Chained by Hades, the Underworld King novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Iron Thorn
In the Ashfrost forest Ingrith pulls a black thorn from a bleeding stranger who says she will be his queen, gets a thimble of warm sap that stops her mother's frost, and comes home to Leif and Frost riders telling her she is the bride at dawn.
The sap was supposed to grow on a silver tree at the edge of the Ashfrost forest.
Ingrith Halvane had been walking for two days to find it, and the only thing she had found was ice.
She was twenty-three years old.
Her mother had one year of frost behind her and maybe a month of life ahead.
The white creep had started at her mother's fingertips last winter.
It had reached her wrists by spring, and by now it lay across her chest.
The hold's healer had said the same thing every week.
"Only the sap of the silver tree will melt it."
No one in Skarnholt had ever seen the tree.
Ingrith's boots broke through the crust and she swore.
Then she heard breathing.
It was ragged and slow, and it came from behind a split birch.
She pulled her knife and stepped around the trunk.
A man lay in the snow with a black iron thorn driven through his shoulder.
The thorn was as long as her forearm.
It had pinned him to the ground, and the snow under him was dark with blood.
He was big, black-haired, with a scar running down the right side of his ribs where his coat had torn open.
His eyes were open.
They were pale, with a ring of gold around the middle.
"Leave," he said.
His voice was low and calm.
"Someone put you here," Ingrith said.
"Leave. The thorn is cursed. It burns whoever touches it."
She knelt anyway.
The iron was so cold it stuck to her palm.
"Then it will burn me," she said. "Hold still."
"Girl."
"My mother is dying and I have no time to argue."
She wrapped both hands around the thorn and pulled.
It came out with a wet sound.
The man's whole body arched off the snow, and the cold in her hands turned to fire.
She screamed and dropped the thorn.
Her palms were blistered red.
The man lay panting.
Then he turned his head and looked at her.
"You pulled it," he said.
"You told me not to. I know."
"No one has ever pulled it."
She tore a strip from her scarf and packed it against his shoulder.
He watched her hands the whole time.
"What is your name?"
"Ingrith."
"Ingrith what?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
"Halvane," she said. "Of Skarnholt. Now press that and keep it tight."
He caught her wrist.
His grip was gentle, and she could not have broken it.
"Ingrith Halvane," he said. "You will be my queen."
She laughed because she was tired and her hands hurt.
"You are bleeding out in a forest," she said. "Marry a healer."
"I do not need a healer."
He pressed something into her burned palm.
It was a coin of dark stone, cold as the thorn had been.
"Keep this," he said. "When the time comes, it opens the door."
"What door?"
He closed her fingers over it and smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
It was the smile of a man who has already decided.
"The one that leads to me."
She pulled free and stood.
Behind him the birch was split down the center, and inside the split something silver shone.
Warm liquid ran down the bark and pooled in the hollow of a root.
It steamed in the cold.
It smelled of iron, and it was the color of moonlight.
"The sap," Ingrith whispered.
"Take it," the man said. "Take what you need. It is yours."
She pulled the thimble from her belt with shaking fingers and filled it.
When she turned back, the snow beside the birch was empty.
There was only blood, and a coin in her fist, and the sound of her own breath.
She ran.
She reached Skarnholt at dusk with her boots frozen stiff.
She went straight to the sickroom and tipped the thimble between her mother's cracked lips.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then the white on her mother's wrist began to shrink.
It drew back from her fingers.
Her mother took a breath that went all the way down.
"Ingrith," she whispered. "You found it."
Ingrith was crying and laughing at once.
She was still holding her mother's hand when the door opened.
Her stepmother, Sigrun, stood in the doorway with her arms folded.
Behind her stood Leif Brandvik, the man Ingrith was going to marry.
Behind him stood six riders in white fur, and their lord's ring was stamped on every cloak.
The Frostlands crest.
Sigrun smiled the way she smiled at funerals.
"Lord Hrodmar's men have come for you," she said. "You are the bride at the Winter Rite."
"What?"
"At dawn."
Ingrith looked at Leif.
He would not look back.
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