Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7)

by Sarah J. Maas

She blinked at him. Four times. I am here, I am with you. Fenrys knew it for what it was. The final message. Not before death, but before the sort of breaking that no one would walk away from. Before Maeve returned with the Wyrdstone collar. Cairn rotated the poker in his hands, heat rippling off its point. And Fenrys couldn’t allow it. He couldn’t allow it. In his shredded soul, in what was left of him after all he’d been forced to see and do, he couldn’t allow it. The blood oath kept his limbs planted. A dark chain that ran into his soul. He would not allow it. That final breaking. He pushed upward against the bond’s dark chain, screaming, though no sound came from his open maw. He pushed and pushed and pushed against those invisible chains, against that blood-sworn order to obey, to stay down, to watch. He defied it. All that the blood oath was. Pain lanced through him, into his very core. He blocked it out as Cairn pointed the smoldering poker at the young queen with a heart of wildfire. He would not allow it. Snarling, the male inside him thrashing, Fenrys bellowed at the dark chain binding him. He shredded into it, biting and tearing with every scrap of defiance he possessed. Let it kill him, wreck him. He would not serve. Not another heartbeat. He would not obey. He would not obey. And slowly, Fenrys got to his feet.