Page 36 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

Ashmere doesn’t have a throne room.

It has a buried skeleton of one—choked three levels below the smugglers’ quarter, braced in rusting beams and sour breath, half of it still held together by smoke memory and spit.

The ceiling groans every time someone shifts their weight.

The relic sconces lining the curved limestone walls pulse weakly—power unreliable, like the light’s considering whether to keep trying.

Whatever ceremony this place once held has long since been looted or set on fire.

But the bones remain. Just arranged differently.

Four tiers of stone benches ring the central pit in a spiral—like a reversed amphitheater, or a throat waiting to swallow whoever’s foolish enough to step inside.

No velvet. No sigils. No gold. Just leaders draped in clashing armor, gang leathers, and path relics that still pulse with fractured authority.

The Ash-banners are easy to spot—tattooed necks, busted knuckles, and eyes that say they’ve survived more than just the Severing.

They wear trial scars like they earned them, and maybe they did.

Across from them, the Bone Line slouch in tattered Council coats, stained with blood and grime.

Once they followed orders. Now they sell blades and secrets to anyone who pays enough to feel important.

And higher up, half in shadow, the Siltborn sit quiet, eyes unreadable.

They don’t talk. They don’t move. They just watch, like they’ve already seen how this ends—and might let it happen.

Every one of them watches me.

Not with awe.

With measurement.

The Chain rests low at my spine. Doesn’t stir. Doesn’t brace. But I feel the prickle of awareness, sharp and absolute. Like it’s parsing every shift of breath. Every inch of posture. Waiting to see if I flinch.

I don’t.

Owen strolls in beside me like he just woke up in the wrong opera.

Loose-limbed. Grinning. Draped in three incompatible layers of salvaged robes stitched together like a dare.

His burnt priest collar is turned up like an insult.

The match behind his ear flickers with the confidence of someone who hasn’t needed fire to burn a room down in years.

He doesn’t announce us.

Doesn’t bow.

Doesn’t even scan the room.

He already knows where the blades are.

I feel Kellen’s behind me. He leans against a cracked pillar at the back—arms crossed, posture grounded, stillness absolute. His presence sharpens the room. No one addresses him. But I see the way three separate crews angle their feet. Not toward him.

Away.

He hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t have to. They’ve all heard about Virelle .

Vale lounges high on the third tier. Her boots swing over empty space. She eyes the room like she’s picking which neck to break if it all goes sideways.

I step into the pit.

No introduction.

No defense.

Just the truth of presence.

A man two tiers up leans forward. Big shoulders. Bone tokens braided into hair that probably hasn’t met soap in a decade. “Didn’t realize we were summoned by kids now.”

“Summoned?” Owen echoes, sounding genuinely amused. “I suppose if you squint at it sideways and ignore the part where we didn’t ask nicely—sure. Let’s go with summoned.”

A few laughs. Shallow ones. They glance around like they’re checking which direction the knives might fall.

A woman speaks from the upper tier. Low, sharp, clipped with control. “This the Chain bitch we’re betting on now?” Her accent reeks of the Ashmere slums, but the way she says betting makes it sound like she runs the book.

The Chain lifts along my spine—just enough to feel it watching.

Another voice follows, this one dry and rough as grave dust. “She carrying something worth bleeding for?” the man rasps.

Older. Heavy with the kind of stillness that makes people vanish.

He doesn’t posture. He assesses. Like he’s already decided someone won’t leave the room whole—he’s just choosing who.

Owen doesn’t turn. Doesn’t blink. Just flicks the match once across his fingers, lazy as breath. The grin on his mouth hasn’t moved in minutes, but somehow it sharpens now—like it knows this is the cut that matters.

“She’s carrying judgment ,” he says, soft as silk and twice as dangerous. “Not everyone survives the weight.”

He lets that hang, just long enough for the silence to bristle.

“But you’re asking whether she’s worth bleeding for—”

The match snaps into stillness between his fingers.

He tilts his chin, barely a motion, toward the far pillar where Kellen stands. Unmoving. Watching.

“Ask him,” Owen murmurs. “He burned a city for her and didn’t blink.”

Every eye shifts. Not a snap. A slide. Controlled. Toward the figure by the back wall.

Kellen stands as he always does—silent, still, unflinching—like the room hasn’t yet realized it’s built on the same pressure that forged him.

The question hangs.

