Page 115 of Break Her Heart
I was seeing through his eyes.
I looked down at the soot-covered hands, the rough fabric clinging to a younger, leaner body, the forge smoke in my lungs—it was all his. And he had been here. At the blade’s beginning.
After Carrow took August’s body, the nightmares had stopped—but the mark August left remained. I used to hope it might protect me, ward Carrow off from claiming me. But it hadn’t. Not truly.
This was something else. Something deeper.
I could feel myself inside him—Carrow. His thoughts didn’t block mine, and my instincts guided his body. I could move, I could breathe, but it was as if my spirit had been draped in his skin. This memory hadn’t been summoned. It had been given.
I stood, legs moving before I fully commanded them, and stepped toward them
“This has to work,” the fae who carved the designs muttered desperately, more to himself than anyone else.
“It will,” the swordsmith answered. “It will raise armies from the dead. We will take Alentara from the creatures and finally be able to live in peace.”
“It is done,” the older witch murmured. “The ancestors have spoken. Our magic always comes at a price. To keep its strength to create armies, souls must be sacrificed.”
The lead witch turned toward me—towardhim—her eyes narrowing with a subtle disdain, as if she were barely tolerating his presence. There was no warmth in her gaze—only calculation, and the faintest sneer that said she saw right through him. Like he was lesser. Temporary. Useful, but beneath her.
“Give this to your master.”
My—his—hands trembled as they reached for it. When our fingers closed around the hilt, the world went white.
When it came back, I wasn’t in the forge anymore.
I was still in Carrow’s body—but now I stood at the edge of a forest, hidden in the shadows of towering trees. From the cover of the tree line, I looked down onto an open battlefield, the earth below a canvas of carnage. The pale, swirling sky cast a dullsheen over the blood-slicked terrain. The air reeked of ash and rot.
Bodies lay strewn across the ground, a grotesque quilt of death. Most of them were fae—fallen warriors in fractured armor, their weapons still clutched in lifeless hands as if refusing to surrender even in death. Among them lay a scattering of creatures, but only a few; the rest prowled over the fallen, feasting without hesitation.
They were nightmares pulled from the oldest, darkest pages of ancient tomes. Winged beasts with bone-covered faces crouched on crooked perches, screeching with hunger. Serpentine horrors, their hides slick with gore, glided through the carnage on rows of hooked claws, black eyes glittering like polished stones. Wolves that walked upright tore at the remains, their massive jaws snapping and their muzzles dripping crimson, howling in twisted victory.
“It’s time.”
I turned slowly to see a fae I hadn’t realized was standing back with me.
His rust-colored hair was braided down his back, streaked with soot and blood. His skin, sun-warmed and golden, gleamed beneath plates of silver-dulled armor etched with ancient sigils. Even from a distance, there was power in the way he stood—still, calm, as though all this death were nothing new to him.
In his hand, he held a blade.Theblade.
This was Aros.
He lifted his gaze, scanning the torn landscape with a grim expression—no triumph, no fear. Just understanding. Then, with both hands, he plunged the blade into the blood-soaked earth.
The ground pulsed.
And the dead rose.
All around him, corpses jerked to life—not mindlessly, not like puppets, but with purpose. The dead fae and creatures alike. They turned, not toward Aros, but toward the creatures that had slaughtered them.
The monsters shrieked as the risen dead launched their assault. Some beasts were cleaved down instantly, others turned and fled. The air filled with the clash of steel, the howl of magic, the roar of vengeance.
I watched as the battlefield shifted, the chaos twisting into something far more dangerous.
This was absolute control.
39
Bronwen
