Page 122 of Break Her Heart
The taste of Benedict’s blood hit my tongue, warm and metallic, and magic sparked through my limbs like wildfire.
“B!” Adar’s voice cracked with panic as he lunged forward.
But I was already moving. I turned the blade inward, pressed it against my sternum, and drove it in before he could stop me.
I woke with a sharp gasp, air flooding into my lungs like I’d been drowning. My back arched off the floor and I flailed for a moment, unsure if I was alive or trapped in some other twisted dream.
Then I stilled. The dark cell was suddenly clearer than I’d ever seen it—every crack in the stone, every speck of dust floating through the air. The distant drip of water sounded like it was beside me. I could hear things—tiny things—like the scraping of rats in the walls, the flutter of moth wings in the light slit above. And something else.
I could hear a heartbeat.
I turned my head slowly and my nostrils flared as Adar’s scent hit me like a wave—earthy, warm, tinged with fear.
And underneath it, his blood.
It was intoxicating. Rich, alive, calling to something deeper than instinct—something primal and starving. My throat burned with need. My teeth ached.
I could smell him. I could feel him. Every beat of his heart thundered through me like a drum summoning a forgotten hunger.
I was a vampire.
Benedict slumped on the floor, his skin still pallid but slowly regaining color—signs of life inching back into him. Adar must have drained him of everything he had. Good. He would need every scrap of magic he could muster to get us as far as I intended to go.
“B.” Adar dropped beside me, his hand pressed to his chest. His breaths were uneven, and though he tried to mask the pain, I could see it clearly now—his pain and mine, mirrored in his expression. The moment our eyes met, I felt it. The horror, the disbelief, the weight of what I had done. “What did you do?”
“I’m putting an end to this.”
Maybe it was reckless. Maybe it was the last desperate act of someone with nothing left to lose. But it was the only path forward I could see. I didn’t care what it would cost me—not if it meant destroying the monster who’d taken everything.
Even if I never felt the warmth of a fire again and the sun forever burns me. Even if this hunger would hollow me out until nothing remained but a shell of who I used to be. Even if I would be driven closer to the insanity I saw August fight every day.
The hunger was growing.
I turned my head toward Adar. His heartbeat still pounded in my ears, his scent flooding my senses. The thought of sinking my teeth into him surged, violent and hot, and my chest ached with the war between hunger and love. He had come for me, risked his life, and yet my body screamed to devour him. I shook my head hard, tears burning as I forced the craving down.
I would never hurt him. Never bite him.
I clenched my jaw and forced myself to look away. I would find another way to feed. He had already given me enough.
“You have to leave,” I said through gritted teeth.
He reached for me, and I jerked back.
“I am not leaving you again.”
I closed my eyes as I tried to focus on the smell of the cell and not Adar. “I will meet you at the gate. You can’t be here for what I am about to do.”
Adar hesitated. I felt it ripple through him—the conflict, the disbelief. But I knew he could feel me too: the wall of fury and resolve that would not budge.
His jaw clenched. “What about him?”
I followed his gaze to Benedict, still slumped on the floor. My stomach twisted, but all I saw now was betrayal. Memories of his betrayal burned hot and sharp—how he had come for me and delivered me straight into Carrow’s hands. Rage and grief tangled in my chest.
“Burn him.”
* * *
I lay sprawled on the cold stone floor, my limbs limp, every nerve still screaming from the transformation, my skull pounding with a single, relentless command to feed. Footsteps echoed beyond the cell door—measured, deliberate, heavy, as though each one was meant to remind me of what was coming.
