Page 120 of Break Her Heart
She was calling for me. Somehow she had tethered her mind to mine, her presence brushing against the edges of my thoughts like a fragile thread of light in the dark.
I opened my mouth to speak but quickly closed it, my breath shaking in my chest, terrified that even whispering might snap the connection.
B?I thought, the word trembling as I sent it out to her.
Adar? I-I’m not going crazy, am I?
Her voice, even echoing inside my mind, was faint and frayed. It carried none of the fierce certainty, none of the relentless fire that had always defined my sister. Hearing her like that twisted my stomach with dread.
Bronwen?I breathed her name inside my mind, the sound cracking with disbelief. My throat tightened as I forced the thought out.Is it really you?
Then an image of a dark room lit only by shadows, its stone walls damp, and a heavy door barred from the outside flashed through my mind. The air felt suffocating, a prison meant to break her.
Come get me.The words landed like a plea, threaded with desperation that hollowed out my chest.
42
Bronwen
Curled in the farthest corner of the cell, my back pressed to the cold stone wall. The only light came from a single slit in the ceiling high above, casting pale gray shadows that never changed. I’d lost track of how many days had passed since I’d reached out to Adar. Since I’d pulled on that frayed, forgotten thread in my mind and found him.
I didn’t even know how I had done it. I just knew that I had screamed inside my head so loudly that somehow, he’d heard me. Since then, he had spoken to me now and then. Small reassurances. A whisper in the dark when I needed it most.I’m coming.
I held on to those words like lifelines, replaying them when the silence stretched too long, when the pain threatened to consume me. He said he was working on getting magic. That he couldn’t get to me yet, not without it.
I understood. But gods, it was getting harder to wait.
Because it wasn’t just fear that kept me curled up in this place. It was grief—deep and hollow and unrelenting.
My baby was gone.
I didn’t know what Carrow had done with her. Had he killed her? Hidden her away? Was she crying somewhere, scared and alone? Or worse—was she with him?
That loss clawed at me more viciously than the hunger or the cold or the silence ever could. It was the kind of pain that rooted itself in my bones, that stole the breath from my lungs when I tried to sleep. Some nights, I felt the flutter of phantom kicks low in my belly, cruel echoes of a life I never got to hold. I would jolt awake clutching at myself, desperate to find her still there, only to be met with hollow silence and emptiness.
Every time footsteps echoed outside the door, I flinched. Every time the lock scraped open and a tray was shoved inside, I held my breath.
Not yet,I told myself.But soon.
I refused to let myself think of anything else.
Justsoon.
Carrow hadn’t come to me yet. That was the one grace the gods seemed to have gifted me with.
Until I felt the air shift.
There was no sound. No footsteps. Just a rush of pressure, like the room exhaled all at once. I shielded my eyes as a flicker of light sparked, blinding in the gloom. Spots burst behind my lids as I squinted into the sudden glow, heart thundering.
When my eyes adjusted, I saw him standing there, a small ball of fire glowing in his hand, casting shifting shadows across the stone walls and chasing the darkness back. The light flickered against the hollows of his face as my heart stuttered.
Adar.
He crouched before me, and I barely recognized him. His face was thinner, cheekbones sharp where they hadn’t beenbefore. Shadows bruised the skin beneath his eyes, and a rough scruff covered his jaw as if he hadn’t had the time or will to shave. He looked unkempt, worn down, as if every day I’d been locked away had carved itself into him too. His eyes were wide with panic and relief all at once.
He reached for me gently, arms wrapping around my small, curled frame like I was something breakable.
“B,” he breathed, tucking his chin into the top of my head. “Gods, I found you.”
