Page 119 of Break Her Heart
Snow had started to fall again as we prepared for another winter. I shoved the cabin door open with my shoulder, arms full of firewood, and kicked it closed behind me. The wind clawed at the frame before it shut. I dropped the wood with a sigh near the hearth, shaking the cold out of my coat.
The fire had burned down to low embers. I knelt and began stacking the wood, the movement automatic. My hands were rough, calloused, nails blackened from work that never seemed to end. My beard had grown thick and uneven, scratching at my jaw, and I hadn’t bothered trimming it in weeks. Food was harder to stomach than the silence, and most days I forced down only enough to keep moving. The hollows beneath my cheekbones deepened, but I ignored them.
I kept this place livable—barely. Fixed the leaks in the roof, patched the cracks in the stone, chopped and hauled enoughfirewood to make it through the cold. It was better than doing nothing. Better than listening to the silence.
After the market, I hadn’t gone north again. I stayed in the south, rooted in a place that felt more like exile than refuge. I didn’t try to reach the coven. I didn’t send word to anyone. What would I say? That I’d lost her? That I stood by while the last person who mattered was taken from me?
No. Instead, I buried myself in this little house and shut out the rest of the world, pretending the walls could keep the truth out.
I tried not to think about that day, but it seared my memory like a brand that would never fade. She’d sent me off for something too sweet—the way she liked it, always indulgent. I’d only been gone a few minutes, the kind of absence that should have meant nothing. When I came back, she was gone, the basket she had been carrying toppled over onto the ground.
I ran through every alley and every stall, shoving past vendors, knocking over baskets of fruit, screaming her name until my voice cracked raw. My chest ached, lungs tearing with each breath, but I didn’t stop. Desperation drove me, but under it all was the gnawing certainty that it was my fault she was gone. If I hadn’t left her for something as foolish as a sweet, if I had stayed at her side like I should have, none of it would have happened. I was ready to rip the town apart beam by beam, stone by stone, until I found her. My throat was raw from shouting, and still I ran, driven by panic and the guilt that weighed heavier than my own bones. And at last, I did.
August had her pressed against a wall, his fangs in her neck, draining her while she went limp in his arms. I saw red. I didn’t see the tenderness, didn’t see the restraint. I saw a predator finishing the kill. And worse, I saw myself too late to stop it.
It had all been a game. He’d hunted her like prey and taken her from me just because he had grown bored in his miserableimmortal life. Or maybe the Blood Moon had passed and we just didn’t realize it. And it was Carrow who killed her.
I didn’t protect her. I should have been there. I should have never left. I didn’t protect our parents, and now I had failed her too. She was all I had left, and I had abandoned her for a moment of carelessness. That truth gutted me deeper than any blade.
Then—
“Adar.”
I froze. The logs slipped from my hands and clattered across the floorboards, the sound too loud in the silence. My chest constricted as I whipped around, breath caught, scanning the cabin. Empty. The fire hissed low, shadows clawing at the walls.
My heart hammered so hard I thought it might break my ribs. I swallowed, throat dry, and forced myself toward the window. My boots scraped against the rough wood. I pressed a palm to the frosted pane and looked out. Woods. Snow. Stillness. No one. Nothing.
Then it came again.
Adar.It was a whisper inside my mind. Soft as breath, but so real it prickled the hairs along my arms.
My pulse thundered. I staggered back from the glass, chest heaving. Had her spirit come to me? Was I losing my grip, slipping into madness after too many nights alone? I squeezed my eyes shut, fists clenched, trying to steady myself. But the sound of her voice lingered, curling through my mind until I could almost feel her there with me.
Adar. Adar. Adar. Adar.
I slammed my hands over my ears, trying to shut it out, nails digging into my scalp as if I could claw the sound away. My whole body shook with the force of it.
“Stop!” I screamed, the word tearing out of me like it might drive the whisper from my skull.
Then memories hit me so forcibly that I fell to my knees. They weren’t mine—but I felt them like they were. I saw her inside that wretched castle, dressed in finery and fire, fighting with every part of herself to survive. I watched her stare August down with eyes that never wavered, and then, I saw her fall in love with him. And he fell just as hard. I saw the way he looked at her, the way he softened, the way he bled for her in ways no one else could see. He was good to her—gentler than I thought him capable of being—and for a time, she was safe in his arms.
And then they ran out of time.
I saw us running, spending our nights under the stars when we couldn’t find shelter. I saw that wretched day at the market and watched myself step away from her. Except I didn’t watch her death through her eyes. Because she didn’t die that day. She was taken. It was all an illusion to think she died. To keep me from coming after her.
I felt her fear when they drove the blade into his heart and everything changed. When August vanished in an instant and Carrow’s soul stepped into his skin like it had always belonged there. One heartbeat, he loved her. The next, he was a monster wearing his face. The cruelty. The manipulation. The beatings. The way he twisted her spirit until she barely recognized herself. I saw her become smaller, quieter—except for the moments she burned. When she refused to break.
I watched her belly grow, heavy with the life they created, watched how she held on to that child as if it were the only thing anchoring her. And then I saw it—the birth. The screams. The blood. The way she fought, and the way it was all ripped from her in one final, cruel stroke.
Her baby. Her daughter.
Stolen.
I screamed her name until my throat tore raw, but it wasn’t enough—nothing was ever enough. The sound broke against the silence, swallowed whole by her absence.
I collapsed to my knees in the firelight, chest heaving, heart splitting open as her pain surged through me like a tidal wave I could never outrun. Tears blurred my vision, and a low, strangled moan clawed from my chest as guilt devoured me. I hadn’t protected her. I hadn’t saved her. And the weight of that truth pressed down on me until I could hardly breathe.
Adar.The whisper came again.
