. The crowd erupts in awe. A beast roars in the distance. The ceremony moves on, as if I was never part of it.

I sit on the lake bench because I don’t know where else to go.

It’s old and half-rotted, the kind we used to lie on as kids when we didn’t know better than to dream.

My hands are in my lap. They feel empty.

Not metaphor-empty. Just… wrong. Like they’ve been promised something and the debt has come due with nothing to collect.

The air here doesn’t shimmer. It just waits. Quiet. Heavy. Like even the trees are pretending they didn’t see what happened. I watch the lake ripple and pretend I’m not waiting for anything. Not for forgiveness. Not for answers.

Kellen finds me anyway.

He doesn’t ask permission. He just sits beside me like we never stopped being whoever we used to be. Part of me hoped he wouldn’t come. The worse part hoped he would.

“They were wrong,” he says, voice low.

I laugh, but there’s no joy in it. “That supposed to fix something?”

“No,” he says. “But it’s still true.”

I study him out of the corner of my eye. He looks uncomfortable in his own skin, like he doesn’t know where to put his fire. Good. Let him burn. Let him sit in the ashes with me and see if he likes the taste.

“You gonna try to save me, Kellen?” I ask, voice quiet, cruel around the edges.

“No.” He doesn’t blink. “You don’t need saving. You need a choice. ”

That almost does it. Almost cracks something open. But I seal it shut before it can bleed.

“If you’ve got a spare one of those lying around, toss it my way. Otherwise, leave me the fuck alone.”

He flinches, just slightly. But he doesn’t move.

“You felt something,” he says.

I go still.

“When you touched the altar. It wasn’t empty.”

I hate that he sees it. I hate that he might be right.

Because yes—there was something. Not light. Not welcome. Not even magic. But something deep. Slow. Heavy. It didn’t come to greet me. It pulled away like it was drawing breath. Like it knew this wasn’t the moment—but that it was coming.

“If I did,” I say, “maybe I’ll dig it out myself.”

He nods. Not because he understands. Because he believes me. I can’t tell which is worse.

“Go, Kellen.”

His jaw tightens. “Freya—”

“I said go. Before I start blaming you for still being golden.”

He stands.

This time, he listens.

The lake reflects nothing. The trees don’t move. And the wind doesn’t carry prayers for the Unbonded.

Tomorrow they’ll bring me back here and cut the last thread of magic out of my spine. They’ll say it’s mercy. They’ll say I’ll be cleansed. They’ll say nothing at all.

But I’m still here.

And if I survive it, I’m going to set this entire system on fire—one forgotten truth at a time.

- x -

They don’t bind my hands with chains. They bind them with silk. Clean. Ceremonial. So when the pain starts, it won’t look like cruelty.