ASHBOUND

Chapter Six — Everything My Father Built

The throne room of the Ember Spire wasn’t gold. That surprised me. I’d spent my whole cold life imagining gold — the rich and their banked light, their bought years — and instead the heart of all that wealth was black. Black iron, black glass, walls that seemed to drink the little fire the braziers gave, so even the flames looked like they were being slowly swallowed.

At the far end, on a seat of fused cinder, sat the Ashking.

He had Castien’s face. That was the first cruelty of him. The same hard jaw, the same banked-gold eyes, aged into something patient and cold-blooded. He watched his son cross the long black floor with a wick at his side, and he did not look surprised, and that — the not being surprised — told me everything before he opened his mouth.

“You felt the crown-fire move,” Castien said. No bow. I noticed that.

“I felt my son’s fire walk into a gutter girl and light her up like a festival,” the Ashking said mildly. His eyes slid at me, slowly, pricing me like a horse,

“Elowen Vane’s daughter. You have her exact look of being about to do something unforgivable. She did, in the end.” A thin smile.

“So we burned her.”

I gave him nothing. It cost me more than he’ll ever know.

“You knew what I was before I did,” I said.

“You’ve known since I was born.”

“Of course.” He laced his fingers.

“Your kind aren’t a curse. That’s the story we sell the faithful, and stories are cheaper than chains. The truth is your kind are the one thing that can unmake us. So we hunt the channels young. We burn the dangerous ones.” His eyes moved to his son.

“And the rare time one slips the net and lives to bloom — we leash her.”

Beside me, Castien went rigid. I felt the horror flood down the bond into my own chest, cold and sick.

“The bond wasn’t an accident,” I said.

“Accidents are for the unprepared.” He looked at Castien almost fondly.

“Why do you think I sent the heir to a common tithing? I’ve had Wardens watching for Elowen’s girl for sixteen years. The instant my son reported a flame that turned in a Warden’s hand, I knew. And I’d already made certain the nearest open fire in that square belonged to the one man whose life I could chain hers to.” He smiled at his son like he’d done him a favor.

“A wick who wakes to her power is a catastrophe. A wick who dies the moment she’s truly used — because her life is knotted to my obedient heir — is merely a tool.”

I will remember the sound Castien made for the rest of my life. Very quiet. The sound of a man learning that the one true thing he found had been set on the table for him like a knife and fork.

And then — worse.

Because I felt the next thought hit him before he said it, felt it land in his chest and c***k something, and through the bond it cracked something in me too. He turned to me. Stricken.

“Sorrel. If my father arranged all of it. If he put us in that square. Then everything I feel for you—” his voice broke

“—I don’t even know if it’s mine. If it’s real, or if it’s just the cord he tied.”

And there it was. The cruelest thing the Ashking did all night, and he didn’t even have to say it. He’d poisoned the one warm thing either of us had ever had. Now neither of us could trust it. I opened my mouth. I didn’t know what I was going to say. I never got to say it.

The great doors boomed open. A grey coat fell to one knee, gasping.

“Majesty — the Grand Pyre Lord has taken the crown-fire chamber. He’s sealed the Spire’s heart. He’s lit the Long Burning.” The Warden looked up, white-faced.

“And he’s taken the old apothecary woman down with him. He says he only needs a channel now. And he means to make one.”

Hesper.

The Ashking’s hand closed white-knuckled on his black throne. And in the half-second his attention broke, Castien’s marked hand found mine in the dark, and his mouth came to my ear, low and furious and certain.

“Run,” he breathed.

“Now.”