Chapter 43 Ashterion
ASHTERION
Ashterion didn’t flinch. Not this time. He hung from the ceiling, arms stretched high above his head, the chains cutting into raw, tender flesh.
His toes barely touched the stone floor, enough to keep him conscious, but never enough to bring relief. Blood dripped down his sides in slow, steady trails, each one a thin red thread pulled loose from the tapestry of his silence.
Xyliria stood before him, poised, calm, immaculate.
“You embarrassed me,” she murmured, soft as velvet, lethal as the edge of the blade in her hand.
It gleamed faintly in the candlelight—curved, elegant, custom-forged.
Xyliria stepped closer, the train of her crimson gown pooling around her feet. She pressed the blade to his chest, just beneath the collarbone, and began to carve.
A curved line. Then another.
Blood welled and spilled, warm rivulets tracking down his torso. He kept his breathing measured, his face impassive. After centuries of this, he had learned that reactions only fed her cruelty.
“I asked you to do one thing.” Xyliria’s voice remained conversational, almost tender. “Stand beside me. Look powerful. Remain unmoved.” The blade twisted, digging into muscle. “And yet, you couldn’t even manage that.”
The flinch. That damned, involuntary flinch when she’d touched him during the meeting. One moment of weakness, witnessed by Varyth and his court—and worse, by that human female with her too-perceptive eyes.
Ashterion met her gaze steadily. “It was a momentary lapse. It won’t happen again.”
“No,” she agreed, smiling sweetly. “It won’t. Now, tell me about the fire.”
The shadow fire. No one should be able to manifest shadow fire naturally. It wasn’t rare. It was impossible.
As far as he knew.
He’d read the histories. Studied the records. The only way to harness that magic had been through ritual, through corruption. A sacrifice of self in exchange for shadowed flame. No human or fae had ever simply… woken with it.
And yet there she was.
A human. Manifesting it on instinct. Wielding it, even if clumsily. As if it belonged to her.
He felt the shadows stir in response to the thought, a low hum beneath his skin.
“That little display from Varyth’s human pet,” Xyliria’s nails drummed lazily on the armrest. “You told me it was extinct. Dead magic. Impossible to bring back. And yet…” she paused, “there it was.”
“I don’t know what it was,” he said, calm despite the blood now pooling at his feet. “Shadow fire hasn’t been seen in millennia. Perhaps it wasn’t real fire at all, just an illusion.”
Xyliria’s laugh was musical, delicate. The sound made his stomach clench.
“An illusion that required my magic to counter?” She pressed the tip of the blade into the hollow beneath his sternum. “Do you think me a fool, husband?”
“No.” The word was careful. “Never that.”
“I asked you,” she said, turning her head toward him. “How that power exists when you told me it can’t.”
The blade dug deeper, leaving crimson trails that traced elegant patterns across his chest. Ashterion kept his face neutral, muscles locked against the pain. This was the dance they’d performed for centuries—her cruelty, his endurance. A rhythm as familiar as breathing.
“I want her.” Xyliria’s onyx eyes gleamed with a hunger that went beyond cruelty, beyond power. “Her magic.”
Ashterion held her gaze. “You want the human,” he repeated, stripped of emotion.
“Whether we can break her, and she serves us, or take her apart and make more like her. I don’t care. But she needs to be ours.”
The blade slid down his thigh, parting skin and muscle.
Xyliria’s lips curled into that smile he’d come to know too well, the one that promised blood and suffering, that meant she would get exactly what she wanted, no matter the cost. “I want her brought to me. Her and the High Lord.”
“Of course,” Ashterion said smoothly, betraying none of the acid churning in his gut. “Whatever pleases you.”
Xyliria’s smile widened, satisfied with his easy capitulation. She never questioned his compliance anymore. Why would she?
The blade whispered against his flesh again, another stroke that left fire in its wake. Ashterion’s jaw tightened, but he remained silent.
“Oh, and one more thing,” she said, her voice light. “Ryleth will be arriving shortly.”
The name sliced through him more effectively than any blade. Ashterion’s control slipped for a heartbeat. His pulse spiked and his shadows writhed beneath his skin.
“Ryleth?” He kept the question steady through centuries of practice.
Xyliria smiled, watching the flicker of reaction with undisguised pleasure. “Yes. He’s always been talented at reminding you of your place.”
She finally stepped back, her blade slick with his blood. With a flick of her wrist, the chains binding Ashterion released.
He collapsed to the stone floor, muscles screaming from hours suspended. His knees struck hard, sending fresh waves of pain through his battered body.
“Clean yourself up,” Xyliria said, wiping her blade on a pristine white cloth. “I’ll allow you some rest before Ryleth arrives.” She smiled, the expression never reaching her eyes. “You’ll need your strength for what he has planned.”
Ashterion remained silent, gathering his will to stand.
“Oh, my love,” she crooned, returning to where he knelt. “You always look so beautiful when you bleed for me.”
Xyliria’s fingers, warm with his blood, cupped his jaw.
Her lips found his, cruel and demanding.
Ashterion didn’t hesitate, he couldn’t afford to.
