Chapter 29 Violet
Violet
Bronwen found me about an hour after dinner.
I was still too restless to sit. The library was quiet around me, and I had been pacing the same stretch of floor for several minutes, replaying the moment Sebastian had stood from the table.
The scrape of the chair. The way the shadows had lifted in answer.
The way his hand had closed around mine before anyone else could speak.
And his voice.
I knew that tone well enough by now. It was the one he used when he was no longer just irritated.
“Come with me,” Bronwen said, pushing the library doors open.
I blinked, turning toward her. “Where?”
“Downstairs,” she replied, already turning back into the corridor. “I need help retrieving a few things.”
I fell into step beside her, frowning slightly. “Why don’t you send a servant?”
She didn’t slow. “Sebastian doesn’t allow them down there.”
That caught my attention immediately.
“Why?”
Bronwen glanced at me then, her eyes sharp with quiet amusement. “Because there are powerful things beneath this castle. Old things. And he doesn’t trust just anyone around them.”
We passed through the lower halls and into parts of the castle I only half recognized. The deeper we went, the more the architecture shifted—stone replacing polished floors, corridors narrowing slightly, the torches spaced farther apart.
The air cooled with every level.
Shadows thickened along the walls until even the sconces seemed reluctant to burn too brightly, their flames small and steady as if they knew better than to challenge the dark too aggressively.
We descended to what I assumed was the lowest level, the corridor stretching long and dim ahead of us. I could barely see where I was going before Bronwen finally stopped.
A narrow entrance waited before us, framed in rough stone that looked far older than the rest of the castle.
“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing toward a doorway a few steps beyond. “There should be a lockbox inside. Iron. Etched with runes. Bring it out for me.”
I hesitated, glancing at the dark corridor ahead. “You don’t want to come with—”
“I’ll wait here,” she said easily, leaning one shoulder against the wall. “Some of the things down here still stir the dead witch in me, and I don’t particularly enjoy that sensation.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she gave me a small nudge forward before I could. So I stepped into the room.
It was smaller than I expected.
Stone walls. No windows. Shelves carved directly into the rock itself, most of them empty except for scattered pieces of metal and objects that had gathered thick layers of dust. The darkness pressed close enough that I could almost feel it against my skin.
I lifted my hand and let a little heat gather in my palm. A small sphere of fire bloomed there, casting warm light across the room.
I couldn’t stop the small smile that tugged at my mouth.
Progress.
The shelves came into clearer view as the light spread across the stone. Old metal. Tarnished boxes. Fragments of things I didn’t recognize.
And then—
Movement.
I turned.
“Gods, Adar!” I yelped. “What are you doing down here—”
The words died halfway out of my mouth.
He was sitting in the far corner of the room, his back pressed against the stone wall, his head bowed. One arm was lifted slightly, his wrist caught in a thick black shackle that disappeared straight into the stone floor. The chain was etched with runes that glowed faintly in the dim light.
My fire flared instinctively in my palm.
Before I could take a step—
The door slammed shut behind me.
I spun, my heart slamming hard against my ribs, and found myself staring straight at iron bars that had not been there a moment ago. On the other side stood Bronwen. She smiled.
She just locked me in a cell with Adar, and she was smiling.
“What the fuck, Bronwen?”
Her expression didn’t waver. Calm. Certain. If anything, there was a flicker of amusement in her eyes.
“The two of you and Sebastian are the only people that matter to me,” she said. “And I cannot keep watching this. The constant fighting. The low blows. The tension.”
My pulse roared in my ears. “So this is your solution?”
“Yes,” she replied simply. “Figure it out.”
“I’ll transfer out,” I snapped, already reaching inward, instinct driving the heat in my chest forward as I tried to grasp the familiar pull of power.
Bronwen’s smile sharpened. “It’s been spelled for centuries to make sure no one escapes.”
The magic slammed into me the moment I pushed against it. My power recoiled immediately, the heat in my chest stuttering. My breath hitched.
“I—I’ll get Sebastian to let me out.”
Bronwen lifted one perfectly shaped brow. “Go ahead,” she said. “Try.”
Then she turned and walked away. Her footsteps echoed down the corridor for several seconds before fading into silence, leaving nothing behind but stone, iron—
—and the quiet, controlled sound of Adar’s breathing behind me.
