Page 93 of Kingdom of Ash

Aelin stiffened as he hauled one over, and set it beneath the foot of the metal table. A smaller brazier, its legs cut short for its bowl to hover barely above the ground.

He set the second brazier below the table’s center. The third at the head.

“We’ve played with your hands before,” Cairn said, straightening. Aelin began shaking, began tugging on the chains anchoring her arms above her head. His smile grew. “Let’s see how your entire body reacts to flame without your special little gift. Perhaps you’ll burn like the rest of us.”

Aelin yanked uselessly, her feet sliding against the still-cool metal.

Not like this—

Cairn reached into his pocket and withdrew some flint.

This wasn’t just a breaking of her body. But a breaking ofher—of the fire she’d come to love. To destroy the part of her that sang.

He’d melt her skin and bones until she feared the flame, until she hated it, as she hated those healers who had come again and again to repair her body, to hide what was real from what had been a dream.

Fenrys’s snarl rolled on, endless.

Cairn said mildly, “You can scream all you like, if it pleases you.”

The table would turn red-hot, and the scent of burning flesh would fill her nose, and she wouldn’t be able to stop it, stop him; she would sob in agony, as the burns went so deep, through skin and into bone—

The pressure in her body, her head, faded. It became secondary as Cairn fished a rolled pouch from his other pocket. He set it upon the swath of black velvet, and she could make out the indents of the slender tools inside. “For when heating the table grows boring,” he said, patting the tool kit. “I want to see how far the burns go inside your skin.”

Bile shot up her throat as he weighed the flint in his hands and stepped closer.

She began fraying then, who she was and had been melting away as her own body would soon melt when this table heated.

The hand she’d been dealt. It was the hand she had been dealt, and she would endure it. Even as a word took form on her tongue.

Please.

She tried to swallow it. Tried to keep it locked in as Cairn crouched beside the table, flint raised.

You do not yield.

You do not yield.

You do not yield.

“Wait.”

The word was a rasp.

Cairn paused. Rose from his crouch. “Wait?”

Aelin shook, her breathing ragged. “Wait.”

Cairn crossed his arms. “Do you have something you’d like to say at last?”

He’d let her promise anything to him, to Maeve. And then would still light those fires. Maeve would not hear of her yielding for days.

Aelin made herself meet his stare, her gauntlet-covered fingers pressing into the iron slab beneath her.

One last chance.

She’d seen the stars overhead. It was as great a gift as any she’d received, greater than the jewels and gowns and art she’d once coveted and amassed in Rifthold. The last gift she would receive, if she played the hand she’d been dealt. If she played him right.

To end this, end her. Before Maeve could put the Wyrdstone collar around her neck.

---