Page 152 of A Kingdom of Shadow and Ash

Ash exhaled through his nose. ‘What must I do to b-break it?’ The queen’s face lit with desperate hope. But Alina knew—she knew—that Ash had asked not out of belief, but in an effort to soothe their mother’s hysteria. If there was something simple he could do to ease her mind, he would do it.

But the queen’s answer was anything but simple.

‘You must stab Mal Blackburn in the heart.’

Silence. A deafening, soul-crushing silence.

Colour drained from Ash’s golden face, his features carved from stone. Alina felt her own stomach lurch violently, bile rising at the words their mother had so carelessly uttered.

She wanted him to kill Mal?

Ash’s body went rigid before he forced himself to stand, gritting his teeth against the pain that shot through him. Whether it was from his wounds or from the horror in his mother’s words, Alina could not tell.

The queen reached for him, her fingers curling around his wrist like a lifeline.‘Ash, my sweet boy, listen to me.’

‘Do. Not. Touch. Me.’

The voice that tore from Ash’s lips was something else entirely. A growl, a snarl, a warning forged in molten fury.

Alina flinched.

She had seen her brother angry before. She had seen his temper burn bright and unforgiving. But this… this was different.

His golden eyes, once warm as the sun, burnt with something lethal.

With rage.

‘Please try to understand…’ Queen Cyra’s voice trembled, fraying at the edges like a tapestry left too long in the sun. Alina had never seen her mother like this before—this was not the queen of ice and precision, not the woman who orchestrated her world with ruthless efficiency. This was someone unmoored, unraveling before their very eyes.

‘I set everything into motion for this,’ the queen continued, her tone sharp as a blade. ‘Do you truly believe your father was the mastermind behind the oath marriage? That it was done in some noble attempt to unify the kingdoms?’ She let out a hollow laugh, bitter and humourless. ‘I couldn’t care less about the other kingdoms or unity! It was done for one reason and onereason alone—so that girl could come here, and you could drive a dagger through her damned heart.’

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Alina swore she saw Ash's hand twitch—as if, for the briefest of moments, he had considered striking the woman who had given him life. His fury was a living, breathing thing, a tempest contained only by sheer force of will. But though he did not raise a hand, his body shook with such unrestrained rage that Alina half-expected him to lash out and shatter the room around them. His chest rose and fell in great, heaving breaths, each one rattling against his injured ribs.

And then, without a word, he turned.

To leave. To escape.

But Alina caught his arm, her fingers light against his burning skin.

The storm of fury in his golden eyes shifted then, narrowing towards her, sharpening. For a fleeting second, it seemed as though he might tear his arm away. But then, after a heartbeat’s hesitation, something softened—just barely, a breath of restraint over a raging inferno.

‘Perhaps we should listen,’ Alina whispered, voice cautious but firm. ‘Listening does not imply agreeing to any of it. But she was right about the witches, she warned me about them and I did not believe her.’

‘I am n-not k-killing Mal.’ Ash’s voice was like distant thunder, heavy with barely contained wrath. His words, slow and deliberate, were not spoken to Alina but thrown like a gauntlet at the queen. ‘If it m-means that I d-die, then I s-shall die in honour of my wi-wife.’

The queen exhaled sharply, pressing a hand to her temple as though trying to quell the chaos within her mind. Alina knew that gesture well. Her mother had suffered from headachesfor as long as she could remember, sometimes so severe they left her confined to her chambers for days.

Was this one of those times? Or was it something else?

‘Mother,’ Alina said, cautious. ‘How do you even know the curse is real?’

For the first time since they had entered, Queen Cyra faltered.

She sank onto the edge of the bed, her spine curving inward, her gaze distant—lost in something only she could see. And when she finally spoke, her voice was quiet. ‘The headaches,’ she said. ‘They have been with me since I was a child. But they are not merely headaches. They are something more. I have hidden the truth from the world for years, but I have listened to them—to what they whisper to me. And since the day Ash was born, they have shown me his fate. They have shown me what will happen if the curse is not broken.’

Alina’s blood ran cold.

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