Page 48 of Break Her Heart
I wanted her to scream, but not in anger. But I’d take the anger too.
She turned to face me again, shrugged her sleeves down, and let the gown fall. She stood there, bare, unflinching, eyes locked on mine as if daring me to look away.
I didn’t have to look down to know exactly what she looked like. It was engraved in my mind. I saw the curve of her breasts, the dips in her hips, and the few freckles that led to her navel every time I closed my eyes.
She glanced at me with hooded eyes. I held my breath, begging to the gods that I wouldn’t smell her scent of jasmine that would be my undoing making me forget the little restraint I was trying to hold on to.
She stepped forward until her breasts nearly touched me, her voice soft and lethal.“Goodnight, husband.”
Gods help me. What have I done?
* * *
She slept with her back to me.
I wasn’t able to sleep long.
At some point in the early hours—before the castle had begun to stir, before the candles outside our door flickered back to life—I’d woken up gasping for air, throat burning like fire, like I was dying all over again.
The dream had been too familiar. Too real. I kneeled, bound in magical chains on the ground. Then, she reached for it—no, sherippedit from me. Drained the power through my veins like it belonged to her. Fire exploded from within, consuming me from the inside out. My skin split, blistered, melted. I tried to scream, but the air burned in my lungs.
She didn’t flinch.
She stood over me with her hand still raised, eyes burning with power. She burned me alive, using my own magic to do it.
I woke with the scent of ash still in my nose, the phantom pain of seared flesh clinging to my bones. My skin still itched, like the flames had left a residue under my flesh. I flexed my fingers just to feel them move.
But when I opened my eyes, I was back in this cursed bed, drenched in sweat, the sheets tangled around my legs. And she was still asleep.
I hadn’t woken her.
Somehow, I’d kept the scream buried in my throat, where it lived now like a shard of glass.
The quiet was a lie. It pressed against my temples like a vice. The castle hadn’t woken yet, but my mind hadn’t stopped screaming. Not since she turned her back on me.
I wished I had woken her. Maybe then I wouldn’t be lying here, watching her sleep like nothing had changed. Like she hadn’t torn the ground out from under me.
The image of her beneath me burned in my mind—her hands wrapped around me just before she did the one thing I begged her not to. I wanted to hate her. Ishouldhate her.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. So I watched her instead.
The castle was still cast in shadow, though it had to be well into the afternoon. The servants had just begun to stir beyond the chamber door, the distant scrape of footsteps and clink of dishes too faint for human ears. But I heard it all.
I lay still, watching the steady rise and fall of her breath. Her hair fanned around her like ink across the pillow, her face relaxed in sleep—young, almost innocent. Vulnerable.
I hated how peaceful she looked, and yet I couldn’t look away.
Part of me still wanted to reach for her. To brush a strand of hair behind her ear. To pull her into me and pretend—just for a moment—that we were still something worth saving.
But another part of me burned with the memory of what she’d done.
She left me. Chose this path. Forced the crown onto my head like it was some kind of salvation. And now she slept like none of it mattered.
My Winnie. Mywife.
I rolled onto my back and dragged a hand down my face. If she woke now, I didn’t know what she’d see. And I didn’t know what I wanted her to see.
Had I gone too far yesterday? Had I broken something between us that couldn’t be put back together?
