Page 33 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

Owen steps up beside me. Doesn’t look my way. Just reaches behind his ear, pulls a matchstick, and lights it with nothing. It flares anyway. A soft hiss. A tongue of fire where there shouldn’t be one.

“I remember when this room had teeth,” he says, voice low. “Now it’s just afraid of getting bitten. ”

Silence follows, but not the passive kind.

It tightens. Like the room’s holding its breath too long.

Like every person here is waiting for someone else to speak first, hoping they won’t have to be the one who chooses wrong.

The Chain hums against my ribs. Not loud.

Not urgent. Just steady pressure—like it’s ready to fill the space if no one else will.

Owen’s smile doesn’t change, but the energy around him does. He’s still. Not casual. Poised. His attention scans the chamber like he’s collecting evidence no one realizes they’re giving away.

Then the grizzled man leans forward. Not much. Just enough to make his chair creak. “If we give her quarter,” he growls, “we invite retaliation.”

“No,” the bone-ringed woman says, sharp and decisive. She hasn’t moved, but her voice cuts through the tension like a hook. “We invite warning.”

Her eyes slide to Kellen. Then to Owen. Then—to me. And linger there. Like she’s just reworked a sum in her head and doesn’t like the answer.

“Kier already called for her,” someone mutters from the shadows. “What happens when he sends his response?”

Owen doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even pretend to entertain the drama. “Believe me,” he says dryly, “he’ll send his response whether Freya’s here or not. He has a reputation to uphold, afterall.”

The woman with the bone rings doesn’t look at him. Her eyes shift instead to Kellen.

“Flameborn,” she says. “Your father rules Solenn, correct?”

Kellen nods. “He does.”

The grizzled man leans forward, lip curling. “You think they’ll protect us?”

Kellen’s eyes lift—sharp, steady. He doesn’t look at the man. He addresses the room .

“Solenn doesn’t answer to the Virelle. We never have. And we won’t kneel to the lies of their fallen Council, either. We are Flameborn,” he says, the words firm without heat. “We do not yield to threats. We burn them.”

Something shifts.

The silence tightens again—less like hesitation now, more like held breath. A chair scrapes. Another man mutters under his breath. The scent of old magic thickens with unease. No one challenges the claim aloud. But the resentment builds like pressure behind stone.

The Chain stirs at my back. Not alarmed. Ready.

The woman finally turns to me. “You get three days,” she says flatly. “No protection. No promises. Bring war through our gates, and you’ll die with it.”

I don’t flinch.

I also don’t thank her.

Gratitude would make it sound like I owe them. I don’t.

Vale leans into the candlelight just enough for her grin to flash. “Three days?” she says. “That’s generous. Usually I get fifteen minutes before someone tries to stab me in the ribs.”

There’s a half-snort from one corner. Might be amusement. Might be threat.

Owen clasps his hands behind his back, mock-solemn. “Three days,” he echoes. “Two and a half more than I expected. You’re in a rare mood, Grelta. Almost festive.”

Then he turns to me.

The match still flickers in his hand, casting warped shadows across the planes of his face. The grin is still there—but something behind it drops. Not false. Just stripped. Real in a way he rarely allows.

“Judgment used to be a feeling,” he murmurs, voice quiet, only for me. “Now it’s going to be a choice. And Freya—” He dips closer. “ It will break you.”

We leave without ceremony. The doors stay open behind us, like the room hasn’t decided whether it’s done with us—or just waiting to see what we become.

Vale mutters something under her breath. I don’t catch it. But when I glance back, her eyes are on Owen.

Not distrustful.

Curious.

Like she’s weighing whether he’s what he says… or something worse.

Kellen brushes my arm as we step into the corridor. A light touch, anchoring. No words needed.

I breathe in smoke, sweat, and the bitter tang of wax melting too close to flame.

This wasn’t a victory.

Just the start of a countdown.

- x -

Vale

I wait until they’re gone.

Freya’s the first to vanish—shoulders tight, jaw set, the kind of quiet that starts wars.

