Page 99 of She Who Was Severed

We rise into smoke, heat trailing off her wings in slow spirals. Below, the Inner Quarter glows.

What’s left of it.

The towers look like ribs now. Hollow. Charred. Split wide.

I don’t look back.

I just breathe.

Because they wanted a traitor.

Now they have one.

Chapter 13

Ash clings to the rafters like it’s still deciding whether to settle. Every breath tastes of soot and splintered wood. The beams above us are half-collapsed, bowed in the middle like they lost the argument with something bigger than time. The stone walls hold, barely, but the corners flake when the wind pushes too hard. I don’t think this place was meant to last. I’m not sure I was either.

Vale found it. Dragged us here after. Didn’t speak, just pushed the door open and waited while I stumbled inside. Now she’s against the far wall, one leg stretched, other bent, knife balanced loose across her thigh like she forgot it’s still in her hand. She watches the door like there’s something left to guard. Like it still matters if we survive the night.

I sit in the corner. Not because it’s strategic. Because I couldn’t keep my legs under me long enough to argue. My muscles twitch like they’ve forgotten how to follow orders. Every signal has a lag. Like I’m shouting down a tunnel and hoping something answers back.

The Chain isn’t gone.

But it’s not here, either.

It’s quiet in the way a wound goes numb. No hum. No pulse. Just that ache at the base of the spine where something used to be, and the silence it leaves behind when it waits too long to return. I press my fingers to the inside of my wrist anyway, just to be sure. Right where the link usually pulses. I dig in.

Nothing.

So I press harder. Past skin. Past bruise. Until I hit bone. Still nothing.

He signed it.

The thought drips in again, same as before. Familiar now. Not dulled—just worn. Like a shard I keep rotating in my palm to see if the edge still cuts.

He signed it.

I don’t know how many times I’ve thought it. Enough to lose count. Not enough to stop it from hitting like new.

They used him.

I say it this time. Not loud. Just enough to push the pain into a different shape. Like if I say it enough, maybe it won’t feel like a betrayal. Maybe it’ll feel like strategy.

He used me.

That one doesn’t come easy. It lodges halfway. It’s not a truth yet. Just a bruise. A fear I’m not ready to measure.

My hands start shaking. That’s what makes me angry—not the fear. The proof that I’m still hoping. That some part of me is still stupid enough to flinch toward the idea that this was anything but what it was.

I clench my fists. Hard. Harder than I mean to.

Don’t cry.

Crying means I still believe he didn’t mean it.

Crying means I loved someone who—

“Freya.”