“She’s going to change everything,” he says, voice quiet and certain. “And I’d burn the world to the ground if it meant she had even half a chance to do it.”

He says it like it costs him nothing. Like setting the world on fire would be easier than watching me try and fail without him.

No one in the room speaks. They’re all still watching him.

Even the ones pretending not to care. But I don’t look at them.

I can’t. My gaze is locked on Kellen, on the man who just told a chamber full of killers and broken warlords that my life—not my victory, not my power, just my chance—was worth the ruin of everything.

And he meant it.

I feel it like heat through bone. Not the kind that burns—something older. Deeper. The kind that hollows you out and fills you with something too sacred to name. My throat tightens, and I don’t know if it’s from awe or terror, or the sudden, impossible want to deserve that kind of loyalty.

The Chain shifts against my skin. Slow. Almost reverent.

It doesn’t hum.

It bows .

And for a single, breathless second—I forget how to breathe.

Because I see it now. What it means to be chosen by something ancient. What it means to be followed by someone who doesn’t want to save you. Only to stand still while you save yourself.

The room stays silent. Even Owen doesn’t speak. He watches me with something closer to stillness than amusement, which means the floor is mine.

And I take it.

“I didn’t come to beg,” I say. “And I didn’t come to ask for your banners, your oaths, or whatever scraps of loyalty you haven’t already sold. I came because Kier’s drawing a noose around this city—and I won’t let it close while I’m still breathing.”

“You plan to stop him alone?” someone spits, but it’s weaker now. Less venom. More fear.

I step forward, letting the Chain shift visible across my shoulder—slow and deliberate, the silver-black gleam catching the torchlight like a warning.

“I don’t need to stop him alone,” I say, voice steady. “But I will.”

A breath holds across the room.

“And if you choose to sit in your silence, to count your relics and sharpen your grudges while the city burns—then you were never meant to survive the Chain anyway.”

No one laughs now.

Because they believe me.

Because I mean it.

Because somewhere behind me, the man who burned half of Virelle to ash still hasn’t looked away.

The silence sharpens. They’re listening now. Not out of fear. Out of recognition.

And the Chain hums low—like it’s found its name .

Then—

Owen claps his hands once, far too cheerfully, then exhales like he’s just watched a particularly moving stage play. Still flicking the match across his knuckles, he doesn’t bother to lower his voice.

“Well. That was inspiring. Spine-prickling, really. If I had a heart—or tear ducts—I’d have wept.”

He flicks the match one last time, catches it neatly between two fingers, then tilts his head toward the benches, mock-sincerity dripping like wine from a cracked chalice.

“Now—shall we skip the groveling and get straight to calling her Mother of Chains ? Or do you need another round of righteous fire to really feel it in your bones?”

He steps forward, flicking the match behind his ear into a spin between his fingers.

“Oh, and since we’ve got the room’s undivided devotion,” Owen drawls, flicking the match once more, “Kellen’s reached out to Solenn. A tender father-son reconnection. Expect fireworks. And possibly political collapse.”

A beat of stunned silence.

Then heads snap to Kellen once more.

He doesn’t move, he just leans further into the pillar and sighs.

The Chain coils a little tighter around me.

Not in warning.

In readiness.

No one speaks.

No one stands.

But no one stops me when I turn.

And in Ashmere?

That silence means loyalty.

Vale drops beside me at the stairwell, bumping her shoulder into mine like we’re just leaving a bar fight instead of a war council. “Three days,” she mutters. “They’ll all be calling you Mother of Chains, guaranteed. ”

“They won’t.”

“No,” she says, grinning. “If Owen’s involved—and he is—it’s already being said.”

It’s my turn to sigh now.

Kellen joins us without a word.

His steps fall in beside mine.

And the Chain hums again.

- x -

The bar doesn’t have a name. Just a blood-slick threshold and a reputation for people not making it out with both eyes.

We enter anyway.

It smells like burnt liquor and bad decisions.

Tables sag from old weight and older grudges.

Two ceiling beams are missing entirely—replaced by a knotted net of rusted chains and splintered bone to hold the roof together.

A girl in a Siltborn shawl is passed out in the corner, knife still clenched in her hand like it owes her something.

Perfect.

Vale struts in first, because of course she does. One boot dragging a squeal across the cracked stone floor, cloak already half-off like she’s deciding whether this is going to be a conversation or a murder. The crowd doesn’t turn. Not yet.

They wait for me.