Chapter 7 Bronwen
Bronwen
“Dinner? Am I going to sit and watch all of you just feed?” I asked as I followed him down another corridor.
Our footsteps echoed off the stone, each one swallowed quickly by thick walls and heavier silence. The halls twisted and turned like a maze, lit by sconces spaced just far enough apart to keep everything in a half-shadow. The air smelled like wax and stone and something older. Something wrong.
“No. It’s an actual meal prepared by humans. I told you vampires can eat.” August turned down another hall as if he had the entire place memorized. But of course he did. This was the real him. Not the one I had grown so used to.
“But you do not need to eat.”
August let out a breath.
“My sister planned this as soon as she heard of your arrival. To welcome you, or assess you to determine the best way to hurt me. I never know with her. Besides, you need to eat.”
I didn’t argue. I hadn’t eaten since before Adar and I questioned August, and that felt like another lifetime. My stomach tightened, but not just from hunger. The dread was growing stronger the closer we got.
August stopped and turned to me. “Do not provoke them.”
I scrunched my nose. “Why?”
“Because I do not wish to kill them on my first day back,” he said. “It will already be hard enough as it is without you doing something to piss them off.”
I crossed my arms. “So you do care about them. They were never important enough to tell me about before. No—I guess I was just never important enough for you to tell me about them.”
He flinched. Barely. But it was there.
“Has it never occurred to you that everything I kept from you, including them, was for your safety?”
“And yet here I am with two dead parents, a brother being hunted, and vampires fighting the urge to kill me around every corner.”
His jaw ticked. “Get through this meal. Be as indifferent as you can. They will be bored enough that hopefully we will see as little of them as possible.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“You do.”
There it was again. That simple, absolute certainty that made my blood boil. He spoke like he owned me, like I was a stupid girl who didn’t know what she was walking into.
We stepped into the dining hall, a vaulted chamber lined with dark stone and towering archways that seemed to swallow the light.
The only illumination came from tall candelabras pushed to the far corners of the room, their wax-dripped arms casting long, twitching shadows across the cold floor.
None of the flames were allowed near the table—too dangerous, I realized, for a room full of vampires whose very skin could catch fire.
The table groaned under the weight of food—glistening fruits not yet in season in Joveryn, exotic meats whose scents curled into the air like perfume, pastries that looked too delicate to be real.
It all shimmered with wealth and presentation, but it felt wrong.
Like it had all been arranged for a show, not a meal.
Halston shooed the servants through a set of double doors when he saw us, before stepping to the dining table adjusting the vase of roses in the middle and admiring his work.
Four other vampires stood together: three men and a woman. They turned toward us in eerie unison. Though their eyes were shades of brown or blue, I felt the familiar thrumming of magic that told me they were nothing close to human. They were just different, like August.
“Long time no see, brother.” One stepped forward with a languid elegance, lifting a silver goblet of wine with fingers that sparkled with rings.
He had dark hair that curled at the edges, tousled like he had no care for his appearance.
His striking blue eyes gleamed with mischief and something sharper underneath, and his smile looked more suited to a dance floor than a throne room.
He wore a deep crimson jacket, open at the collar, exposing just a little too much skin in a way that felt deliberate.
Every movement was theatrical, exaggerated, as though life was just one long performance to him.
“But here you are in the same form I left you in.”
Then he glanced at me, tilting his head in the same animalistic way August always had. “We are honored,” he said, bowing just slightly. “Though I admit, I never expected our dear brother to bring a human when he would only be here for a few months.”
August didn’t blink. No matter how much fear he had for Carrow taking over his body, he never showed it to anyone, which was probably smart. “This is Simon.”
“Of course,” Simon said, with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “Your ways have always been… unconventional.”
The silence that followed was thick with unspoken insult.
“Bronwen.” I nodded, cutting through the tension. I refused to be called the human for the rest of my life.
He opened his mouth to speak, but someone grabbed him and pulled him to the side.
Just as he stepped aside, a woman swept in with loose golden curls that glimmered like sunlight against the candlelight.
Her lips curled into a wide, wolfish smile that didn’t reach her bright eyes.
She moved with a predatory grace, like she was always circling someone, waiting to strike.
It was the woman I had seen when we first arrived, and up close, her presence felt even more dangerous. She was stunning. And she knew it.
“You’re prettier than I imagined,” she said to me, tilting her head. “So soft. So pink. I wonder what you’d taste like if someone bit you right here.” She reached out and traced a finger along the line of my throat.
Her eyes widened when her fingers grazed the mark. “Oh but it seems someone already has. Now Auggie, don’t you know the dangers of marking someone?”
I didn’t move. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction though every natural instinct in me told me to set her on fire.
“I guess all your time away has caused you to forget what happened to your dear mo-”
“Speak of her again and I will have your tongue cut out, Lavina. Do not forget who your king is.”
August’s mother was marked?
She straightened. “For a few months. It is a shame we lost our father, but at least we have you to bring him back to us.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder as she stepped back.
Then a third vampire stepped forward—his deep brown skin smooth and unblemished, a striking contrast to the golden embroidery of his dark velvet coat.
