He Freed the Kings He Once Chained, They Chose to Bind Him novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Silver

At dawn Su Ming slid off Ren and walked, naked and unsteady, to the bed.

He lay down beside Ryu with his back turned and did not say a word.

Ryu did not say one either.

Ren sat up on the rug with his shirt open and his face burning, and he looked at the man he had once been told was the proudest king in the North.

Ryu looked back at him for three long breaths.

Then he turned his head to the window.

It was not a threat or an accusation.

It was only a man deciding to leave something unsaid.

Ren got up, washed in the basin, and sent a maid to the royal goldsmith with a note.

She came back in half an hour with a small bundle.

Inside were a jeweler's saw, a fine file and a pot of beeswax.

Ken was sitting up with his wrist on the pillows.

He looked at the saw and swallowed.

"You're serious."

"I'm serious. Lie on your back."

"The Pledge says this cuff stays on."

"Then the Pledge can come and cut it itself." Ren knelt at his side and tucked a wet cloth under the silver. "Look at the ceiling. Tell me a story."

"What story?"

"Anything. Tell me about the East."

Ken stared at the canopy.

"We have forests," he said after a moment. "Pine, mostly. It snows in the high country, and the tigers hunt in the white all winter. My mother used to take me out at dawn before the court woke. She'd say, listen. And you could hear the whole forest breathing."

The saw bit into the soft silver.

Ken flinched.

"Keep going," Ren said.

"The shifters run at the full moon. All of us, thousands, through the pines. I was twelve the first time. I'd never felt anything so..."

The silver parted with a thin bright crack.

Ren caught the halves before they could fall and eased them off the swollen wrist.

The skin beneath was raw and blistered and a deep, angry red.

Ken stopped talking.

Every muscle in his body went hard.

"Ken?"

A shudder passed through him, from his shoulders to his heels.

The hair on his forearm lifted and rippled, and for one second a faint tawny fur showed along his arm.

Ryu was out of the bed in a single movement.

"Back away," he said to Ren. "He hasn't changed in three years. The beast will be mad with it."

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