Their Fireheart

Chapter Twenty Five

Rowan

I was about a hair's breadth away from ripping out the King of Assassins' spine.

We were seated around the large, oval table in the Keep's opulent dining room - Aelin's old master having purposefully seated my mate between himself and Lysandra - cutting her off from the rest of us.

The urge to kill the man had been vibrating in my bones ever since Aelin had stepped out of the carriage at the entrance to the Keep - instantly donning that cold, emotionless mask - one I would gladly never see again.

The worst part of it all was that it was achingly obvious that this particular mask was as familiar to her as her own name. This was how she had existed - as a whirlwind of hate and rage and violence, unable to show a single weakness or human emotion - for a gods-damn decade.

Agony licked a fiery path up my spine at the thought.

The dark yearning to end the bastard had grown exponentially worse when he'd led us into those dark, dank dungeons - my primal beast roaring louder and louder with every step into the gruesome space. The reek of mildew and blood and rust had been nearly overwhelming.

I'd been tortured enough, and done enough torturing of my own, to know exactly what occurred within those stone walls.

The thought of what Aelin had seen, what she'd endured - as a fucking child - when the red-headed maniac had brought her here to be trained, was enough to have me seeing red. My mate, my precious mate, had been so heartbreakingly young when he'd taught her how to slice up men bit by bit, how to keep them alive while she stripped them of the will to live, how to make them scream and cry and beg. How to snuff out their lives.

All at the risk of losing her own.

There was no part of her that disgusted me, no secret of her past that could make me think less of her, not an ounce of her being that scared me. But the thought of her here, at the fragile age of ten, in this place, with these smells, in this sinister darkness ...

The full reality of all she'd suffered thundered through me with the violence of an invading cavalry. It trampled my heart, crushed my lungs, and made it difficult to breathe.

I'd watched, blood boiling in my veins, as with every step, Aelin's shoulders seemed to droop, and her hair grew duller, her skin paler.

I'd almost thrown up when the next realization hit me with all the subtlety of a tsunami.

This was where she had last seen Sam.

These disgusting, abhorrent dungeons. This was where she'd said goodbye.

This Keep was where she'd met him, fallen in love with him. The place she'd planned to escape from with him, after buying freedom for the both of them.

This dungeon was where her dreams went to die when she'd been confronted with his brutal demise, where she had curled up with his desecrated corpse - unable to fathom a world without him in it.

And Arobynn knew that.

That fucking monster knew exactly what kinds of memories Aelin would face within those stone walls. He reveled in it. I could tell by the glint in his eyes when he looked at her - it was disgustingly apparent – the fascination he regarded her with. He was waiting to see if she would crack, break, or shatter under the pressure. And I watched as the obsession in his unnatural eyes grew impossibly stronger when she didn't even flinch.

I was in awe of her sheer strength when she didn't allow a single emotion to cross her flawless face, following her tormentor into the room of horrors without balking. My reverence of the female I'd claimed as mine was the only reason I hadn't snapped and reduced her old master into nothing more than one of the many bloodstains that decorated the ancient stones.