I stood there for a long moment before the truth finally settled in.
I was trapped.
We sat in opposite corners of the cell. I pressed my back against the cold stone wall and forced myself to stay still. Pacing would only make the space feel smaller. Movement made my heart race, and racing hearts led to fire.
I couldn’t afford fire.
So I counted the stones.
One by one. Their size. Their shape. The way the mortar darkened in uneven lines between them like veins. I traced the cracks with my eyes and cataloged every imperfection I could find, anything that might anchor my mind somewhere other than the growing pressure inside my chest.
When that wasn’t enough, I started reciting the lineage of my ancestors in my head.
Names. Titles. Battles fought centuries before I was born.
Wars that had redrawn borders and alliances and left entire families erased from history.
I moved through them carefully, one generation to the next, until I reached my biological father—where the records splintered into contradictions depending on who had written them and who they had wanted to protect.
I started over.
A thin crack ran through the center of the ceiling above us. Jagged. Uneven.
Water collected there slowly before falling.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Each drop echoed through the room, louder than it had any right to be.
My chest tightened anyway, my breath going shallow despite the effort it took to steady it. I closed my eyes and reminded myself—over and over—that this wasn’t the same.
This wasn’t Celine.
I wasn’t being punished for loving the wrong person.
I am not helpless.
I am not helpless!
But memories have a way of ignoring the things you tell them.
Cold stone beneath my hands. Blood running down my back. Astrid’s lifeless body sprawled across the floor. The way time had stretched so thin in that room that it had stopped feeling real at all.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
I forced my fingers to unclench, nails leaving deep crescents in my palms where I had dug them in without noticing. Heat stirred low in my chest, anxious and restless, but I kept it leashed, letting only the smallest amount escape with each controlled breath.
Panic would make it worse.
Panic always made it worse.
Across the cell, Adar sat exactly where he had been when I first noticed him—his back against the wall, head bowed slightly, eyes fixed somewhere on the stone floor between his boots. The chain around his wrist glowed faintly in the dim light, its runes steady and unchanging.
He didn’t shift.
Didn’t fidget.
Didn’t even look uncomfortable.
Like the perfect, obedient Commander he had trained himself to be.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
“I can’t take it anymore!” I said suddenly, the words ripping out of me before I could stop them.
My voice echoed thinly off the stone walls, brittle and sharp in the quiet.
“You know your sister better than I do,” I said after a moment, forcing my voice back under control. “Is she actually going to let us out if we don’t talk?”
For a while, I thought he wouldn’t answer at all.
Then he exhaled.
“She told you everything that happened to her?” he asked.
“I think so.”
His jaw flexed. His fingers curled once against the stone beside him.
“Then you know her… infatuation with him got our parents killed,” he said. His voice stayed level, controlled in that way that somehow made the words worse. “Got her tortured.”
He paused.
“Raped. And she lost her fucking baby.”
The words landed heavy, like stones dropped into still water—no splash, just the slow, sickening pull of their weight sinking deeper.
“Yes,” I said.
He lifted his head just enough that I could see the edge of his eyes in the dim light. “I told you before that you make Sebastian weak. It isn’t because I think it might happen. It’s because I know it will.” His gaze finally cut to mine, sharp and unflinching. “You will bring him to ruin.”
Heat surged through me instantly, hot and bright and furious, the instinctive flare of power rising under my skin. But I forced it down.
I would not let my power answer for me.
“I am not August,” I said as calmly as I could. “And he is not Bronwen.”
Adar’s mouth curved slightly. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“All of this already happened to Bronwen,” I shot back before I could stop myself. “And you don’t see her hating me because of it. Gods, she pushed Sebastian and me together more than anyone else. It’s like you’re clinging to the past harder than she is!”
That did it. Adar looked at me with malice in his eyes.
“Did you know,” he said, “that we weren’t always connected the way we are now?”
The question caught me off guard enough that I didn’t answer.
“After she lost her daughter, and that monster told her he was going to keep trying until he had a son—she called for me and somehow tethered us together,” he said. “When she did that, I felt everything. Every moment. Every emotion. The heartbreak. The torture.”
His jaw tightened.