ASHBOUND

Chapter Five — The Heir of Ash

His name was Renalt Crane, and Castien told me later he was the kind of man who’d kneel to the king and pick his pocket in the same motion. Nephew to the Grand Pyre Lord. Castien’s rival since they were boys. And the last person on earth we wanted between us and the only way out.

“Walk away, Renalt,” Castien said.

He’d shifted, just slightly, so he was between Renalt and me. I felt the bond flex with it — protective, fierce, and so loud I almost missed Renalt talking.

“Now why would I do that?” Renalt strolled closer, torch high, savoring every second.

“You’ve handed me everything. The heir, gone soft over a wick. Bound to her, by those pretty matching marks — which means I don’t even have to fight you. I put her on the scales, and you do me the enormous favor of dying right beside her.” He spread his hands.

“The Grand Pyre Lord gets his channel. I get a clear road to the throne. Everybody wins.” His smile sharpened.

“Except the two of you. Though I’ll say — you’ll die together. Romantic, in a tragic sort of way.”

“Don’t,” Castien said, very quiet,

“talk about her.”

Through the bond I felt the heat of that land in my chest. I told myself it was the fire. It was not the fire. Renalt lifted his hand toward me, palm out. The gesture of a man reaching to drain a tithe. To pull my flame, kill the bond, kill us both at the root.

So I reached first.

I didn’t pull at him the way I’d pulled at the boy, or at Castien’s open hand. I opened myself to all of it. The torch in his fist. The banked fire in his chest. And further out, further up —the huge, distant, furnace pulse of the Pyre itself, burning at the crown of the mountain over our heads. Eight hundred years of stolen years, hoarded behind iron.

I’d spent my whole life taking sips.

Now I drank.

Renalt’s torch went out like a pinched candle. He gasped, staggered, clawed at his own chest as the fire poured out of him and through me — and where did I send it? I didn’t decide. The bond decided. It flooded into Castien, into the boy who’d been kept cold and sworn his whole life, and he made a low, stunned sound as warmth that wasn’t bought or owed to anyone filled him to the brim.

I held it one heartbeat. Two. Renalt on his knees. Castien blazing gold beside me. Me in the middle of it. The hinge. The channel. The thing the Pyre spent three centuries lying about, because a girl who can move the fire freely can end the whole machine of debt and tithe with her bare hands.

Then I shut the window. The cistern went dark and still. Renalt folded into the muck — alive, drained, terrified.

“You,” he wheezed.

“You’re not a wick. You’re— gods, the old lord was right—”

“An Ashkeeper,” I said. My voice didn’t shake.

“Say it properly.” Castien turned to me, still glowing faintly at the edges, looking at me like the floor of his whole life had tilted and what slid into view was something he’d never let himself imagine.

“You moved the crown-fire,” he breathed.

“Sorrel, no one alive can touch the crown-fire. Not the Grand Pyre Lord. Not my father. That’s why they hunted your mother. That’s why they bound you to me.” Understanding broke over his face, and it hurt to watch.

“To leash you. So if you ever woke up to what you are, my life would be the chain that stopped you.” He stepped closer.

The bond pulled us in like a tide.

“They never meant for me to find you first,” he said.

“They never meant for me to—” he stopped. His eyes dropped to my mouth.

We were close enough now that I could feel his fire on my lips.

Above us, the bells changed. Not the hunting toll. Three slow strokes. Silence. Three more. I felt Castien recognize it in my own borrowed bones, dread rolling off him into me.

“That’s the Spire,” he said, stepping back, and I felt the loss of his warmth like a door closing.

“That’s my father. He’s calling the heir home. Which means by morning, the whole Pyre will know what you are, what I’ve done, and exactly which wrist to cut to finish us both.” He held his marked hand out to me one more time.

And this time it wasn’t a blade held wrong. This time his fingers were open, warm, and steady.

“They lied to me about everything,” he said.

“My order. My father. The fire I’ve fed since I was a boy. You’re the only true thing I’ve found in any of it.” His jaw set, and the boy who’d walked so calmly toward my alley to burn me now looked at me like he’d pull the whole tower down to keep me out of the fire.

“So choose, Sorrel Vane. We run tonight, and spend whatever’s left of our two tangled lives hunted to the ends of the world.” The bells tolled again. Closer.

“Or we climb that mountain together, walk into the heart of the Pyre, and put out the fire they’ve been selling back to us for eight hundred years.” The iron gates of the Ember Spire groaned open above us.

I took his hand.