Chapter 25 Bronwen #2
His gaze darkened—deepened—like a storm rolling in behind his eyes.
The edges of the room fell away; candlelight guttered, sound thinned, and all the air seemed to funnel toward him.
Heat rose off his skin in a faint glow. My heartbeat climbed to meet his, too loud, too eager.
He was ruin and refuge in the same breath—something holy wearing something wicked—and I couldn’t look anywhere else.
I wanted him. Needed him. The kind of need that emptied out reason and filled it with fire.
I would have given him my throat, my pulse, the last of my stubborn pride.
I would have lied, knelt, burned a kingdom to ash if he asked and then thanked him for the order.
Let the world keep spinning; let it fall—I didn’t care. There was only him.
A smile—slow, knowing—curved his lips. “You’d know,” he said.
The words wrapped around my brain, silky and sharp, and then he blinked and the world snapped back into place. I gasped, stumbling as I pushed myself from the bed.
“What. The fuck. Was that?!”
“Compulsion,” he said. “Like I said, I didn’t use it on you. I would never use it on you.”
“You could have stopped me from killing Carrow.”
The words tumbled out before I fully processed what they meant. And when I did, it hit me like a punch to the chest.
He could have stopped me.
He’d watched me fall apart. Watched me break. Let me make the choice that nearly cost me everything—him included. My throat tightened, a flicker of betrayal sparked somewhere deep in my chest. But then again would I have been okay with him taking a choice from me?
No. I wouldn’t have been able to forgive him if he manipulated me like that. It had to be my decision. Right or wrong, it needed to be mine.
Still, the weight of it lingered.
“But I didn’t,” he said quietly as he pulled me back into bed. “Even when you signed my death sentence.”
His voice had barely settled in the air when his hand slipped beneath the blanket, fingers brushing the inside of my thigh. My breath hitched, and I hated how instinctively my legs parted for him.
I didn’t stop him. Not at first.
His palm smoothed upward, teasingly close. I exhaled sharply, muscles tightening for all the wrong reasons. I shoved his hand away.
“The mood’s gone,” I said, not nearly nearly as firm as I wanted it to be.
He moved closer anyway, his breath brushing my jaw. “Come on, Winnie,” he whispered, mouth almost against my ear. “I said I’d never use compulsion on you. Are you going to make me a liar now?”
The words sank into me like a hook. My body betrayed me first—leaning into him, my thighs tightening. That intoxicating heat swelled between us again, and any resistance I had left crumbled.
I gave in.
* * *
Later, I lay in bed with my head on his chest, tracing slow circles across the hard lines of his abdomen. His arm was draped around my back, the other hand sliding slowly through my hair in a rhythm that made it hard to think.
“Can other vampires do that?” I asked softly.
“No,” he murmured as if he had no doubt that compulsion was still on my mind. “I’m the only one.”
“Are there other gifts some have?”
“No. It’s just me.”
I tilted my head slightly, feeling his fingers pause briefly in my hair before moving again, gentler now.
“You’re also stronger.”
“Stronger than Carrow was in my father’s body, too.”
He didn’t say it with pride—just quiet certainty. But it carried weight, and I could feel the truth in his voice. Not just strength, but something lonelier. The burden of being different, even among monsters.
“Why is that? Do you think it has to do with being the oldest?” I asked.
“Huh.” August let out a breath that was almost a laugh, but not quite. “I guess it never came up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m the youngest of my siblings.”
I pushed myself up, brows knitting. “What? Then why are you the one that’s next in line?”
He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, as if sorting through old dust-covered memories.
“Benedict is the oldest and was originally the heir. Then came Simon, Lavina, and Corwin. All by different mothers. All from Malachi, my father. Simon and Lavina were born only months apart—that’s why they’re so close.
They were raised together. Benedict was already grown when they were born, and Corwin came a century after that.
They were all born before Carrow took over my father’s body. ”
“But you weren’t,” I said softly.
He nodded. “I was an accident. After Carrow took over Malachi’s body, he got attached to a servant. She was quiet, obedient, exactly what he wanted. So he married her, thought she could play the part in his twisted little fantasy. For a while, she did.”
“Lavina said she was marked.”
He sighed. “Not by Carrow. He had another vampire mark her because he wanted to feed from her but had seen what could happen and didn’t want any of the side effects.
He locked up the other vampire to keep him from trying to find her after she was marked, but it didn’t stop my mother from trying to get him out.
She dreamt of him. Not dying by his hand but living a happy life with him.
That was when Carrow decided to turn her. ”
Everyone had always been a pawn in Carrow’s game.
And it was all so confusing. It always was. Carrow was a leech that attached himself to others and forced control. August said he was not his father. Maybe it wasn’t his body, but it was his soul when August was conceived. It was easier to believe if I didn’t think about it too hard.
“So you never got to know Malachi?”
He shook his head. “At first, I thought Carrow was my father. And in his own sick way, he was… good to me. Which only made things worse with my siblings. They went through the loss of our father. They had to watch Carrow wear his face. I didn’t.
I was a child when they were already adults—and they made me pay for it.
Locked me in cells when no one was watching.
Starved me. Made me feed off dead animals.
All except Benedict. He kept his distance. ”
My stomach twisted. “How old were you when that stopped?”
“I was thirteen. I threw Corwin through a wall and had my hand in Lavina’s chest, ready to rip her heart out, but Carrow stopped me.
I shouldn’t have been able to do that with them having hundreds of years on me.
They should have been stronger than me. After that, my siblings kept their distance.
And Carrow… he changed. I think he started to fear me. ”
August’s voice dropped lower. “Then, one night, a servant spilled wine on me during dinner. I told him he would’ve been better off jumping off the balcony.”
“And he did?”
“Yes. He ran straight for the railing. That’s when I realized what I could do—what compulsion was.”
“Gods,” I breathed.
He nodded slowly. “And then Carrow grew obsessed. He saw how different I was. Declared me his heir. I think because I was conceived after he took over my father’s body…
it changed something. It made me something else.
After that, there was no loving father. He only saw me as his next body.
And when Carrow is obsessed, he turns wicked.
Finding anything that brought me joy and taking it away just to try to break me.
When he ran out of things, he took my mother away. ”
“Did he kill her?”
“I think so. I looked for her for years.”
I wrapped my arm tighter around him. “I’m sorry.”
“But none of it broke me. It only made my hatred grow more. And because of that little bit of fear he had for me, he let me be for centuries. Until he found you.”
Memories flashed through my mind. My parents hanging. They were caught in the midst of all of it because of me. All because of what I meant to August.
We had to stop Carrow.