Chapter 2 Bronwen
Bronwen
I watched the fire dance in the hearth. The feeling of victory I felt when I killed Carrow left as quickly as it came.
August said I didn’t kill him, but he could have lied.
He always kept things from me and this could just be another one of his games because he was mad that I went behind his back and did something.
He had to be lying.
Because the truth was too hard to bear.
I reached into the fire, waiting to feel something—anything. The flames danced around my hand, wrapping between my fingers as they nipped viciously at my flesh, but my skin stayed clean, and all I could feel was a little heat.
What did it feel like to burn? I’d watched a man at Market stand too close to a pit where they were roasting a pig.
The tail of his coat caught immediately, trailing up his back, but he ripped it off and was left unscathed other than a few burn marks.
But a vampire… it was as if they were made entirely of kindling.
A candle could burn them in a matter of seconds.
Did it feel the same as it did when a human burned? I’d never know.
The fire didn’t hurt me, but part of me wanted it to. Maybe if I burned, it would feel like penance. Like proof that I could still feel anything at all. I thought pain would bring me clarity. Or punishment. Or something other than this numbness pressing down on me like a weight I couldn’t shake.
I felt nothing. Just heat and silence.
My thoughts were fragmented, slipping away as fast as they came. Everything felt foggy. I couldn’t remember how long I’d been sitting here. Minutes? Hours? The flames blurred in front of my eyes, and for a moment I forgot where I was.
What I would give to have Shadow with me right now. Was he okay? Did the townspeople make him pay because he was the property of a witch? Or was he still in the barn waiting for us to return? Alone and starving.
The thought punched the breath from my lungs. I blinked slowly, a sick heaviness pressing down on my chest.
I needed to know.
The scar on my neck pulsed, faint and steady, like it was listening. A soft reminder that August would always be tied to me in a way I couldn’t shake. I pressed my fingers against it, but it only throbbed harder, like it was mocking me.
Is this what Papa meant when he said darkness would consume me? The darkness that was left in my soul after losing him and Mama?
“Bronwen!” I jumped at the sound of my name, ripping my hand away from the hearth. I was so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t realized that the flames had crept up my arm, searing the fabric of my sleeve. Adar’s voice had never sounded so much like Papa’s.
He sat in a small wooden chair behind me, daylight peeking behind him through the windows. I had brought us to the coven’s cabin and immediately sank to the floor in front of the fire. Now I realized I had been sitting here for hours. Had he been talking to me?
He stared at me, unmoving. His eyes looked glassy, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He dragged a hand through his hair once, then again, before his knuckles whitened against the armrest. Then he erupted.
“You told me nothing! Trust you? I did. I followed you blindly and we killed the fucking king! But that wasn’t the worst part. Your little boyfriend is one of them! Bronwen, what did you do?”
Tears pooled in my eyes.
Adar took a breath, but I flinched as he shifted forward. My whole body tensed, instinctively pulling back like I expected him to lash out. He froze, his brow furrowing at my reaction, and that made the shame hit even harder.
“Tell me what you’ve done,” he said, steadier now, but with an edge that scraped like ice.
And I did.
I told him everything. I watched his face shift with every detail, and with each passing second, the distance between us grew. I hated how hollow I sounded. Like I was narrating someone else’s story, not mine.
I told him about the night I was marked—how I let it happen, how I convinced myself I could handle it.
I told him about the nightmares and how real they felt, how they tore pieces of me away one at a time.
I told him how many times August and I tried to kill each other, and how I started to forget why we stopped.
I couldn’t meet Adar’s eyes when I told him about the journal. About the witches. About Lowen and his friend. I saw something shift in him when I got to the part about the Legion soldiers. His mouth opened slightly, maybe to interrupt, but he didn’t say a word. He just listened.
And when I finally told him about meeting the king—about how I didn’t know it was Carrow, how I let myself get close—I felt the final crack split wide open inside me.
“I didn’t know his father was Carrow,” I said, barely above a whisper. “I should have. All the signs were there, but I was too blinded to see them. Too stupid. And now they are dead.”