His mouth moved against hers, returning her kiss with a fervour that had been perfected over centuries of survival.
His hands came up to cradle her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks as though she were precious to him.
The taste of her was familiar. Sweet poison that burned his tongue, his throat, his very soul.
But he kissed her back with the desperate intensity she expected.
His tongue met hers when she demanded entrance, and he tasted copper—his own blood on her lips.
She’d always enjoyed that particular cruelty, making him taste his own suffering.
“There’s my good husband,” she murmured against his mouth, her fingers digging into the fresh wounds on his chest. Pain lanced through him, but he didn’t break the kiss, didn’t pull away.
Xyliria’s mouth lingered on his, her teeth scraping his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. She savoured it with a small hum of pleasure before finally pulling away. Her thumb traced the fresh wound on his lip, pressing hard enough to make it sting.
“Rest well, my love,” she whispered, rising gracefully to her feet. “I want you strong enough to scream when Ryleth arrives.”
The rustle of her crimson gown was the only sound as she glided toward the door, leaving him kneeling in a pool of his own blood. She paused at the threshold, casting one last glance over her shoulder, at her handiwork carved into his flesh.
With a pleased smile, she was gone.
Ashterion didn’t move. Not until the echo of her footsteps faded, not until the gilded door clicked shut and silence swallowed the chamber whole.
Then, and only then, did he let his mask crack.
A slow, shaking breath hissed through his teeth. Blood dripped from his lip, mingling with the mess already smeared across his chin. He pressed his forehead to the cold stone beneath him, bile rising thick in his throat.
She wanted the human.
Of course she did. He’d hoped the meeting would buy him time, but naturally it had the opposite outcome.
Ashterion forced himself to move, muscle by splintered muscle. His arms shook violently as he pushed himself upright, every tendon protesting. The blood loss made the edges of his vision darken, but he stayed upright. He had to.
With trembling legs, Ashterion pushed himself to his feet, the world tilting dangerously as he rose. Blood slicked the stone beneath him, making each step treacherous. He needed to heal. Or at least stop the bleeding before Ryleth arrived.
The bath was carved into the floor itself, an obsidian basin fed by steaming water that trickled down from a spout in the shape of a serpent’s mouth. He fumbled for the vials stored in the shelf above.
Healing tonics. Burn salve. A tincture for nerve damage. He usually ignored them. Let the wounds fade on their own. Let the reminders linger in his bones.
But not this time.
Not with Ryleth coming.
His hand trembled as he uncorked the vial. Pale blue liquid. He poured the entire bottle into the bath. Then another. The scent of herbs filled the room. Sharp rosemary, crushed yarrow, something faintly metallic beneath it.
Ashterion gritted his teeth as he eased himself into the water.
It always burned, at first. The tonic sought out every raw edge, every torn seam in his skin, and lit them aflame. He hissed through clenched teeth, digging his nails into the edge of the tub.
Steam curled around him, hiding the worst of it. His blood diluted in the water, curling like ink through the ripples. His breathing slowed.
He let his head fall back against the edge of the tub, eyes closed.
And he thought of her.
The human. That impossible blaze that had spilled from her.
Black flames—shadow fire—a magic he hadn’t seen in centuries. It had flickered across the table with such raw, untamed power that for a moment Ashterion had forgotten to breathe.
He’d felt it then. A pull. A resonance. Ancient and familiar power stirring inside him. It called to him. Or perhaps it answered something in him.
He hadn’t told Xyliria that part.
He hadn’t told her that when he’d seen that fire, his shadows had curled toward it instinctively. That the scent of it had stayed in his lungs like smoke, like memory.
That it had felt… right.
Ash opened his eyes to the ceiling above, the black stone swimming with steam.
That magic should not exist. Not in the hands of a mortal-turned-fae. Not when the last of that power had been burned from the world for a reason.
He let his head loll to the side.
He could kill the human.
End it clean.
Avoid the mess of Xyliria trying to harness power she didn’t understand.
He’d eliminated lives for less. And he could blame it on Varyth’s recklessness. On bad luck. On fate. But the thought unravelled as quickly as it formed.
Because he wouldn’t.
He didn’t know why, and that only pissed him off more. His jaw ticked as he ran a hand through his hair, forcing his mind to quiet.
His shadows curled tighter around his limbs, ghosting over his wounds with a touch lighter than breath.
The humming started so quietly he almost missed it—a low vibration against his skin, a song without melody.
Not a sound anyone else could hear, but a frequency that lived in the space between his heartbeats.
His constant companions, his only true allies in this gilded prison.
But even they felt… different lately.
Louder. More alive.
And worse, hopeful.
He hadn’t sung to them in years. Not since Xyliria had poisoned every part of his existence. And yet, he had been humming again. Quietly. In the dark, when no one listened.
They’d sung back. He hated how it made him feel. As though something long buried was clawing its way back up.
He forced himself to breathe evenly, to shove it all down. The shadows throbbed against his wrist. Still waiting. Still listening.
Ashterion sighed, and whispered, “Sleep.”
And for now… they did.