Page 116 of Break Her Heart
The child grew heavy inside me, stretching skin and space until there was almost nothing left for me to call my own. The days blurred together—meals and parties, eyes tracking my every movement, Carrow whispering soft threats against my belly like bedtime stories.
But the visions never stopped.
They came without warning—sometimes in sleep, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, leaving me gasping like I’d been pulled through time itself.
In one, I saw Aros, regal and radiant, standing tall as fae warriors knelt before him. One by one, he called them forward—not to reward them, but to sacrifice them. Each soul fed into the blade like kindling. And each time, the magic darkened. I could see it in the steel. In the stone. In the sky above, which turned redder with every offering.
Another vision came in firelight—Carrow, still young, still a servant, watching from the shadows with wide, hungry eyes. Not at the magic or the blade, but at the way they looked at Aros.
Carrow soaked in every moment of it.
I saw him older—maybe only a decade had passed, or maybe hundreds of years. The buildings, the language, and the fashion changed around them, but he had stopped aging. Still in servant’s clothes, but no longer watching. He was acting. I watched his hands steal into Aros’s tent under cover of night. I saw the blade in his hands.
He didn’t hesitate as he drove it into Aros’s chest.
And for the first time, he looked alive. But a witch stood in the shadows. She stepped forward as if summoned by the act, her eyes glowing gold. “You will die within a year.”
That was the price.
He had traded immortality for power.
In the most recent vision, I saw him in Joveryn still clinging to the last threads of mortality. He moved through the town like a shadow, but he watched her.
She practiced magic in the woods, always alone. She screamed into the night, into the wind, at a family that didn’t understand her. Her disdain festered like a wound. He waited. Stalked. Learned her schedule, her weaknesses, her loneliness.
And then he offered her something in return.
Power.
Her name was lost to time now, but I saw her clearly—emerald eyes, ivory skin, thick curls as black as night, hands that shook when she touched the blade for the first time.
My ancestor.
She helped him create the spell. She poured her magic into it. She believed him, and together, they created the vampires and shifted the world.
Now, I sat curled in the corner of my cell, my arms wrapped protectively around the weight of my belly. My back pressed to the cold stone wall, and I let my eyes slip shut, trying to block out the ache that throbbed low in my spine.
“Your grandparents would have loved you,” I whispered. “Your grandmother would have cooked you the best food, and your grandfather would have let you pet the horses. And your father… he would have spoiled you so much.” A tear fell down my cheek. “We would have argued about it nonstop, I’m sure. But I wish I could have seen the two of you together. He deserves to be here. To see how much you’d love him. How muchIlove him.”
I had to get us out of here. Mama said I used to speak to Adar in my mind. August believed it was true. So I breathed slowly and tried to find Adar.
I pictured his face. Not just his features, but the feel of him. The way he always smelled like old paper and pine. The steadiness in his eyes when the world around us cracked. I remembered the sound of his laugh, the quiet cadence of his voice when he corrected me as we sparred. I pulled all of it close, like string I could wind through my fingers.
Please.
My breath hitched.Please, Adar. If you can hear me—
The first pain came like lightning, a white-hot spear ripping through my core.
It tore through me, sharp and brutal, yanking the air from my lungs and cutting off the thought with a scream I couldn’t hold back. I doubled over, clutching my belly as a second wave followed, even more vicious than the first, leaving my vision spotted and my breath ragged.
No. No, not now.
I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t strong enough. I needed more time—just a little more time. But the baby had made its choice, indifferent to my pleading.
My time was up.
The cell door crashed open with a sound that rattled the walls. Servants rushed in as if they’d been told I would break tonight. Maybe they had. Maybe he’d known before I did. I tried to resist, to brace myself against the pain long enough to fight back, but my legs had given out hours ago. They lifted me from the floor like I weighed nothing, my limbs dangling uselessly as they carried me down the narrow corridor. One of them murmured, “Careful, careful—she’s too far along.”