I waited for him to say something. My pulse pounded in my ears, drowning out the crackle of the fire. I braced for him to yell again, to walk out, to tell me I was as twisted as August. The silence felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, waiting for the wind to shove me over.
“Please. Say something.”
He didn’t look at me. Instead, he kept his eyes on the ground. I thought this was it. That he had shut me out. I wouldn’t blame him if he did.
And still, a part of me feared it so deeply I couldn’t breathe.
He pushed himself out of the chair and knelt in front of me. “You went through all of that. Alone.” He grabbed my face, pain painted across his own. “No more secrets. No more lies. We only have each other, and I—I can’t lose you.”
I nodded, wishing this was it. That we could move past it all, run away and start over. But it wasn’t.
The numbness hadn’t lifted. The guilt still dug into my bones.
“He said I didn’t really kill him.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t making sense, but he said that on the next Blood Moon, Carrow will take over his body.”
Adar closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “He could be lying.”
I nodded. “I know. But I need to see him. To see if he’s telling the truth.”
“Then I am going with you.”
“No. He won’t hurt me.” Not physically at least. Emotionally, probably. “He had the chance, and he didn’t.”
“Do not keep me in the dark anymore. Let me take this burden on with you. Please, B.” His voice cracked, his eyes searching mine with desperation.
“He won’t talk if you’re with me.”
“Oh, he’s going to talk,” Adar growled. “If he wants to fucking live, he’s going to talk. Besides, I have something that will make him talk.”
* * *
We had formed a shell of a plan, but Adar wanted to wait until sunset to ensure no one in town saw us. We had a giant target on our backs now that everyone knew we were witches. I was fine with waiting, because something else had been bothering me for days now.
I needed to see Shadow.
The sun hung high in the sky now, but it did nothing to chase cold away as I slipped through the pines.
I wanted to come alone. And I almost convinced myself to slip out when Adar wasn’t looking, but if he found me gone, the little bit of progress we had made would have been for nothing.
With him came Jonah, one of Papa’s oldest friends, who used his magic to get us here faster.
It was the logical choice. I would have been miserable riding for hours from the coven’s safe house to our home in the middle of winter. But still, I’d rather be alone.
Jonah brought us to the woods. He worried that if we spelled ourselves straight to our home, someone would be on the road and see us. He decided to let us visit our home alone and wait in the woods to take us back.
As we walked, my mind constantly replayed what had happened last night-tricking August, the trap we formed with our witches hiding under a cloaking spell, and August almost stopping me.
“How many witches died last night?” I asked, breaking the long silence between me and Adar.
“Three. None if your lover hadn’t shown up.”
I tensed at those words. There was no love in those eyes. Not anymore.
Adar sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
But it wasn’t like he was wrong.
“I went to him before,” I admitted. “Planned to kill him for what he let happen. But I couldn’t.”
Adar nodded, and I was sure he had something he wanted to say, but he stopped himself.
The smell of smoke hit me before I saw it, curling in the back of my throat like a scream I couldn’t swallow. Our home was a pile of ashes. Where once there were windows glowing with candlelight, now only scorched timbers jutted like broken bones from the earth. And the barn—oh gods.
I ran through the yard. My breath came fast, shallow, and panicked, clouding the freezing air like smoke.
The world blurred, grief coating it in static.
I could still see Papa on the porch, laughing at something Mama said.
I could still hear the creak of the barn doors, the soft huff of Shadow greeting me. Gone. All of it was gone.
“B! Wait!”
Smoke still filled the air, clinging to my clothes, my hair, my skin.
How could someone do this? Did they leave the horses to burn?
I dropped to my knees on the far end where Shadow’s stall once stood, my fingers digging through the blackened debris like I could uncover a miracle.
Ash clung to my hands, and sparks flickered with every desperate movement.
Would I find anything to know if he was in here? Bones? Hair?
“No, no, no, no, no.” The word was barely a whisper, ripped from the hollow pit in my chest as I clawed through the rubble. My fingers closed around something half-buried beneath the ash—a warped metal halter buckle, still warm from the smoldering ground.
My breath hitched. I pushed deeper into the rubble, my heart thudding in my ears. What if he had been trapped? What if he had cried out for me while I was off chasing vengeance?