Page 24 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

She doesn’t look over. “Let me guess. Fire. Judgment. Doom-face with the smoky jaw?”

I nod. Swallow. “The Manticore.”

“Hot,” she says. “In a deeply upsetting, ancient trauma way.”

Across the room, Owen exhales like he’s been holding the breath since I screamed.

He’s perched on a splintered crate near the wall, barefoot, ankles crossed like he’s holding court in a place that forgot what courts are.

His robes are a layered wreck—threadbare linen, scorched edges, a torn collar stitched sideways like he mended it blind or drunk or both.

One cuff’s safety-pinned. The other’s just…

gone. Nothing on him matches. Nothing fits.

But the way he sits—spine slouched, shoulders open, like the room’s already answered to him—makes it hard to look anywhere else.

He turns a single matchstick over his knuckles, slow, careful, like it’s the only thing in the room with weight.

Doesn’t light it. Never does. Just lets the wood catch what little candlelight’s left and reflect it back as warning.

“Did he give you the line?” Owen asks, voice low and smooth. “Something about not being a mirror?”

I nod again. My palms sting. My fingers are trembling.

He smiles. Wide. Warm. Sharp .

“Oh, he does love that one. Never changes the script. You’d think a thousand-year-old Chainbound Memory could workshop a second metaphor.”

“He said Link Two is a consequence,” I manage.

“That’s true,” Owen says, with a brightness that makes my ribs ache. “But so is breathing, if you do it wrong.”

Vale snorts. “What does that even mean?”

Owen raises an eyebrow. “It means truth isn’t tax-free, and the Chain is a greedy tax-man.”

The hum under my skin is heavier now. Not panic. Not warning. More like the moment before something lands.

“He said it’s waiting for me to stop lying,” I say.

Owen stops flipping the coin.

His smile doesn’t drop. But it settles. Still bright. Just… quieter. More dangerous.

“Did he now?” he says.

Vale whistles, low. “Oooh. Therapy hour. Should I leave or bring snacks?”

Owen rises. He moves like someone playing a part in a play only he knows the ending to. Picks up his coat, throws it over his shoulder like he’s about to walk a runway lined with corpses and secrets.

“Then you should stop lying,” he says gently. “Seems rude to keep the Chain waiting.”

“I don’t know what the truth is.”

He looks at me like I just told him the punchline and forgot to laugh.

“Of course you do,” he says, stepping forward. “You just haven’t admitted it to yourself in a way that hurts yet.”

I shift back a little. The cot creaks.

“You’ve been trying to be safe,” he adds. “That’s not what this path rewards. ”

“What does it reward?”

He grins again. Full. Flamboyant. Possibly lethal.

“Clarity,” he says. “And cruelty, if necessary. Memory’s favorite tools.”

He moves past me, trailing the edge of his coat along the floor like it’s writing something in dust.

“Tomorrow,” he says, over his shoulder, “we finish Cycle Seven.”

I stiffen. My breath catches. Vale makes a small “oof” sound and offers me a lazy salute.

“No pulling back. No flinching. You’ll let it burn. You’ll let it speak. You’ll let it remember through you.”

“And if I fail?”

Owen stops. Doesn’t turn.

“If you fail,” he says, voice low now, almost kind, “the Chain will stop pulling.”

Then, softer:

“And you’ll spend the rest of your life pretending it was ever yours.”

He taps two fingers against his temple, the gesture too practiced to be offhand.

“Just another Severed with stories and a scar that doesn’t mean anything.”

Then he vanishes through the doorway like the conversation never mattered.

The silence left behind is anything but silent.

The Chain pulses once.

Then again.

Then a third time.

Deep in my breath. In the bones of my wrists. In the place behind thought.

It’s not a warning.

It’s recognition .

Link Two is here.

And it needs me to go and get it.

- x -

Kier

They left the room warm again. I told them not to. But guards hate the cold. It makes them feel.

Ash-Rag doesn’t lift his head when I enter. Blood’s already drying at the edge of his mouth. Split lip. Swollen eye. Sloppy work. Pain as punishment. Not persuasion. Typical. Brutes always mistake a hammer for a key.

I sit.

No rush. Let the chair creak. Let the chains shift just enough to remind him they’re not just restraints. They’re alive. Listening. Breathing. Remembering.

He doesn’t look at me. Pity. I’m the last thing he’ll ever see clearly.

The chains stir again. Not from him. They respond to mood. Vibration. Memory. They move like something half-starved and dreaming of meat.

I never look at them. Not directly. They’re relics from a path I publicly condemn. And privately repurpose.

I call it containment. Control.

But the chains?

They call it hunger .

“You know,” I begin, unbuttoning my cuffs with slow, deliberate fingers, “truth is not something I pry from a man like a nail from old wood. Truth is what leaks out of the soft parts when the skin remembers it was never designed to be armor.”

He doesn’t answer. That’s expected. Martyrs are always silent at first.

“Pain doesn’t frighten you. I admire that. Truly. So few men walk into suffering like it’s sacred.” I lean forward, studying the bruises. “But pain… isn’t the weapon you think it is. Pain is discipline. And I am devout.”

I reach for the lacquered box beside me. It’s small. Cherrywood. Immaculate. Inside: five instruments. Two surgical. One ancient. One symbolic. One mine.

