She was on a bed, not her's not soft, and the sheets were soaked. The air was sharp, the tang of metal thick in the air. She moved to open her eyes and screaming pain shot across her back. She heard a sound of pain before realizing it had come from her. Hot, her skin was boiling hot.
"You're awake." It was Aspen, she opened her eyes doing her best to hide her flinch at the movement. She realized then that she was not wearing anything more than under garments. And she immediately flushed, no more than flushed her skin grew hotter, glowing red and orange and yellow. Flame, for a moment flame coated her like a second skin, but she blinked and it was gone. She pulled up the sheets to hide her body and realized that the sheets were soaked in blood. It didn't matter. She had seen far more blood than this. Though people that lost this much had never lived. How was she breathing? She looked up at him and saw the concern on his face before he hid it behind his normal mask of stone. Really bad it had to be really bad if Aspen was worried.
"Where are we? This isn't the castle." She had lived in that castle for years and there was barely an inch she hadn't seen of it.
"We are in Rosshiem." the city where queen Aine presided. How were they-
"What did you-?"
"It doesn't matter, you are safe and you are here."
"Why did you bring me here, I told you-"
"I am bound by blood to Queen Aine, she commanded me to go to Glacinar and find Anatia Nalcothy, and that I bring the girl to her." She was silent, he had been sent to retrieve her. He left the room without looking at her but before he opened the door he said,"Aine wants you to come to dinner tonight, wear something nice." Great, this was all just great. She went to stand up and groaned as her back screamed in protest. She would have to get over it. She walked to a mirror, clutching the bloodied blanket and turned around to see her back.
The iron was gone, it looked like someone had cut all of it out of her skin. The scarring was atrocious, the place where the iron brand had been was cut out leaving deep grooves in her skin, which seemed to cut through the scars from her lashings and the more recent burn scars.
Despite the bloodied sheets it looked like the wounds had stopped bleeding a long time ago. The pain still lingered though, the area sensitive.
A bit of the fabric brushed against the scars and it burned, her skin and the fabric. Her skin raged and heated and then the fabric was on fire and she dropped it jumping away. Immediately her skin cooled.
The iron, it was gone, that heavy weight. It felt like she was floating, blowing through the sky free once again-but she couldn't control it, she was floating and rising and there was no way back down, nothing to anchor her to the earth. She had grown so used to it devouring her magic anytime she was angry or sad or afraid. But now there was a heat in her blood and under her skin. Now her ears were sharpening and her teeth pointing. Now she was magic. No, no she couldn't. The ears rounded, her teeth dulling and the song in her blood dimmed to a hum. She had to go back, because as bad as the king was, Aine had millennia to hone her cunning and cruelty, and if she wanted to meet Anatia-
Anatia had to leave.