Page 31 of Break Her Heart
It was beautiful.
Too beautiful.
Silk and lace, soft against my skin, with delicate beading that shimmered like frost in the candlelight. The bodice clung to me like it had always known my shape, while the train billowed behind in heavy waves, so long and so luxurious it seemed made for another life.
But the weight of it—it didn’t feel like a gown. It felt like a warning.
Earlier, August had taken Corwin’s body back to our chambers. He ripped it apart piece by piece and burned each limb in the hearth. He did it slowly, methodically, because a large fire would have summoned questions—too many servants, too many vampires with too keen a sense of smell.
I sat and watched.
And the worst part was, I wasn’t horrified. I was more concerned he’d accidentally set himself on fire than I was by the sight of him covered in blood and gore, reducing his brother to ash.
Now I stood in a room surrounded by fabrics worth more than the house I grew up in, being pinned into a dress that felt like a cage stitched in ivory. A vow I never made. A surrender. I had never worn anything so exquisite.
The seamstresses worked with swift, practiced hands, whispering to each other in a language I didn’t understand. They circled me like vultures, pinning and tucking and smoothing as though sculpting me into someone else entirely.
August lounged in a tall velvet chair near the door, head resting on his hand. He didn’t speak. But his eyes never left me. They followed every brush of a hand, every adjustment, every inch of lace that was pulled taut over my skin.
I glanced at his hands—broad, steady, deceptively gentle. I could still feel them on me from earlier, right after the bath I took to rid myself of Corwin’s blood. He hadn’t said a word as I emerged clean and quiet, but he’d touched me anyway. Hands over my skin, lips on my neck, smoothing nothing, adjusting nothing. Just placing his scent over mine like a brand.
There was a possessiveness in his gaze that made my cheeks flush, though I fought not to show it.
I looked back at myself in the mirror, at the way the dress hugged my ribs. It was easier to focus on fabric and posture than the memory of his hands on me, of how he’d touched every inch of skin just to coat me in his scent. I tried to push it down, to pretend it hadn’t happened. But my body remembered even if I didn’t want it to.
“There is no way they made this dress in a day,” I muttered, watching my reflection.
“Well, they did,” he said lazily, but his tone didn’t match the slouch of his body. There was something too careful in it. A quiet tension behind the ease.
I turned toward him, careful not to twist too much with the pins still in place. “August, I was raised by the most skilled seamstress in Joveryn.” I glanced down at the women in front of me. “No offense, but this would have taken her months.”
He opened his mouth—maybe to lie, maybe to explain—but before he could speak, Halston stepped into the room like a shadow slipping in under the door.
“Excuse my interruption, but I would like your opinion on some things, Your Grace.”
August stood without argument, adjusting the cuff of his shirt. “I will be back.”
He glanced at me once more before following Halston out. I let out a slow breath and turned back to the mirror.
“It was his mother’s dress,” one of the seamstresses whispered, too softly for anyone but me to hear.
“Nadia!” the other hissed.
I blinked. “His mother’s?”
The younger seamstress nodded, eyes wide. “I heard that she wore it on her wedding day. Before she—” She stopped herself, suddenly interested in the hem.
I swallowed hard, staring at myself again. Draped in history. In legacy. In the ruin of a woman who birthed a monster.
It fit perfectly. As if it had been waiting.
The door creaked open.
“August, why didn’t you—”
I stopped short. It wasn’t August.
Simon stepped inside, the scent of expensive cologne wafting in ahead of him. He gave me a dramatic once-over, eyes sparkling. “Beautiful, Bronwen.”