Kellen stays close, silent and fire-lit, a shadow shaped like a man who’d kill for her and pretend he didn’t mean to.

Owen follows last, slow as always, humming something half a hymn, half a dare.

There’s a match tucked behind his ear, catching candlelight like it’s planning to burn just for the hell of it .

I don’t move.

I let the room empty. Let the air settle. I need to ask something I shouldn’t want to. And I hate that I do.

When I finally slip out, I don’t go far.

Down one hall, past two doors that smell like dried blood and moldy parchment.

Left at the busted pipe. Right at the burn mark in the floor shaped like a hand.

I know where he’ll be. Owen’s routine in ways he pretends not to be.

Same leaning wall. Same cracked barrel. Same back corner of Ashmere that looks out on nothing but dust.

I find him there, like I always do. Feet kicked up, sleeves rolled high, folding a blood-streaked napkin into something delicate and useless.

“Don’t you get tired pretending to be weird?” I ask.

He doesn’t look up. “Not at all. I’m a thrilling burden.”

I cross my arms, lean against the opposite wall, and wait. The silence settles between us, dry and brittle, like it might snap if either of us breathes too hard.

“You knew I’d follow.”

He shrugs. “I always do.”

“You’re not a prophet. You’re just smug.”

He smiles without showing teeth. “They look the same from where I’m standing.”

I want to drag this out. Wrap it in sarcasm. Let it rot in pretense until it stops mattering. But I don’t. Because the longer I wait, the worse it feels—like admitting a weakness that doesn’t go away once spoken.

So I just say it.

“Can you really restore bonds?”

Owen folds the napkin again—slow, deliberate, like it’s something sacred instead of stained linen. Then he sets it aside and meets my eyes.

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t sure it was actually possible. ”

“It’s not,” he says, calm as ever. “Which is what makes it interesting.”

I brace for cruelty. Or a joke. Or some offhand quip to knock me off center. But he just watches me. Quiet. Focused. Like he already knows what I’ll look like on the other side—and isn’t sure I’ll make it.

“My bond didn’t fade,” I say. “I cut it. It was pulling me under, and I—”

“Survived,” he finishes. Not unkind, but not softened either.

“Barely.”

He nods once. “You bled for your freedom. And now you want the collar again.”

My jaw tightens. “It wasn’t a collar.”

He doesn’t blink. “No. But it fit the same if you didn’t choose it.”

The air between us goes thin. He’s not testing me. Not exactly. Just watching for where the cracks already are.

“I don’t want the old bond back,” I say. “I’m not looking to rewind the damage. I want something else. Not a rebind. A rewrite.”

Owen tilts his head. Like he hears something inside me I haven’t admitted yet.

“Then you already understand the cost.”

“What cost?”

“That no path will hold you now. Not cleanly. Not safely.”

“But the Chain will?”

He smiles, “it might. But it won’t be a bond.” He leans in slightly. “It’ll be a reckoning.”

I let that sit.

“I’m not asking it to want me,” I say. “I’m asking you to make it fit.”

He picks up the napkin again. Folds it into a perfect square and presses it down like he’s sealing something beneath it.

“Then we don’t call it a graft,” he says. “We call it a gamble.”

I swallow hard. My throat burns.

He tilts his head like he’s waiting to see what parts of me hold .

“I can do it,” he says. “But you won’t come out the same. Not the same body. Not the same girl. Not the same Vale.”

I keep my voice even. “I’m not the same now.”

He gives me a slow, almost-sad nod. “Then maybe there’s space for you in what comes next.”

He turns before I can respond. Doesn’t wait for my answer. Doesn’t need to. He walks off like none of this mattered—like it didn’t hollow me out just asking.

I stay there longer than I should, in a hallway that smells like rot and damp stone, where even the light feels borrowed.

And I realize something awful.

It’s not the bond that terrifies me.

It’s that for the first time in years… I might want it.

And that?

That might kill me slower than the blade ever could.