Kingdom of Ash
He didn’t so much as fight it when she wrapped her thin white hands around his neck. And snapped it.
Aelin screamed. Screamed, clutching at her chest, at the shredding mating bond—
Aelin arched off the altar, and every broken and torn part of her body screamed with her.
Above her, Maeve was smiling. “You liked that vision, didn’t you?”
Not real. That had not been real. Rowan was alive, he was alive—
She tried to move her arm. Red-hot lightning lashed her, and she screamed again.
Only a broken rasp came out. Broken, just as her arm now lay—
Now lay—
Bone gleamed, jutting upward along more places than she could count. Blood and twisted skin, and—
No shackle scars, even with the wreckage.
In this world, this place, she did not have scars, either.
Another illusion, another spun dreamscape—
She screamed again. Screamed at her ruined arm, the unscarred skin, screamed at the lingering echo of the severed mating bond.
“Do you know what pains me most, Aelin?” Maeve’s words were soft as a lover’s. “It’s that you believe I’m the villain in this.”
Aelin sobbed through her teeth as she tried and failed to move her arm. Both arms. She cast her gaze through the space, this real-yet-not room.
They’d repaired the box. Had welded a new slab of iron over the lid. Then over the sides. The bottom. Less air trickled in, the hours or days now spent inside in near-suffocating heat. It had been a relief when she’d finally been chained to the altar.
Whenever that had been. If it had even happened at all.
“I have no doubt that your mate or Elena or even Brannon himself filled your head with lies about what I’ll do with the keys.” Maeve ran a hand over the stone lip of the altar, right through her splattered blood and shards of bone. “I meant what I said. I like this world. I do not wish to destroy it. Only improve it. Imagine a realm where there is no hunger, no pain. Isn’t that what you and your cohorts are fighting for? A better world?”
The words were a mockery. A mockery of what she’d promised so many. What she had promised Terrasen, and still owed it.
Aelin tried not to shift against the chains, against her broken arms, against the tight pressure pushing on her skin from the inside. A rising intensity along her bones, in her head. A little more, every day.
Maeve heaved a small sigh. “I know what you think of me, Fire-Bringer. What you assume. But there are some truths that cannot be shared. Even for the keys.”
Yet the growing strain cracking within her, smothering the pain … perhaps worse.
Maeve cupped her cheek over the mask. “The Queen Who Was Promised. I wish to save you from that sacrifice, offered up by a headstrong girl.” A soft laugh. “I’d even let you have Rowan. The two of you here, together. While you and I work to save this world.”
The words were lies. She knew it, though she couldn’t quite remember where one truth ended and the lie began. If her mate had belonged to another before her. Been given away. Or had that been the nightmare?
Gods, the pressure in her body. Her blood.
You do not yield.
“You can feel it, even now,” Maeve went on. “The urge of your body to say yes.” Aelin opened her eyes, and confusion must have glittered there, because Maeve smiled. “Do you know what being encased in iron does to a magic-wielder? You wouldn’t feel it immediately, but as time goes on … your magic needs release, Aelin. That pressure is your magic screaming it wants you to come free of these chains and release the strain. Your very blood tells you to heed me.”
Truth. Not the submission part, but the deepening pressure she knew would be worse than any pain from burnout. She’d felt it once, when plunging as far into her power as she’d ever gone.
That would be nothing compared to this.
“I am leaving for a few days,” Maeve said.
Aelin stilled.
Maeve shook her head in a mockery of disappointment. “You are not progressing as quickly as I wished, Aelin.”
Across the room, Fenrys let out a warning snarl. Maeve didn’t so much as glance at him.
“It has come to my attention that our mutual enemy has been spotted again on these shores. One of them, a Valg prince, was contained a few days’ journey from here, near the southern border. It brought with it several collars, no doubt to use on my own people. Perhaps even on me.”
No. No—
Maeve brushed a hand over Aelin’s neck, as if tracing a line where the collar would go. “So I will go myself to retrieve that collar, to see what Erawan’s minion might say for itself. I ripped apart the Valg princes who encountered me in the first war,” she said quietly. “It shall be rather easy, I suppose, to instead bend them to my will. Well, bend one to my will and wrest it from Erawan’s control, once I put its collar around your neck.”
No.
The word was a steady chant, a rising shriek within her.
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” Maeve mused.
No.
Maeve poked Aelin’s shattered wrist, and Aelin swallowed her scream. “Think on it. And when I return, let’s discuss my proposition again. Maybe all that growing strain will make you see more clearly, too.”
A collar. Maeve was going to retrieve a Wyrdstone collar—
Maeve turned, black gown swirling with her. She crossed the threshold, and her owl swooped from its perch atop the open door to land upon her shoulder. “I’m sure Cairn will find ways to entertain you while I’m away.”
She didn’t know how long she lay on the altar after the healers swept in with their sweet-smelling smoke. They’d put the metal gauntlets back on her.
With each hour, the pressure beneath her skin grew. Even in that heavy, drugged sleep. As if once she’d acknowledged it, it wouldn’t be ignored. Or contained.
It would be the least of her problems, if Maeve put a collar around her neck.
Fenrys sat by the wall, concern bright in his eyes as he blinked. Are you all right?
She blinked twice. No.
No, she was not anywhere near to all right. Maeve had been waiting for this, waiting for this pressure to begin, worse than anything Cairn might do. And with the collar Maeve now went to personally retrieve …
She couldn’t let herself contemplate it. A more horrific form of slavery, one she might never escape, never be able to fight. Not a breaking of the Fire-Bringer, but an erasure.
To take all she was, power and knowledge, and rip it from her. To have her trapped inside while she witnessed her own voice yield the location of the Wyrdkeys. Swear the blood oath to Maeve. Wholly submit to her.
Fenrys blinked four times. I am here, I am with you.
She answered in kind. I am here, I am with you.
Her magic surged, seeking a way out, filling the gaps between her breath and bones. She couldn’t find room for it, couldn’t do anything to soothe it.
You do not yield.
She focused on the words. On her mother’s voice.
Perhaps the magic would devour her from the inside before Maeve returned.
But she did not know how she’d endure it. Endure another few days of this, let alone the next hour. To ease the strain, just a fraction …
She shut down the thoughts that snaked into her mind. Her own or Maeve’s, she didn’t care.