His hair, a rich chestnut, was perfectly styled and tucked back behind his ears with the kind of precision that screamed vanity rather than habit.
His deep blue eyes were sharp and assessing, and he carried himself with the confident ease of someone who assumed everyone in the room should already be watching him.
“We’re all very… curious, of course,” he said, swirling the dark wine in his glass. “We never see our brother and when he is forced back, he brings a woman with him.” He looked up at August. “You must really despise her to leave her for Carrow when he returns.”
“Careful, Corwin,” August warned.
Simon gave Corwin a sidelong glance, amused. Lavina, on the other hand, looked vaguely annoyed—like she hadn’t been the one to land the insult first.
“You can say that to my face, you know. I don’t need a man to defend me. Least of all him.”
Corwin inclined his head, and August placed his hand on my back as if silently reminding me of our earlier discussion. I took a deep breath as I tried to push my emotions back down.
August gestured to the last man, who sat slightly apart from the others, his posture withdrawn but not unsure. “That is Benedict.”
Benedict had dark, shoulder-length hair that fell like a curtain, half-concealing his sharp, pale features.
His eyes were shadowed, as though he was always somewhere else in his mind.
He didn’t radiate menace the way the others did.
Instead, he carried the quiet presence of someone who had never quite belonged here but stayed anyway.
Where the others wore their roles like finely tailored clothes, Benedict seemed untouched by it all.
Like he existed on the edges of their world, always observing, never partaking.
August grabbed my hand, his grip firm, and led me down the long stretch of table.
We passed his siblings, who parted only just enough to let us through, their eyes following us like hawks tracking prey.
Then, in a blur of motion, they vanished from our path—appearing at their seats in flashes of movement too fast for human eyes to follow.
The sudden shift made the candle flames tremble.
As August took the head of the table, the room seemed to settle, the tension strung tight like a bow. It was clear that this was his place, whether they liked it or not. And by the stiff posture of his siblings, they didn’t.
“What? You might as well get used to seeing your brother here. If Carrow’s lucky, he will be in this body for a millennia.”
They exchanged glances, but August ignored them. Halston lingered near the kitchen doors, his posture careful, his gaze fixed uncomfortably on me.
“You are dismissed, Halston,” August said, draping a napkin across his lap.
Halston’s eyes snapped away from me as if waking from a trance, darting to August instead. Flustered, he dipped his head quickly. “Yes, Your Grace,” he muttered before hurrying out.
August grabbed a plate of meat and started piling it on my plate. “You need to eat,” he muttered.
“How endearing.” Simon glanced toward us, smiling as he studied me.
August shot him a glare, and Simon only chuckled under his breath before shaking his head and dropping his gaze to the food in front of him.
The other siblings had already started eating—forks and knives cutting silently through rare, barely cooked meats.
Their conversation flowed easily now, fluid and dismissive, like we weren’t even at the table.
Lavina was telling some sordid story about her latest hunt, her laughter sharp and glittering like broken glass.
Simon interrupted with a crude joke that made Corwin roll his eyes and mutter something under his breath about decorum.
Benedict sat silent, methodically dissecting his food with surgical precision, occasionally glancing at the rest of them with thinly veiled disdain.
At one point, Lavina snapped at Corwin for correcting her. Simon mocked them both with a lazy toast, while Benedict kept his head down, clearly tired of it all.
For the longest time, none of them looked at August. None of them acknowledged him—or me.
It was like we were ghosts at their feast.
Then, Lavina leaned forward. “Did you live in town?”
There was a long moment of silence before I realized everyone was looking at me.
I straightened. “A little outside of it.”
“Siblings?”
“A brother.”
“And your parents?”
I paused for a moment, trying my best to not show the despair that wanted to desperately come out at the mention of them. “Dead.”
“Oh, a poor orphan girl. How sweet of Augustus to bring you in.”
I clenched my fists under the table. Breathe.
“You know,” Simon cut through the conversation. “You smell oddly familiar.”
“Maybe it’s because your brother had his hands all over me right before we came in here.”
He let out a loud laugh. “Do you enjoy that? Having something so dangerous be so… obsessed with you?”
“Not as much as I enjoy having my hand wrapped around his throat,” I said before I could stop myself, but I didn’t regret it.
I was tired of being quiet. Tired of being told to behave.
The look of frustration that twitched across August’s face only made me smile.
If it made his life harder, good. I wasn’t here to make things easy for him.
The room stilled for a beat, and then something like amusement flickered across Lavina’s sharp smile. Corwin raised an eyebrow, clearly intrigued, while Benedict actually glanced up from his plate for the first time.
Simon gave a delighted laugh, clapping his hands once.
“Oh, Bronwen,” he purred, leaning forward. “I think we are going to get along splendidly.”
August leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. I guess I wasn’t boring them like he wanted.
The siblings talked more as servants brought in towers of decadent sweets.
August leaned closer, his voice low enough to be mistaken for a breath. “You never listen, do you?”
I turned to face him, ready to snap something back—and froze. His face was so close, our lips nearly brushed. I hated how I still noticed things like that. How the heat rolled off him despite everything.
“Listening to you has gotten me nowhere.”