Page 77 of She Who Was Severed

Chapter 10

Kellen

The door closes behind me with a sound I don’t like—soft, deliberate, final. Like someone took care to make it feel like it wasn’t a cell, while still making damn sure I couldn’t walk back out.

Stone walls. No chains. No window. No sigils humming under the floor. Just a room stripped of distraction. Meant for waiting. For quiet unraveling.

I sit.

Not because I want to, but because the longer I stand, the more it feels like I’m bracing for a fight I’m not going to give them. They’d like that—something to write down. Dragonblood unstable. Emotional. Threat level increased.

I lean forward, elbows on knees, and keep my breath slow. My bond doesn’t like it. He’s pacing already. Coiled just behind my thoughts, heat simmering at the base of my spine like it’s waiting for a signal I refuse to send.

Stay down.

I don’t say it aloud. Don’t need to. He hears it anyway. Doesn’t like it.

Neither do I.

The guards hadn’t said much. A polite request. A quiet escort. Council business, they said. Nothing to worry about. The sort of tone that only gets used when something is very much worth worrying about. They hadn’t even brought cuffs. Didn’t need to. The walls here do the work. This room is warded—too subtle to see, too old to feel until you try to push. Which I won’t.

Not yet.

The dragon growls low. Not rage. Not yet. More like… disapproval. Like I’m wasting time sitting still. He thinks I should burn the door down, force answers, leave ash behind and call it strategy.

I think I’ll wait.

Let them talk first.

Let them reveal what they think they know.

The lock ticks. Not loudly. Enough to send a shift through the air.

A woman enters. Robes like ink. Clean hands. Eyes tired. She doesn’t introduce herself, which means she expects me to already know who she is. I don’t. Which means she’s from my father’s circle. Or someone he’s hoping I’ll underestimate.

She sits across from me. No preamble.

“We need to talk about Freya Thorne.”

The dragon stirs so fast I flinch.

She notices. Of course she does. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t lean in, doesn’t soften the blow. Just places a thin folder on the table and slides it forward an inch.

“We know she’s alive. We know she escaped. And we know you helped her.”

I say nothing.

She doesn’t expect me to. Not really. This isn’t the real interrogation. This is the pressure phase. The soft edge.

She opens the folder.

The first page is a priest’s written testimony, marked with temple seal and dated two weeks ago. He describes a girl seen near the eastern gate, her wrist flickering with a glow “like chain-forged iron catching fire.” Said she didn’t run. Just stared.

The next is from a merchant caravan leader—scratched out in hurried ink on trade parchment. “Thin girl. Limped. Stole a blade off my stand. Left coin behind. Chain shimmered at the wrist when she moved. I didn’t ask questions.”

The last one’s worse. Old, smudged, unsigned. “Saw it in the ruins. Not the Chain that frightened us. It was how still she stood while it burned.”

She places the page flat between us and taps it with her index finger. “You’re protecting a threat.”