Page 1 of Break Her Heart
1
Bronwen
You made me king. I’ll make you my queen.
The words rang in my head—too loud, too real. My stomach twisted. I had expected his hatred, his rage. I had been ready to die for what I had done. But this? This wasn’t vengeance.
This was a claim.
And somehow, that terrified me more.
“N-no.”
August’s laugh tore through the woods, echoing off the trees like thunder. Snow swirled through the air, flakes catching in my hair and melting against my flushed cheeks.
“No?” His voice was a blade. “Do you expect me to listen? Like you listened to me when I told you not to kill him? I am your king now, remember? And as your king, you will do as I say.”
I recoiled at his words. Hiscommand.
“I will not marry you.”
In an instant, he was standing above me, pressing my back against a tree. His eyes glowed red, a wicked brightness against the midnight shadows.
“Say that again,” he whispered, edged with madness. His breathing was uneven, his fists clenching and unclenching as if he couldn’t decide whether to strike me or pull me closer. He pressed forward, pushing me harder against the tree, his movements sharp and jerky, like his own body was fighting against him. “You think you can just walk away from me? After everything?”
My hands trembled as rage burned beneath my skin. He was not going to tell me what to do.
But the August standing in front of me wasn’t the one I had come to know. Not the one who made me feel…something. Dark webs pulsed beneath his red eyes. That playful smirk he always wore was long gone. His hair was in disarray—the hair that I had clenched in my hands only hours earlier. He was so vulnerable then, worried about me, begging me to trust him. And I did. Then I used his trust to do the one thing that I knew he despised. I pulled his magic, sending him through what I could only imagine to be unbearable pain, and I used that to kill his father. When I did that, something inside him had shifted, like I’d broken a part of his soul that he could never get back.
The way something inside me broke when my parents died.
The guilt twisted through me like thorns, sharp and relentless. I had used him. Manipulated him. And now I stood here trying to pretend I was the righteous one.
But hadn’t he been manipulating me, too? Keeping secrets, holding back the truth until it suited him? Trying to control me even now? My thoughts tangled, torn between anger and guilt, between the anguish in his eyes and the cruelty in his words.
No.Carrow deserved to die. I was willing to sacrifice my relationship with August for that. That was a truth that didn’tchange. No emotion burned brighter than the pain I felt from seeing my parents’ lifeless bodies. Nothing mattered more than getting revenge.
“But you hated your father,” I snapped, pushing him off of me as I moved out of his reach. My breath spilled out in frantic clouds, the chill scraping against my lungs.
“This has nothing to do with my father,” he said coldly. “This is about Carrow.”
“What?” Why did he say things like this? Things that never made sense. “Your father is Carrow!”
August glanced to the left as if he’d heard something that I couldn’t. His shoulders tensed, jaw clenched. His gaze flickered through the darkness, searching for whatever threat he sensed.
“Your brother is looking for you. Let’s go.”
He stepped forward, but I matched the distance with a step back. Fear threaded through me, each breath a struggle against the cold that seeped into my bones.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
His eyes locked onto mine. “You will.”
My fists clenched at my sides, the heat of the magic I stole from Carrow rising like a fever against the winter chill. Flames itched beneath my skin, desperate to be released.
“Tell me,Winnie,” he said, cruelly calm. “Has your… curse been broken? Do you feel the magic pulsing through you? Are you fixed? Or are you still a hollow shell of a witch?”
His words cut deep, but the truth remained. Nothing had changed. No surge of magic when I killed Carrow. No divine awakening. Just the magic I had stolen from him, still burning beneath my skin like an echo of what I could never truly have.
