Kingdom of Ash

Aelin swallowed once. Twice. The portrait of uncertain fear as she lay chained on the metal table, Cairn waiting for her answer.

And then she said, her voice cracking, “When you finish breaking me apart for the day, how does it feel to know that you are still nothing?”

Cairn grinned. “Some fire left in you, it seems. Good.”

She smiled back through the mask. “You were only given the oath for this. For me. Without me, you’re nothing. You’ll go back to being nothing. Less than nothing, from what I’ve heard.”

Cairn’s fingers tightened around the flint. “Keep talking, bitch. Let’s see where it gets you.”

A rasping laugh broke from her. “The guards talk when you’re gone, you know. They forget I’m Fae, too. Can hear like you.”

Cairn said nothing.

“At least they agree with me on one front. You’re spineless. Have to tie up people to hurt them because it makes you feel like a male.” Aelin gave a pointed glance between his legs. “Inadequate in the ways that count.”

A tremor went through him. “Would you like me to show you how inadequate I am?”

Aelin huffed another laugh, haughty and cool, and gazed toward the ceiling, toward the lightening sky. The last she’d see, if she played this right.

There had always been another, a spare, to take her place should she fail. That her death would mean Dorian’s, would send those hateful gods to demand his life to forge the Lock … It was no strange thing, to hate herself for it. She’d failed enough people, failed Terrasen, that the additional weight barely landed. She wouldn’t have much longer to feel it anyway.

So she drawled toward the sky, the stars, “Oh, I know there’s not much worth seeing in that regard, Cairn. And you’re not enough of a male to be able to use it without someone screaming, are you?” At his silence, she smirked. “I thought so. I dealt with plenty of your ilk at the Assassins’ Guild. You’re all the same.”

A deep snarl.

Aelin only chuckled and adjusted her body, as if getting comfortable. “Go ahead, Cairn. Do your worst.”

Fenrys let out a warning whine.

She waited, waited, maintaining the smirk, the looseness in her limbs.

A hand slammed into her gut, hard enough she bowed around it, the air vanishing from her.

Then another blow, to her ribs, a cry rasping from her. Fenrys barked.

Locks clicked, unlocking. Hot breath tickled her ear as she was yanked up, off the table. “Maeve’s orders might hold me at bay, bitch, but let’s see how much you talk after this.”

Her chained legs failed to get under her before Cairn gripped the back of her head and slammed her face into the edge of the metal table.

Stars burst, blinding and agonizing, as metal on metal on bone cracked through her. She stumbled, falling back, her chained feet sending her sprawling.

Fenrys barked again, frantic and raging.

But Cairn was there, gripping her hair so tightly her eyes watered, and she cried out once more as he dragged her across the floor toward that great, burning brazier.

He hauled her up by her hair and shoved her masked face forward. “Let’s see how you mock me now.”

The heat instantly singed her, the flames licking so close to her skin. Oh gods, oh gods, the heat of it—

The mask warmed on her face, the chains along her body with it.

Despite herself, her plans, she shoved back, but Cairn held her firm. Pushed her toward the fire as her body strained, fighting for any pocket of cool air.

“I’m going to melt your face so badly even the healers won’t be able to fix you,” he breathed in her ear, bearing down, her limbs starting to wobble, the heat scorching her skin, the chains and mask.

He shoved her an inch closer to the flame.

Aelin’s foot slid back, between his braced legs. Now. It had to be now—

“Enjoy the fire-breathing,” he hissed, and she let him shove her another inch lower. Let him get off balance, just a fraction, as she slammed her body not up, but back into him, her foot hooking around his ankle as he staggered.

Aelin whirled, smashing her shoulder into his chest. Cairn crashed to the ground.

She ran—or tried to. With the chains at her feet, on her legs, she could barely walk, but she stumbled past him, knowing he was already twisting, already rising up.

Run—

Cairn’s hands wrapped around her calves and yanked. She went down, teeth singing as they slammed against the mask, drawing blood from her lip.

Then he was over her, raining blows on her head, her neck, her chest.

She couldn’t dislodge him, her muscles so drained from disuse, despite the healers keeping the atrophying at bay. Couldn’t flip him, either, though she tried.

Cairn fumbled behind them—for an iron poker, heating in the brazier.

Aelin thrashed, trying to get her hands up and over his head, to loop those chains around his neck. But they’d been hooked to the irons at her sides, down her back.