I remove the third. A bone needle, polished to a shine. It once belonged to a priest who tried to silence the gods. It didn’t work. I use it because it remembers failure.

Ash-Rag’s breathing stutters.

“I don’t want what you know,” I say conversationally. “I want what you can’t stop remembering. You think your silence is a gift. That you’re protecting someone. But silence,” I raise the needle, “is just truth with a tourniquet.”

The first puncture goes under the nail of his left thumb. Clean. Precise. His scream is ragged, but not full.

I let him scream. Let him feel it. Not because it hurts—but because it names him.

“You were with her,” I murmur. “The girl. Freya Thorne. Ashenborn. You saw her before she fully knew what she was.”

He says nothing.

So I slide the needle into the webbing between his fingers.

He jerks. The chains respond with a slow, mechanical pull. Designed to reward resistance with injury. A beautiful system, really. One I had purpose built after a winter of failures .

“She had the manual,” I continue. “The real one. Not the Council’s redacted nonsense. How did she get it?”

Still nothing.

So I break his pinky.

Slowly.

There’s a scream this time. Short. Pitiful. I hold his gaze until it stops.

“Tell me where she is.”

His throat works. Blood slicks his teeth. “Aur… Aurelle. In Caelith. She… she’s hiding under another name.”

I strike him across the jaw with an open palm. Not hard. But contemptuous.

“You were doing so well,” I sigh. “But lies bore me.”

He spits.

It lands near my boot.

I nod once, then reach into the box and remove the next instrument: a thin silver spike, engraved tip to hilt. It’s not metal. Not really. Something older. Something banned. One touch to the spine, and the body forgets its name.

“I’m not cruel,” I say softly. “I’m correct.”

Ash-Rag is sobbing now. Not because of pain. Because he’s realizing this isn’t pain yet.

I kneel. Press the tip to his sternum.

His words come like bile. “There’s a place—black market—near the Wanehold. Where the severed go.”

I wait.

He gasps. “Ash… Ashmere.”

Ah.

Now we’re speaking truth.

I rise. Wipe the spike clean.

“Thank you,” I say. And I mean it .

Then I break both of his legs.

Not out of rage. Not for the information. That part’s already done.

No, this is preparation. Mercy, in its purest, most clinical form.

The body cannot hold the kind of pain I’m about to introduce. Not without an anchor. Something sharp. Immediate. Localized. A fracture the brain can fixate on—so the rest of it doesn’t collapse under the weight.

One femur. Then the other. Clean. Controlled.

He screams, of course. They always do. But it’s a scream with purpose now. A scream that will ground him while I begin the real work.

Because what comes next doesn’t bleed.

It unravels.

When it’s done, I return to my office.

I always need a drink after work like this. Not to forget. I forget nothing. But blood dulls the palate, and I like to rinse it clean.

The brandy’s waiting. I pour it from the crystal decanter—dark amber, syrup-thick. The smell hits first: dried fruit, charred oak, and that sharp burn that lives just behind the eyes. Old. Expensive. Banned.

Virelle’s laws prohibit anything stronger than wine or ale. But laws, like men, bend if you apply enough heat. Especially when you’re the one writing them.

I settle into the chair behind my desk, glass in hand, and take the first slow swallow. It burns exactly as it should—low, deliberate, clean.

Then I reach for the folder.

The wax is untouched. His seal. His signature. Kellen Tor, first son of House Torvannen, heir apparent to a rotting throne of lies. His pen stroke carries conviction—steady, clean, noble in the way young men still think nobility matters.

He signed the release order without hesitation. Because he thought it was a trick of his own making.

Because he thought love could outmaneuver machinery .

The boy is sincere. It’s always the sincere ones that bleed easiest.

He thought giving us a false location would buy her time. Thought clever hands and desperate hearts could reshape systems that were built to crush them. That’s the tragedy of sons—they still believe their fathers are bound by the same rules they were raised on.

He wanted to protect her. I expected as much. The only variable was his method.

So I asked Ash-Rag.

Once.

Twice.

Then properly.

He screamed less than I predicted. It’s remarkable what collapses when you take the time to listen past a body’s protests.

Now I have everything I need.

I lay the release form across the desk. The ink hasn’t even begun to fade. His signature gleams like a child’s offering—authentic, hopeful, doomed.

I don’t touch it.

Not yet.

Instead, I prepare a second draft. I copy every stroke of his seal and signature with exacting care. The same pressure. The same tilt. Identical in every detail but one.

The location he gave us—some forgotten ruin he thought would lead us in circles—gets replaced with the one Ash-Rag wept out between his teeth. A minor correction, courtesy of pain.

The seal clicks shut with a softness that pleases me.

Kellen will sleep well tonight. Believing he’s saved her.

That’s good.

Hope makes the knife sink deeper when it breaks.

And I want to be there when it does .

I extinguish the lantern before leaving. Let the dark settle. Let it memorize the silence.

Outside, the corridors murmur with footsteps not meant to echo. Courtiers, guards, servants—each convinced they serve something that still matters. A Council. A Code. A throne made of dust and nostalgia.

They think we live in a kingdom.

But kingdoms fall. And in the ash, what remains must answer for what came before.

The Five were never gods. They were delays. Distractions. Apologies dressed as power.

Soon, they’ll be relics.

And all that will be left… is judgment.

And chains…