Page 6 of She Who Was Severed (The Ashen Chain Trilogy #1)

The fountain at the center hasn’t held water in years.

Just moss and broken offerings—tarnished coins, petrified fruit, a single cracked prayer disk.

I sit on the edge anyway, one leg curled under me, the other braced for flight.

The manual stays tucked tight in my cloak, but the weight of it feels heavier now. Realer. Like it’s pressing back.

The chain rests along my wrist. Still wrapped. Still humming. It hasn’t moved since I read the last page. But I feel it waiting. Not asleep. Not awake. Like a thought about to become decision.

I unwrap the manual with careful fingers.

The cover is rough, the title carved in like someone meant it to scar—not shine.

Ashen Chain. No gilding. No sigils. Just the weight of something that shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t look like the manuals they used to hand out on name-day, back when I still believed I’d get one.

This feels older. Raw. A truth buried because someone survived it.

The first diagrams are simple. Breathing rituals meant to slow the pulse when the chain stirs too fast. Hand forms to ground excess energy.

Focus drills designed to tether you when the bond starts pulling too hard.

They’re techniques, sure—but not answers.

No explanation for what the chain is. Just the quiet insistence that if you don’t learn how to hold it steady, it will hollow you from the inside out.

A whisper threads through my chest. Not a word. A shape. A tug under the ribs.

Link Two.

The sensation burns—not pain, but presence. I grip the stone edge of the fountain until my knuckles ache, breathing through clenched teeth. The calming pattern from the manual flickers in my head. Count four. Inhale. Anchor at the collarbone. Let the chain follow.

It doesn’t.

I’m halfway through the second breath when the air shifts.

Bootsteps.

I twist, too fast. A figure stands framed in the garden arch. Black robes, gold trim. A bone-white pendant at his throat, shaped like a crescent fang. He doesn’t wear a path mark. Doesn’t need one.

Kier Stromyr.

I’ve only seen him from a distance before—one of the Stromyr bloodline, which makes him dangerous by default. The kind of dangerous that doesn’t have to raise a voice to flay you clean.

“Severed aren’t permitted here,” he says, almost cheerfully. “Though I suppose that only matters to those still clinging to rules.”

I stand. The manual disappears under my cloak.

“Didn’t realize broken fountains were regulated. ”

He smiles, thin and sharp. “Everything is regulated, if it’s worth watching.”

His gaze dips to my sleeve. Lingers.

“They say you walked out of the Severing like it blinked. Like something inside you decided it didn’t like being buried.”

The chain pulses once. I don’t flinch. But the heat behind my ribs says he’s not guessing.

“And what do you say?”

Kier smiles. “I say the temple doesn’t like questions it didn’t write down first. And you—” he steps closer “—look like a question waiting to become a catastrophe.”

He leaves the rest unsaid. But it hangs between us, taut as wire.

“If the chain speaks again,” he says, voice lower, “tell it we remember. Tell it the storm still has teeth.”

Then he turns, robes whispering across the moss. Gone.

My legs feel rooted. I sit again, slower this time. The garden hasn’t changed, but everything feels thinner. Like the world just learned I exist again, and it’s deciding what to do about it.

Another set of footsteps.

Lighter. Familiar.

Kellen.

He doesn’t announce himself. Just stands beside me without asking. The distance between us isn’t quite enough.

“Sky’s bruising,” he says after a long pause. “Storm coming.”

I nod.

“Stromyr was here,” he adds. “I saw him.”

I keep my eyes forward. “He didn’t touch me. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t answer. But his jaw ticks once—just enough to betray whatever thought he swallows .

His gaze slides to my wrist. A sliver of chain glints beneath the wrap.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he says.

I turn my head slowly. Let him see the heat rising up my throat. “Then stay.”

He does.

The space between us tightens like a drawn bowstring. The kind that doesn’t snap. Just hums with the threat of it.

We don’t speak.

His thigh brushes mine as he sits, not enough to be improper. Just enough to feel. His body radiates warmth like it always has—like fire just beneath the skin—but this close, it’s more than heat. It’s gravity. Pulling. Daring.

Somewhere above the temple, a low sound rolls through the sky—not thunder, not wind.

A roar, deep enough to rattle ribs. I know that sound.

Kiroth. His bonded dragon. I’ve only seen it once, but it left a mark I haven’t shaken since—wings like a stormfront, eyes like hammered gold, fire braided down its spine like it was born to burn the world clean.

Kellen tilts his head at the sound. Just once. No reaction but a flicker of recognition. He smiles—but not at the sky. At me. As if even that fire out there means nothing compared to what’s happening here, right now, between us.

His thigh brushes mine again, and I feel it—his heat, his restraint, his attention narrowing like a blade. Gods, I can’t tell if it’s him or the dragon watching. But I want both to see me break.

The chain stills. Not quiet—waiting. Beneath my ribs, something winds tighter, as if bracing for impact. My breath is steady. Too steady. My fingers press into my thigh to keep from moving. Reaching.

His arm shifts on the stone behind me. Barely. His wrist close enough now that I could lean back and graze it. Could tilt my head and feel that familiar warmth against my cheek. I don’t .

But I think about it.

“I shouldn’t be here,” I whisper, not because it’s a lie. But because I want him to disagree.

He doesn’t. He just looks at me with that war in his eyes. The one that always flickers right before he does something reckless.

His gaze drops. To my lips. My throat. My wrist—where the edge of the chain peeks from beneath the wrap like it’s testing the air.

He leans in, slow enough that I feel it first in my stomach.

My pulse kicks. Hard.

He’s so close I can taste his breath. Smoke. Salt. The faint bite of ashwater.

But he doesn’t close the space.

His voice is barely audible. “Freya—”

I don’t let him finish. Not with words. I turn just enough that my mouth almost brushes his.

Almost.

But I stop there.

Because I want him to be the one who breaks.

He doesn’t.

But gods, he wants to.

I feel it in the air before I see it—in the way his breath shortens, in the slow, deliberate stillness that says he’s fighting something with every muscle. His shoulders tense. His jaw locks like he’s biting down on a command he doesn’t trust himself to speak.

And worse, I want him to.

It coils low and sharp—heat curling in my belly, blooming behind my ribs, rising like a hunger I’ve never had permission to name.

My breath catches on the edge of it. Not just need.

Ache. The kind that makes my hands twitch and my skin feel too tight.

Like every inch of me is waiting for his mouth, his hands, his heat .

I want him desperate.

Not clean. Not careful.

I want the restraint to snap. I want him to stop pretending he’s golden. I want to taste the fire he keeps hidden in his throat and see if it burns worse than mine.

And gods, I want to be the reason he loses control.

But he doesn’t move.

He just watches.

Like he’s already touching me in every way that matters and holding back anyway.

And it makes me ravenous.

The air hums between us. The chain pulses once.

And then he pulls back. Just enough to break the spell.

“I’ll stay,” he says.

And he does. Silent. Still.

But when I shift beside him, just slightly, his hand brushes mine.

And he doesn’t pull away.

But neither of us breathes right for the rest of the night.