Page 44 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

His hand jerks, and a burst of compressed wind slams into my ribs—fast and hard, like getting punched by something I didn’t see coming. Not enough to drop me. Just enough to knock me off balance.

I stumble a step. Catch myself.

Lightning flickers across both blades—thin white lines snapping between the hilts. That’s when I see the marks on his wrist. Faint, etched into the skin like they’ve been there for years.

The kind of scars the Council burns into those they trust to kill without question. Nothing about them says mercy.

In Virelle, they’re called execution marks.

The Chain pulls tight.

I lock my breath, centering fast .

A scream splits the sky above. A griffon drops through the clouds, wings stretched wide over the basin. It slams into the court, talons cracking stone, ice spraying from its feathers.

The assassin doesn’t even glance at it.

The beast watches him. Then me.

Then waits.

I’ve seen bonded beasts surge forward without command. None hold still like this. Not unless taught. Or warned.

The Chain draws cold now. Steel across the base of my spine. No fear in it—only certainty.

I let it rise.

My stance drops to Anchor. Breath locks in rhythm. Inhale. Hold. Compress.

Cycle Four.

The Chain strikes. Not at him—at the court.

Stone splits in a perfect ring around me, a sharp crack that sends tiles flying and ash flaring into the air. Not enough to break bone—but enough to blind, distract, throw the rhythm off. His griffon startles a half-step back, wings twitching.

He hesitates.

I drop my palm to the ground.

This time, the Chain doesn’t lash—it drops weight. Pure, sinking pressure that punches through the courtyard like it’s remembering something older than both of us. The tile caves under my hand.

He stumbles—not from pain, but from recognition.

Whatever he thought I was, he’s realizing now he was wrong. He recovers fast—clean and practiced—but he’s never fought anything like this. This isn’t path magic. It’s pressure. Memory. And it moves like it knows what he’ll do before he does.

He lunges again .

Both blades aimed straight at center mass. No flourish. No trick. Just full commitment to a kill arc.

I don’t move.

The Chain does.

It wraps his wrist first. Then coils around his ribs. His throat. Not choking—just holding.

He stops cold.

The Chain pulses. Once. Then again.

No show of force. Just pressure. A clear answer—without a word.

The griffon rears behind him, wings spread.

Then halts.

Claws scratch forward. Feathers settle. The head lowers—not in defeat. In acknowledgment.

Its eyes lock on my chest—on the faint glow beneath soaked fabric where the Chain rests.

Then it lowers its head, wings folding in.

Not for him.

For me.

Silence falls across the court like something sacred cracked open and no one dares step forward yet. The Chain retracts. The assassin drops to one knee.

Not unconscious. Not broken.

Just overmatched.

He coughs once. Blood colors his spit as it hits the tile.

His eyes lift. Not afraid. Still focused. Still spoken-for.“He should’ve been the one. The Chain knows it. And you’ll bleed trying to prove otherwise.”

I don’t answer.

Because the courtyard is no longer empty.

Figures stand in the outer arches. Steps. Edges of ruin. Silent .

They didn’t flee when the wind screamed. They didn’t flinch when the Chain cracked the earth. They came, and they stayed.

They saw.

The griffon bows again—slower, deeper. Then vanishes in a whisper of wind and broken light.

The Chain etches a final curl into the stone beside me. Barely more than a mark. But enough.

- x -

The Chain settles beneath my skin, quiet but wound tight—like breath I haven’t let out yet.

The griffon’s gone. The assassin is where I left him—his blades cracked, arms twisted where the Chain locked and let go. His chest still rises, just barely.

But the crowd doesn’t know what it means.

They don’t speak. They don’t step forward.

But they’re here—tucked into the walls and ruins like they’ve been there all along.

Leaning against broken archways. Standing behind carts that haven’t seen use in days.

Some crouch low behind rubble. Others stay standing, unsure if they’re meant to bear witness or get out while they can.

Faces I’ve never memorized but might’ve passed near the market, near the barracks, near somewhere that mattered a lot less than this.

