The Princess of Ash novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: What the Fire Remembers

I found him at the forge at midnight, hammering a sword that did not need it.

The forge hall lay under the Emberhold's great court, a low vault where the volcano's heat came up through the floor in red cracks.

Auren was stripped to the waist, glistening, with the hammer swinging in his right hand.

Each blow rang off the walls.

He didn't stop when I came in.

I held up the scrap of paper between two fingers.

"Do you know whose writing this is?"

"I do."

The hammer fell again.

"It is the spymaster of Carrow's," he said.

"He sent a cupbearer to my table, and he sent you to my bed."

"You've known since the cup."

"I have known his hand for years."

I stared at him.

He set the hammer down and turned, and there was sweat on his chest and fury in his face.

It was the first time I had seen it.

"I knew what you were for, Thessaly, the moment your father opened his mouth."

"A bride."

"A knife."

The word dropped between us.

"Then why am I still alive?" I said.

"Why haven't you thrown me from the tower?"

"Because I was curious."

"That isn't an answer."

"It is the one I have."

I dropped the paper.

I was shaking, and I hated it.

"Lord Hask told me you set the fire in the north tower," I said.

"Eleven years ago, when I was thirteen years old, you set it, and my mother burned."

The forge was so quiet that I heard the coals tick.

"Is that true?"

He did not answer.

He stood there with his hands open and his eyes going slowly orange.

I drew the steel knife from my boot and went for him.

He didn't dodge.

I hit him in the chest with my shoulder and drove him back against the great anvil, and the knife went up at his throat.

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