Chapter 19 · Varen Takes the Crown

"Where are you taking me?" Seraph dug her heels into the stone, and Kael didn't slow down at all.

"Somewhere Varen can't listen at the door." His hand stayed locked around her wrist, thumb dragging right over the fading mark. "You're going to explain this, and you're going to do it now."

The forge chamber door groaned open before he even touched it. That wasn't right. Ironfate forges didn't open for anyone but blood.

Heat crawled up through the floor, the kind that lived in seventeen versions of her nightmares. Twelve of those versions ended in this exact kind of heat.

"Kael. Let go. Right now."

"Not until you—"

The forge coughed a column of white fire straight up its center shaft, and the chains bolted to the ceiling snapped taut like something had just switched them on from the inside.

Kael's grip didn't loosen. His eyes did something else. Went flat, glassy, like a candle guttering out behind glass.

"That's not you doing that," Seraph said, grabbing his forearm with both hands now. "Kael. Look at me."

"I am looking at you." His voice came out wrong. Slower. Colder.