And still, no one moves.

Their eyes go everywhere but my face. To the scorched tile. The bloodless impact fractures. The mark still faintly glowing through the front of my shirt. The space around me where no one dares to breathe too loud. It’s not the Chain they’re afraid of.

It’s the fact I haven’t moved.

That I haven’t said a single thing.

“That beast bowed to her,” someone mutters, voice sharp with confusion. A girl, maybe sixteen. Her knuckles are white around a half-rotted apple, like she doesn’t know she’s still holding it.

“That doesn’t happen,” someone else snaps. Male. Closer. Angry, but not sure at who. “Stormbound beasts don’t kneel. Not to anyone.”

“She didn’t even move,” another voice says, smaller. “It just—did it.”

“She’s not bonded,” the man growls. “So what the hell is she?”

“She didn’t kill him,” someone else mutters. “She had him. Why didn’t she finish it?”

The words don’t ring out—they spread. Soft. Measured. A line of tension catching across the group. Not one of them breaks the silence, but every one of them’s thinking the same thing.

They didn’t see power lash out.

They saw it held back.

And that scares them more.

I don’t move. I don’t answer. I let the quiet stretch until it becomes something they have to carry.

Let them feel how close the Chain still rests beneath my skin.

Let them guess how awake it is. It hasn’t left.

Hasn’t gone dormant. It waits with me, coiled but unbound, the weight of it stretched across my spine like wire strung tight.

Then I hear it.

The voice doesn’t interrupt. It slides in. Smooth. Warm. Like it belongs here more than anyone else.

“Wrong questions,” it says. “But a charming attempt.”

I look up .

Owen stands in the jagged window of the old watchtower, one foot on the stone ledge, the other dangling like the drop beneath him is more of a dare than a threat.

Wind tugs at his robes—layers of fabric and ruin and something once-sacred, all worn like a costume he chose for the occasion.

A match burns in his fingers. Slowly. Deliberately.

He watches it like the flame might forget who’s in charge.

Then he steps forward. He walks the crumbling edge of the tower like it’s a ballroom stage. Like we’re all just lucky to have been invited.

“You’re all trying to understand her,” he says, turning the match once between his fingers. “Trying to define something you haven’t even survived yet.”

His smile’s there, barely. The kind you see from someone who knows exactly how far the floor can fall and how fast.

“The real question,” Owen says, voice still light, “is what kind of man sends a trained killer after a seventeen-year-old girl?”

He stops walking. Looks down—not at me, never at me—but at them. The crowd. The doubters. The ones still unsure whether they should kneel or run.

Then he flicks the match.

It arcs once, lands beside the assassin’s broken blade, and hisses out on the stone. The sound is soft. Too soft for how loud it lands.

He scans the crowd, voice dropping with it.

“She’s been here for weeks. She hasn’t seized power. She hasn’t begged for it, either. She’s walked through Ashmere adopting the Severed, uniting the gangs, and when you started calling her Mother of Chains? She didn’t flinch.”

A pause.

“And still, none of you asked why Kier sent a killer. Why Kier declared war against her.”

He lets that land, then smiles—not wide, just enough to show edge .

“You all saw the Chain move,” Owen says, voice even now, calm like this was the plan all along. “What you missed—was what she held back.”

He pauses, not for effect, but because he knows no one will interrupt.“She could’ve turned the Chain on this city the day she arrived.”

“She didn’t.”

There’s no response.

“Instead, she gave you a choice.”

I step forward. Just once. Not toward them.

Through them.

They don’t part all at once. And not cleanly. But the line breaks anyway. Hesitation gives way to instinct. Enough of them shift aside that I don’t need to ask for space.

I don’t say thank you. Don’t offer a speech. Don’t explain.

I walk.

The Chain hums once, low and certain. Not a warning. Not a flare. Just a pulse at the edge of breath, enough to remind me—and them—that it’s still listening.

The courtyard isn’t quiet anymore.

But it’s paying attention.

And that might be worse.