Page 94 of She Who Was Severed

This wasn’t interference.

This was constructed.

They fed her to a strike team and wrapped the blade in my name. Dressed betrayal in ink and legal formality and called it justice.

Steam curls off my shoulders.

My hands are too hot to touch the desk anymore. The edge blackens where my fingers rest.

She’ll think I chose this.

She’ll think I aimed it.

She’ll think I let them.

A growl builds in my throat and doesn’t stop. The dragon presses against my ribs, my spine, my lungs. Every breath feeds it.

A ward glyph on the far wall flares and dies. Another sparks—then cracks. Something in the ceiling whines. I don’t look.

The bond is done hiding.

I cross the study in five steps and shove open the balcony doors.

Wind slams into my chest. Cold. Pointless. The heat doesn’t break. It spreads.

I step into the night and the air ripples around me. The balcony railing hisses where my hand touches it. Stone blackens under my bare feet.

“She trusted me,” I say aloud, but my voice doesn’t sound right. Too deep. Burned from the inside.

“They made it look like I handed her over.”

My skin steams. My back glows faint orange where the dragon marks thread under the surface. Breath comes fast now. Not because I’m winded.

Because I’m done holding it in.

“They wanted a traitor?” I say, louder now.

I don’t shout.

I ignite.

Flame bursts across my shoulders, wraps down both arms. The balcony stone fractures under me. I step up. One foot on the rail.

My dragon comes.

I leap.

- x -

Freya

Ashmere smells wrong before it breaks.

The market’s bones still carry the usual stink—burned resin, blooded sweat, too many people pretending they aren’t desperate. But today it’s pinned under a kind of stillness that doesn’t belong. No shouting. No back-alley gamblers. Even the hawkers are quiet. The air feels like it’s waiting to tighten.

I slow down. No reason. No trigger. Just instinct. The mist clings close to the ground, slicking the cobbles and softening sound. My boots land louder than they should.

The stall wall near the spice vendor should have the mark. Red chalk, shaped like a fang—one of Vale’s signals. Instead I see only soot. And a single dark smear that’s dried too clean to be fresh.