heat of it—
The mask warmed on her face, the chains along her body with it.
Despite herself, her plans, she shoved back, but Cairn held her firm. Pushed her toward the fire as her body strained, fighting for any pocket of cool air.
“I’m going to melt your face so badly even the healers won’t be able to fix you,” he breathed in her ear, bearing down, her limbs starting to wobble, the heat scorching her skin, the chains and mask.
He shoved her an inch closer to the flame.
Aelin’s foot slid back, between his braced legs. Now. It had to be now—
“Enjoy the fire-breathing,” he hissed, and she let him shove her another inch lower. Let him get off balance, just a fraction, as she slammed her body not up, but back into him, her foot hooking around his ankle as he staggered.
Aelin whirled, smashing her shoulder into his chest. Cairn crashed to the ground.
She ran—or tried to. With the chains at her feet, on her legs, she could barely walk, but she stumbled past him, knowing he was already twisting, already rising up.
Run—
Cairn’s hands wrapped around her calves and yanked. She went down, teeth singing as they slammed against the mask, drawing blood from her lip.
Then he was over her, raining blows on her head, her neck, her chest.
She couldn’t dislodge him, her muscles so drained from disuse, despite the healers keeping the atrophying at bay. Couldn’t flip him, either, though she tried.
Cairn fumbled behind them—for an iron poker, heating in the brazier.
Aelin thrashed, trying to get her hands up and over his head, to loop those chains around his neck. But they’d been hooked to the irons at her sides, down her back.
Fenrys’s snarling barks rang out. Cairn’s hand fumbled again for the poker. Missed.
Cairn glanced behind him to grab the poker, daring to take his eyes off her for a heartbeat.
Aelin didn’t hesitate. She rammed her head upward and slammed her masked face into Cairn’s head.
He knocked back, and she lunged toward the tent flaps.
He had more restraint than she’d estimated.
He wouldn’t kill her, and what she’d done just now, provoking him—
She’d barely made it out of her crouch when Cairn’s hands gripped her hair again.
When he hurled her with all his strength against the chest of drawers.
Aelin hit it with a crack that echoed through her body.
Something in her side snapped and she cried out, the sound small and broken, as she collided with the floor.
Fenrys had seen his twin drive a knife through his heart. Had watched Connall bleed out onto the tiles and die. And had then been ordered to kneel before Maeve in that very blood as she’d bade him to attend her.
He’d sat in a stone room for two months, witness to what they’d done to a young queen’s body, her spirit. Had been unable to help her as she’d screamed and screamed. He’d never stop hearing those screams.
But it was the sound that came out of her as Cairn hurled her into the chest of drawers where Fenrys had watched him arranging his tools, the sound she made as she hit the floor, that shattered him entirely.
A small sound. Quiet. Hopeless.
He’d never heard it from her, not once.
Cairn got to his feet and wiped his bloodied, broken nose.
Aelin Galathynius stirred, trying to rise onto her forearms.
Cairn pulled the red-hot poker from the brazier. He pointed it at her like a sword.
Fenrys strained against his invisible bindings as Aelin glanced at him, toward where he’d sat for the past two days, in that same damned spot by the tent wall.
Despair shone in her eyes.
True despair, without light or hope. The sort of despair that wished for death. The sort of despair that began to erode strength, to eat away at any resolve to endure.
She blinked at him. Four times. I am here, I am with you.
Fenrys knew it for what it was. The final message. Not before death, but before the sort of breaking that no one would walk away from. Before Maeve returned with the Wyrdstone collar.
Cairn rotated the poker in his hands, heat rippling off its point.
And Fenrys couldn’t allow it.
He couldn’t allow it. In his shredded soul, in what was left of him after all he’d been forced to see and do, he couldn’t allow it.
The blood oath kept his limbs planted. A dark chain that ran into his soul.
He would not allow it. That final breaking.
He pushed upward against the bond’s dark chain, screaming, though no sound came from his