Chapter 9 Bronwen #2
Instead, I lifted my hand and summoned whatever wood I could find nearby. A door creaked open down the hall, and a chair snapped through the air, whistling toward us.
The chair slammed into Corwin with a brutal crack—one leg spearing through his heart, another tearing into his stomach, the remaining legs pinning his body to the floor like a grotesque marionette.
That was a little more than I meant. I winced. “Whoops.”
Footsteps thundered down the hall.
August appeared a second later, breath ragged, eyes flashing. He looked around sharply, making sure no one else had followed, then turned to me with a look that was somewhere between fury and disbelief.
“Gods alive, Winnie!” he hissed. “You couldn’t wait twenty-four hours?”
My mouth fell open. “He was going to throw me over the balcony!”
“Shh!” August snapped, glancing down the hall again. “Do you want the entire castle in here? We have to clean this up before someone sees.”
I looked at Corwin’s body—gray, still, pierced through the chest and stomach. August didn’t even hesitate. He grabbed the shattered remains of the chair, yanked it free from the corpse, and hurled it over the balcony like it was trash.
“They won’t know whose blood this is,” he muttered. “But we need to get rid of the body. I am not dealing with this right now.”
“Get rid of the body? You’re not upset that I just killed your brother?”
“Upset?” He turned to me with a scowl. “No. Inconvenienced? Absolutely.”
August slung Corwin’s body over his shoulder with a grunt, blood still dripping from the chair splinters embedded in the corpse.
He made it a few steps before glancing back over his shoulder, catching me still kneeling on the blood-slick floor, my breath uneven.
“Do I need to carry you, too?”
* * *
A wedding dress.
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.”
Not another one.
I didn’t return the compliment. “I know.”
He circled the pedestal slowly, taking care not to step on the train. His gaze was curious, glittering, too knowing.
“It’s strange,” he mused. “To see Augustus with someone. But then, who could resist you?”
I didn’t respond, waiting for his attack.
He smirked, sensing the tension. “Relax. I prefer my lovers taller and broader, and my heart belongs to someone else.” He paused, inhaling deeply—too deeply. His eyes widened. “I knew it.”
I frowned. “Knew what?”
“I smelled you. Months ago, in the woods. It was… overwhelming.” His smile faded. “I almost came to find you. But Augustus found me first.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Convenient.”
“He was strange that night. Wanted to spend time with his brother. Took me away from the scent, acted like he couldn’t smell it.” Simon tilted his head. “Which now I know was a lie.”
I crossed my arms. “So you followed him instead.”
“I did.” He looked almost embarrassed. “I watched him feed. Six people, maybe more. It wasn’t hunger. It was frenzy. Like something inside him had snapped. It was sweet of him, protecting you from me.”
I kept my expression neutral. “Maybe he was protecting you from me.”
Simon blinked, caught off guard. For the first time, he looked unsure—his tongue stilled behind parted lips, as if realizing just how much he didn’t know about me after all.
“What are you doing in here?”
August’s voice cut through the room like a whip. He stood in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, his eyes fixed on Simon with a look that could gut a man.
His gaze flicked to me, then dropped lower—to the lace clinging to my waist, the bare slope of my shoulders. When he looked back at Simon, the rage was quiet but unmistakable.
Simon stepped back instinctively. “I just came to let you know that Lavina wants to do another dinner tonight.”
August didn’t move. “Does she.”
Simon swallowed and tried a smile, but it faltered under the weight of August’s stare.
August finally pushed off the frame and walked into the room. “Why does she wish to make my life more difficult?”
“It’s Lavina,” Simon said quickly. “That’s why the gods gifted us with a sister.”
August stepped up to me, his eyes sweeping over the front of my dress with quiet deliberation before finally meeting mine.
The pedestal I stood on brought me level with him—eye to eye, breath to breath.
I fought the urge to step down, to retreat from the heat of his gaze and the closeness that made the air feel too thin.
“Very well,” August mumbled.
“You haven’t seen Corwin today, have you?”
I knew questions would come, but not this fast. They couldn’t know what I did. Eventually, they’d all know what I was capable of—when they were screaming and burning. But not now. Not yet. I forced my breath to stay steady, my spine stiff.
“No.” August rolled his neck, a muscle twitching in his jaw, but his eyes stayed locked on mine. “Is that all?”
Simon hesitated a beat longer than necessary, gaze flitting between us like he sensed something was off. “I’ll see the two of you tonight, then.”
As if silently instructed, Simon left in a blur, the air practically hissing in his wake.
“Why not tell them no? You’re the king.”
He exhaled through his nose, the edge of a bitter smile tugging at his mouth. “Because being king doesn’t mean they’ll stop trying to gut me when I’m not looking. Appeasing them with dinner is a lot easier than having to watch my back around every corner.”
I rolled my eyes as I looked back at myself in the mirror.
I knew I was going to be miserable at dinner.