Page 110 of She Who Was Severed

The door creaks again. No knock. No preamble.

Owen walks in holding two mugs of something steaming and mildly threatening. He’s wearing a robe that might’ve been white once. There’s a smear of ink across his cheek and the kind of smirk people don’t survive long in polite society.

He sets the mugs on the table with more ceremony than required. Then, gently, he places a single match between them. “Tea,” he says, too brightly. “And, presumably, whatever’s left of your dignity. Though I doubt either of you have any left to spare.”

He glances at Kellen’s sleeping form, then at me. Winks. “Busy day ahead, my radiant troublemakers. Drink up. Try to hydrate.”

And he’s gone. No explanation. Just robes flaring, voice trailing into silence like he’s announcing a wedding rather than delivering the aftermath of vengeance and sex.

Kellen shifts behind me. His hand slides up my waist like he’s waking with his whole body, not just his mind.

“You’re awake,” I murmur.

He doesn’t open his eyes. Just lets out a low sound—half breath, half acknowledgment—and tugs me gently back into him.

I reach for one of the mugs. The ceramic burns my fingers. I hold it anyway. The heat is good. Familiar. Like the press of his chest behind me. Like the Chain curled between us, no longer binding—just there.

He noses into the space behind my ear. Breath warm. Mouth soft. His hand slides up my thigh under the sheet, slow but certain, and I don’t stop him. I don’t even breathe.

We don’t talk.

We don’t need to.

He’s already hard. I’m already aching. There’s no ceremony to it. No build. Just the rhythm of bodies that already know the shape of each other, moving in sync without asking permission.

It’s fast. Quiet. A shared inhale in the space between storms.

When it’s over, we don’t move. We don’t have to.

The match is still on the table. The mugs still steam.

And the morning is just beginning.

Chapter 15

Kier

The world tastes like blood and bone ash.

It’s in my teeth. Behind my eyes. Lodged somewhere between my lungs and the hollow where my voice used to live. I don’t open them yet—my eyes—because I already know what’s left. Not ruin. That was always the price. But silence. If they’re all gone—if no one survived to witness what crawled out of the flames—then this was just noise. Noise dies. I won’t.

The breath I drag is thick and sour, like smoke filtered through rot. It cuts on the way in, oil-slick and ragged, and still I take it. Because pain means I’m not ash yet.

I was supposed to die in that chamber.

That was the plan. Dragonfire doesn’t miss. It consumes, sears, erases. Burn the throne, burn the law, burn me with it. Make a martyr out of madness. Make sure no one lives to challenge the rewrite.

But I am not gone.

I open my eyes.

Light stabs through the collapsed rafters overhead, smoke threading the gaps like it’s too afraid to rise. The air hangs thick—choked brown with soot, veined green where old glyphs tried to hold. Blood mist catches the light in bursts, turning the broken floor red, then darker. Nothing stands. Not truly. The dais is split open like a jawbone. The Tribunal seal has half-melted into the far wall, warped and screaming.

I am the only thing still upright.

I move to sit, and the left side of my body protests with the wet slap of skin pulling free from stone. Burned. Partial. Some places down to tendon. The back of my thigh rips free first, then my ribs. I grunt. Not pain—confirmation. I’m still inside it.

I brace. Roll to my elbow. There’s no glory in it, just the slow mechanics of survival. Every nerve lights up in delayed agony as I plant my right foot, press to stand. One knee gives and locks again. I hold. Not proud. Just vertical. Ash spills from my shoulders like black sand shaken loose from a corpse.