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He’d sat in a stone roo queen’s body, her spirit Had been unable to help her as she’d screa those screams

But it was the sound that came out of her as Cairn hurled her into the chest of drahere Fenrys had watched hi 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 froot 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, tohere 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 ae 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 as 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, screah no sound caainst those invisible chains, against that blood-sworn order to obey, to stay down, to watch

He defied it All that the blood oath was

Pain lanced through him, into his very core

He blocked it out as Cairn pointed the s queen with a heart of wildfire

He would not allow it

Snarling, the , Fenrys bellowed at the dark chain binding hi with every scrap of defiance he possessed

Let it kill him, wreck him He would not serve Not another heartbeat He would not obey

He would not obey

And slowly, Fenrys got to his feet

Pain shuddered Aelin as she lay sprawled, panting, arround

It was not Cairn and the poker she stared at

But Fenrys, rising upward, his body rippling with tree

Even Cairn halted Looked toward the white wolf "Stand down"

Fenrys snarled, deep and vicious And still he struggled to his feet

Cairn pointed the poker at the rug "Lie down That is an order fro But he was standing

Standing

Despite the order, despite the blood oath’s commands

Get up

From far away, the words sounded

Cairn roared, "Lie down!"

Fenrys’s head thrashed froainst an invisible oath

His dark eyesfrom the wolf’s nostril

It’d kill him--to sever the oath It would break his soul His body would go soon after that

But Fenrys put one paard His claws dug into the ground

Cairn’s face paled at that step That impossible step

Fenrys’s eyes slid toward hers Neither needed the silent code between theaze The order and plea

Run