Page 83 of She Who Was Severed

I reach for the lacquered box beside me. It’s small. Cherrywood. Immaculate. Inside: five instruments. Two surgical. One ancient. One symbolic. One mine.

I remove the third. A bone needle, polished to a shine. It once belonged to a priest who tried to silence the gods. It didn’t work. I use it because it remembers failure.

Ash-Rag’s breathing stutters.

“I don’t want what you know,” I say conversationally. “I want what you can’t stop remembering. You think your silence is a gift. That you’re protecting someone. But silence,” I raise the needle, “is just truth with a tourniquet.”

The first puncture goes under the nail of his left thumb. Clean. Precise. His scream is ragged, but not full.

I let him scream. Let him feel it. Not because it hurts—but because it names him.

“You were with her,” I murmur. “The girl. Freya Thorne. Ashenborn. You saw her before she fully knew what she was.”

He says nothing.

So I slide the needle into the webbing between his fingers.

He jerks. The chains respond with a slow, mechanical pull. Designed to reward resistance with injury. A beautiful system, really. One I had purpose built after a winter of failures.

“She had the manual,” I continue. “The real one. Not the Council’s redacted nonsense. How did she get it?”

Still nothing.

So I break his pinky.

Slowly.

There’s a scream this time. Short. Pitiful. I hold his gaze until it stops.

“Tell me where she is.”

His throat works. Blood slicks his teeth. “Aur… Aurelle. In Caelith. She… she’s hiding under another name.”

I strike him across the jaw with an open palm. Not hard. But contemptuous.

“You were doing so well,” I sigh. “But lies bore me.”

He spits.

It lands near my boot.

I nod once, then reach into the box and remove the next instrument: a thin silver spike, engraved tip to hilt. It’s not metal. Not really. Something older. Something banned. One touch to the spine, and the body forgets its name.

“I’m not cruel,” I say softly. “I’m correct.”

Ash-Rag is sobbing now. Not because of pain. Because he’s realizing this isn’t pain yet.

I kneel. Press the tip to his sternum.

His words come like bile. “There’s a place—black market—near the Wanehold. Where the severed go.”

I wait.

He gasps. “Ash… Ashmere.”

Ah.

Now we’re speaking truth.