Page 21 of Heart Cradle
“Her parents refused to give their children to the Pale Court’s armies,” Aeilanna went on. “So the soldiers slaughtered them and took Nolenne and her two brothers anyway.”
Maeve’s stomach churned. “And now she’s… what? A prison guard?”
“Not willingly,” Aeilanna said. “She was beaten, starved, and then they punished her. All three of them.”
“How?”
A pause. Then flatly, “They made her watch her brothers fight to the death.”
Maeve could barely breathe.
“The survivor, Davmon, the eldest, is now second to Vargen himself,” Aeilanna added. Her voice was even, but laced with old, undiluted grief. “She was nine. They were thirteen and fifteen. She watched them tear each other apart. Watched one brother die, watched the other become something else entirely.”
Maeve closed her eyes, a sour taste coating her tongue.
“And now,” Aeilanna whispered, “she survives. Not for loyalty or glory, but just survival. It is incredibly difficult being a woman around so many isolated men.”
Maeve didn’t respond, there was nothing to say but after that, she began watching Nolenne more closely. Watched the subtle stiffening in her shoulders every time she saw the changing bruises on Aeilanna’s skin. The way her mouth pressed into a tight line and how her hands always hovered, like they wanted to reach out and never quite dared.
Maeve didn’t ask, sometimes they exchanged a look, brief and bare, and it left Maeve aching with questions she didn’t know how to voice. A connection that felt like it had been carved from shared terror. Nolenne was a prisoner, too. No chains on her wrists, but shackled all the same and though Maeve kept her secrets close, though the Chain still pressed like a secret heartbeat against her body, something in her began to shift. A thread of kinship, the beginning.
?????
On the eighth night, Maeve could barely sleep. Her body aching from the cold stone floor, every joint stiff, every muscle tender. Her stomach gnawed at itself with hunger, but that wasn’t the worst of it. An invisible pressure had begun to build inside her chest. Slow at first, then unbearable, like a snare drawing tighter with every hour. It came in waves. Sharp, brutal throbs pulling through her ribs, her spine, her very bones, as if something essential was being unravelled, strand by fragile strand.
The separation from my mate.
Maeve curled tighter on the floor, arms wrapped around herself as if she could hold the pieces together through sheer persistence alone. She still didn’t dare think his name. Not in this place where even silent thoughts felt like they could be overheard, stolen and twisted. So she buried it, buried him, buried herself. The ache wouldn’t fade, it only grew, a void that nobreath could fill, no comfort could soothe. An emptiness that scraped the inside of her chest raw, leaving her drained and gasping without a sound. She pressed her hand to her pocket, fingers finding the familiar velvet pouch. The Chain pulsed faintly beneath her covered touch, its hum thready but present.
The mate bond was screaming for him now, with every hour he didn’t come, with every heartbeat spent alone in the dark, Maeve realised something colder and sharper than anything she'd faced before. If she stayed here much longer, she wouldn’t survive it. Not because of the imprisonment, not because of the guards, but because of the bond. The slow, aching severing of something sacred.
When the door scraped open, far earlier than usual, she shot upright, fists clenched. Nolenne stepped inside, no tray, no water, just her. She was breathless, with loose flowing hair around her shoulders and sweat shining at her brow.
“Aei, we’ve got to go tonight,” she said in a low voice, looking at the other prisoner.
Maeve rose slowly. “What?”
“I can get you out, but we have to leave now.”
Aeilanna was already standing, one hand reaching for Maeve’s arm, the other for Nolenne’s. Her eyes, dulled so long by the gloom, now shone with something fierce and electric, gold flowing around the brown.
“You planned this?” Maeve whispered.
“We’ve been working on it for months,” Aeilanna said. “Mapping the shifts, watching the guards and timing the patrols. Waiting for the right night.”
Maeve stared at them both, her heart thudding. “And it just happens to be tonight?”
“Not coincidence,” Nolenne said. “We were close, but your arrival... it was the sign we needed. We could have done with another, and it looks like you need out. Fast.”
Maeve’s breath caught. “What?”
Aeilanna’s fingers touched her wrist gently. “The pain. It’s separation, I can feel it, even with these gods-damned shackles.”
Maeve’s throat tightened, she hadn’t said a word, not about the bond or about the pain, and yet, they knew.
She pulled back, pacing towards the wall. “This could be a trap.”
“It’s not,” Nolenne said, stepping closer. “I wouldn’t risk everything if it were. I’ve bled for this, lied, hidden and risked every part of myself. I’m putting my life in your hands.”