Fenrys’s snarling barks rang out. Cairn’s hand fumbled again for the poker. Missed.

Cairn glanced behind him to grab the poker, daring to take his eyes off her for a heartbeat.

Aelin didn’t hesitate. She rammed her head upward and slammed her masked face into Cairn’s head.

He knocked back, and she lunged toward the tent flaps.

He had more restraint than she’d estimated.

He wouldn’t kill her, and what she’d done just now, provoking him—

She’d barely made it out of her crouch when Cairn’s hands gripped her hair again.

When he hurled her with all his strength against the chest of drawers.

Aelin hit it with a crack that echoed through her body.

Something in her side snapped and she cried out, the sound small and broken, as she collided with the floor.

Fenrys had seen his twin drive a knife through his heart. Had watched Connall bleed out onto the tiles and die. And had then been ordered to kneel before Maeve in that very blood as she’d bade him to attend her.

He’d sat in a stone room for two months, witness to what they’d done to a young queen’s body, her spirit. Had been unable to help her as she’d screamed and screamed. He’d never stop hearing those screams.

But it was the sound that came out of her as Cairn hurled her into the chest of drawers where Fenrys had watched him arranging his tools, the sound she made as she hit the floor, that shattered him entirely.

A small sound. Quiet. Hopeless.

He’d never heard it from her, not once.

Cairn got to his feet and wiped his bloodied, broken nose.

Aelin Galathynius stirred, trying to rise onto her forearms.

Cairn pulled the red-hot poker from the brazier. He pointed it at her like a sword.

Fenrys strained against his invisible bindings as Aelin glanced at him, toward where he’d sat for the past two days, in that same damned spot by the tent wall.

Despair shone in her eyes.

True despair, without light or hope. The sort of despair that wished for death. The sort of despair that began to erode strength, to eat away at any resolve to endure.

She blinked at him. Four times. I am here, I am with you.

Fenrys knew it for what it was. The final message. Not before death, but before the sort of breaking that no one would walk away from. Before Maeve returned with the Wyrdstone collar.

Cairn rotated the poker in his hands, heat rippling off its point.

And Fenrys couldn’t allow it.

He couldn’t allow it. In his shredded soul, in what was left of him after all he’d been forced to see and do, he couldn’t allow it.

The blood oath kept his limbs planted. A dark chain that ran into his soul.

He would not allow it. That final breaking.

He pushed upward against the bond’s dark chain, screaming, though no sound came from his open maw.

He pushed and pushed and pushed against those invisible chains, against that blood-sworn order to obey, to stay down, to watch.

He defied it. All that the blood oath was.

Pain lanced through him, into his very core.

He blocked it out as Cairn pointed the smoldering poker at the young queen with a heart of wildfire.

He would not allow it.

Snarling, the male inside him thrashing, Fenrys bellowed at the dark chain binding him.

He shredded into it, biting and tearing with every scrap of defiance he possessed.

Let it kill him, wreck him. He would not serve. Not another heartbeat. He would not obey.

He would not obey.

And slowly, Fenrys got to his feet.

Pain shuddered Aelin as she lay sprawled, panting, arms straining to hold her head and chest off the ground.

It was not Cairn and the poker she stared at.

But Fenrys, rising upward, his body rippling with tremors of pain, snout wrinkled in rage.

Even Cairn halted. Looked toward the white wolf. “Stand down.”

Fenrys snarled, deep and vicious. And still he struggled to his feet.

Cairn pointed the poker at the rug. “Lie down. That is an order from your queen.”

Fenrys spasmed, his hackles lifting. But he was standing.

Standing.

Despite the order, despite the blood oath’s commands.

Get up.

From far away, the words sounded.

Cairn roared, “Lie down!”

Fenrys’s head thrashed from side to side, his body bucking against invisible chains. Against an invisible oath.

His dark eyes met Cairn’s.

Blood began running from the wolf’s nostril.

It’d kill him—to sever the oath. It would break his soul. His body would go soon after that.

But Fenrys put one paw forward. His claws dug into the ground.

Cairn’s face paled at that step. That impossible step.

Fenrys’s eyes slid toward hers. Neither needed the silent code between them for the word she beheld in his gaze. The order and plea.

Run.

Cairn read the word, too.

And he hissed, “Not with a shattered spine, she can’t,” before he brought the poker slamming down for Aelin’s back.

With a roar, Fenrys leaped.

And with it, he snapped the blood oath completely.