Page 30 of Break Her Heart
Corwin’s lips curled, not quite a smile. “Then let’s test that theory.”
Before I could react, he grabbed me. One arm hooked behind my back, the other beneath my knees, and then we were moving. The room blurred around us.
I gasped, my hands flying to his chest, one gripping his coat as the other sparked with the instinct to pull magic. But I held it back, teeth clenched, heart hammering.
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the rising bile back down my throat as fear twisted through me. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to see if Augustus gets to you before you hit the bottom of the stairs.”
Fuck. That.
I reached for the power inside of him and yanked.
Corwin’s knees buckled. He gasped, collapsing forward and dropping me hard onto the floor.
I stifled a scream as my shoulder connected with the floor. I crawled over to him as he writhed, fingers clawing at the carpet.
“He doesn’t care about me,” I hissed as I gripped his hair in my hand. I pulled more from him, the power flowing into me like wildfire, mending the dull ache in my shoulder. Dragging his face close to mine, I whispered, “Hefearsme.”
My palm sparked, a ball of fire swirling to life in my hand. But the sliver of logic left in my head—small, stubborn, and annoying—forced itself forward.
Someone would smell him burning. Someone would come. There would be questions.
With a hiss of frustration, I extinguished the flame.
Instead, I lifted my hand and summoned whatever wood I could find nearby. A door creaked open down the hall, and a chair snapped through the air, whistling toward us.
The chair slammed into Corwin with a brutal crack—one leg spearing through his heart, another tearing into his stomach, the remaining legs pinning his body to the floor like a grotesque marionette.
That was a little more than I meant. I winced. “Whoops.”
Footsteps thundered down the hall.
August appeared a second later, breath ragged, eyes flashing. He looked around sharply, making sure no one else had followed, then turned to me with a look that was somewhere between fury and disbelief.
“Gods alive, Winnie!” he hissed. “You couldn’t wait twenty-four hours?”
My mouth fell open. “He was going to throw me over the balcony!”
“Shh!” August snapped, glancing down the hall again. “Do you want the entire castle in here? We have to clean this up before someone sees.”
I looked at Corwin’s body—gray, still, pierced through the chest and stomach. August didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed the shattered remains of the chair, yanked it free from the corpse, and hurled it over the balcony like it was trash.
“They won’t know whose blood this is,” he muttered. “But we need to get rid of the body. I am not dealing with this right now.”
“Get rid of the body? You’re not upset that I just killed your brother?”
“Upset?” He turned to me with a scowl. “No. Inconvenienced? Absolutely.”
August slung Corwin’s body over his shoulder with a grunt, blood still dripping from the chair splinters embedded in the corpse.
He made it a few steps before glancing back over his shoulder, catching me still kneeling on the blood-slick floor, my breath uneven.
“Do I need to carry you, too?”
* * *
A wedding dress.
