Chapter 29 Violet #2
“I felt it all as if it were happening to me. Except it was worse,” he continued, his voice dropping even lower.
“Because I knew it was happening to her. And I didn’t stop it.
I thought she was dead. I never looked for her.
If I had… if I had looked for her, I could have prevented it, and she would have her baby. ”
The drip from the ceiling echoed again, too loud in the quiet space.
“And then she turned,” he went on after a moment.
“And it was like she shut the door on it. On the pain. On her love for him. On everything she lost. Some things about her are who she was before everything happened, and others are so opposite that it’s terrifying but I think that’s the vampirism and how it chose to cope.
I see parts of the Bronwen I thought I’d lost forever because she lives in a world where the pain no longer matters.
And I see a version of her that is happier than she ever was. ”
Something twisted uncomfortably in my chest.
“I am glad,” he added. “Truly. It’s one of the only things that keeps me alive. Because no matter how tightly she locks those emotions away—”
His hand curled slightly, the chain at his wrist rattling softly.
“I still feel them. They never stopped. They eat at me. Every day.” A beat. “But as long as she looks happy… I can endure it.”
“Does she know?” I asked.
“No.” The answer came too quickly.
His gaze dropped back to the stone floor between us. “She knows I can feel her emotions,” he said after a moment. “Because she feels mine. But I don’t think she understands how deeply I feel hers.”
His jaw tightened as he spoke.
“Her vampirism gave her the ability to shut things out. If she doesn’t feel them, she can live without him.” His voice flattened. “I don’t think she could survive otherwise.”
“She needs to feel, Adar,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady even as my pulse began to quicken again. “If she locks everything away forever, one day it’s going to be too much. She’s going to erupt—and when that happens, something worse will follow.”
He shook his head once. “As long as she isn’t triggered, I can keep her safe.”
“That’s not safety,” I said. “That’s avoidance.”
“See,” he continued, brushing past my words entirely, “that’s the other problem.”
His eyes lifted again, colder now. “It’s not just about Sebastian. You risk Bronwen’s happiness too. You were here for a week, and that bloody fucking heart sent her into a spiral.”
“What?”
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
And then the memory clicked into place.
The way Bronwen had frozen when she saw the heart Sebastian had pulled out of the chest of the fae that hurt me. The brief flicker of something raw behind her eyes before it disappeared. The way she vanished for days afterward.
And when she returned, it was as if nothing had happened at all.
“And now that you know everything,” Adar continued, his voice low and cutting, “your constant questions are dragging it back to the surface. Things that should remain buried.”
“You’re trying to control everything,” I said slowly, the pieces finally beginning to settle together, “because you couldn’t control what happened to her.”
His head snapped up.
“Stop,” he said sharply. “Stop trying to understand me.”
“No,” I said, pushing myself to my feet despite the way my legs trembled beneath me. “You’re terrified of her feeling again. And instead of letting her heal, you’re deciding for her what she’s allowed to survive.”
“She survived because she stopped feeling!” he snapped. “You don’t get to undo that.”
“And you don’t get to decide she never feels again,” I shot back. “That isn’t protection. That’s a cage.”
The silence that followed was thick enough to press against my ears.
I understood him now.
This wasn’t about anger. Not really.
This was about a man who had been forced to feel a woman’s suffering so completely that numbness had begun to look like peace. Someone who had lived inside her pain long enough that the absence of it felt like the only safety left.
And he was willing to destroy anything that threatened to wake her up again.
Gods help all of us if Bronwen ever did wake up fully.
But even after everything he had thrown at me tonight, I understood him now.
It wasn’t me he hated.
It was change.
The possibility that something in the fragile world he had built might shift.
Because if things moved…
They could break again.
“We were fine before you came,” he said at last.
They didn’t hurt the way they might have earlier. Because I knew now that they weren’t really meant for me.
“I’m sorry, Adar,” I said. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
He let out a short, humorless breath. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I’m starting to see that.”
“Sebastian and I are already mated,” I continued. “You can’t push us apart. Not like that. You know it as well as I do.” I paused. “But you can push him away from you.”
That made him look at me again.
“And he won’t say it,” I added, softer now, “but I know it hurts him. You’re his family. You always have been. The two of you—” I swallowed slightly. “You need each other.”
His jaw tightened. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you do know it,” I replied. “And I think that scares you more than anything else. We might all be doomed. We don’t know for sure.
But you can’t control it. You can’t control Sebastian.
You have to let him make his own decisions.
And you have to know that I’d rather die than let something happen to him.
I can’t help that he feels that way about me, too.
And Bronwen… if she doesn’t process what happened to her, something bad is going to happen. ”
He looked at me again.
“But I will stop pushing.”
Silence stretched between us again, longer this time.
“You don’t have to like me,” I said finally. “But I’m not your enemy.”
This time, he didn’t argue.
The silence between us settled again. I waited for Bronwen to appear at the bars with that satisfied look she wore when her plans worked exactly as intended. But the corridor outside remained quiet, and after a while even the tension in the air seemed to ease.
We just… sat there.
“Did she show you the blade?” Adar asked finally.
“Yes.”
He exhaled slowly. “She carries it sometimes, you know. Strapped on her thigh.”
My stomach tightened.
“I don’t think she realizes I notice,” he continued. “But I do. I can hear it.”
I frowned. “Hear it?”
“The whispers. The screaming.” His gaze dropped back to the floor. “She tried to find a way to get him out, but I don’t think she’d like it if she succeeded.”
“Why not?”
“That place—whatever world the blade holds—no one could come back from three centuries in there unchanged. Not whole.”
I nodded. August may not have moved to the afterlife. But the August she knew had probably been gone for a long time.
“It’s called the Blade of Aros,” Adar said. “I know you like learning about things. Read about it.”
That felt like a peace offering.
Then he added, quieter but firm, “But don’t bring it up to Bronwen.”
I nodded.
The drip from the ceiling had stopped.
Or maybe I had simply stopped counting it.
Adar had gone quiet again, his shoulders resting back against the stone wall, eyes closed now instead of staring at the floor. I sat across from him with my knees drawn up, arms wrapped loosely around myself. The heat under my skin was leashed so tightly it almost hurt.
Every so often a memory tried to push its way forward—cold stone, iron restraints, Celine’s voice—but I shoved it back down before it could take shape.
Breathe.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
The way Sebastian had taught me.
Stay here. Stay now.
“Do you not like small spaces?”
My eyes shot open. Adar was staring at me.
“I—” I closed my mouth as I tried to find the right words. “I was—”
Then—
Humming.
The sound drifted down the corridor, light and careless, like someone wandering through their own home without a single worry in the world. It echoed faintly along the stone, growing clearer as it came closer.
Keys chimed softly.
A moment later the lock turned with a slow click, the door swung open, and Bronwen stepped into view. Her red hair was loose over one shoulder, the deep color catching the torchlight as she leaned casually against the frame with her arms crossed.
“Well?” she asked lightly, as if she hadn’t just locked me in a dungeon with her brother for hours. Her gaze moved between us, measuring. “Are you friends now?”
I stared at her.
Across the cell, Adar remained exactly where he was.
I pushed to my feet slowly, every muscle in my body tight. “You cannot do that,” I said. “You cannot just trap people underground and—”
“It must have worked,” she interrupted calmly, glancing between us again. “You’re both still breathing. No one’s bleeding.”
Adar let out a slow breath beside me. “We understand each other.”
“That’ll do,” she said brightly.
Then she clapped her hands once, satisfied. “Now hug.”
I stared at her.
If I had to guess, Adar’s expression looked very similar.
Bronwen sighed dramatically. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “No hug then.”