Chapter 43 Bronwen
Bronwen
The sheets were tangled around us, cocooning the world down to breath and skin and the steady proof of him beneath me.
I straddled him like the position itself was an act of defiance—against time, against death, against the gods who had thought they could take him from me and leave nothing behind. His bare chest rose and fell under my hands, solid and real in a way that still felt impossible.
Miracles were never supposed to look like this.
I traced him slowly, letting my fingers move over his skin with careful patience. If I moved too quickly, some irrational part of me feared the illusion might break—that the moment would splinter apart and leave me holding nothing again.
Three centuries taught a person not to trust good things.
My fingers followed the familiar planes of his body as if they were relearning a language I once spoke fluently.
The slope of his shoulder. The line of muscle beneath his collarbone.
The faint hollow at the center of his chest where I used to rest my head when the world was quiet and we believed we had all the time in it.
“How long has it been?” he asked.
I stilled for half a heartbeat before looking down at him.
“You don’t know?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly, pale hair brushing against the pillow. “Time moved differently in there. Sometimes it felt endless. Sometimes it felt like I’d just closed my eyes.”
My hand drifted lower along his chest, the motion instinctive.
Then I stopped.
There.
A scar.
Raised. Angry. An X carved into his skin like a mark of ownership the world had no right to leave behind.
My throat tightened. I swallowed hard and traced the scar with my thumb.
“That wasn’t there before,” I said.
August’s gaze followed the movement of my hand. His jaw tightened slightly as recognition settled across his features. “No.”
“It’s from the blade,” I said softly.
From the moment his soul was torn away.
From the moment everything broke.
He nodded once, the movement subtle.
“Three hundred and thirty-five years,” I finally answered.
His breath left him slowly. “That’s… a long time.”
“It’s nothing,” I said immediately, louder than I meant to be.
He looked around then, taking in the room—the crimson walls, the heavy drapes, the faint hum of magic threaded through everything. His gaze moved slowly, measuring the space the way he always had when entering somewhere unfamiliar.
“You have another life now,” he said carefully. “And I don’t know where I fit in it. Gods alive, I don’t even know where we are!”
“Alentara. The Night Realm.”
Shock flickered across his face. “You’ve built a life here, Winnie. Are you sure you want me to wreck it?”
“I don’t think you understand.” I leaned down, bracing my hands on either side of him and forcing him to look at me. “I haven’t lived for three hundred and thirty-five years. I died the moment I lost you.”
That was the truth.
“There were things,” I continued, quieter now. “Things I did to pass the time. Indulgences. Distractions. Ways to meet needs without feeling.” My mouth twisted faintly. “But none of it mattered. None of it stayed.”
I grabbed his hand and placed it flat against my chest, pressing his palm there so he could feel the steady beat beneath my ribs.
“I gave you my heart,” I said. “And you’ve had it ever since. Even when you weren’t here to know it.”
Before I could react, he shifted and flipped us, the world turning with a quick movement until his weight settled above me.
“I will need the names of these indulgences,” he said.
I arched a brow. “And why’s that?”
His mouth brushed the side of my neck, right where the mark had once lived. The skin there may have healed when I turned, but his mark on my soul had never left.
“Because,” he murmured against my skin, “I am going to kill them for touching my wife.”
My wife.
The words slid straight into the hollow place in my chest that had existed for centuries.
I couldn’t help the small smile that curved my mouth.
I had never thought I would feel this again.
His skin against mine. His breath warm at my throat.
The familiar weight of him, solid and real in a way that made my chest ache with the effort of believing it.
“You’ll like it here,” I murmured, tracing the muscles in his shoulders with my fingertips. “No kingdom to rule. No witches hunting you. You’re free.”
He huffed a quiet laugh.
“No witches, hmm?” Another kiss on my neck. “So this new Winnie—she’s never going to fight with me?” Another. “Won’t that get boring?”
“I’m not a witch anymore.”
That got his full attention.
He lifted his head slightly, studying me. “You lost your magic when you turned?”
“I can hear it,” I said. “Like a song in another room. But it doesn’t reach for me the way it used to. I think the connection… snapped.”
“A shame,” he said softly. His hand slid up my side, the touch sending a quiet shiver through me.
“But,” he added, voice low, “there are other ways you’ve always managed to bring me to my knees.”
“You know,” I said, studying his face, “I’m surprised you recognized me.”
August snorted softly. “You are the only thing I thought about the entire time I was in that stone,” he said. “Do you truly think red hair would have kept me from recognizing you?”
I ran my hand through my dark locks, letting the strands fall back across my shoulder.
“Did you like it?” I asked. “It’s weird having dark hair again after so long.”
His eyes softened as he looked at me. “I like whatever you like, Winnie Vael.”
The name sent a spark through me, but the feeling dulled almost immediately when his gaze drifted past me. His eyes unfocused for a fraction of a second like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear.
Then they glazed over completely.
“She is ruin,” he whispered. His voice sounded wrong. Hollow. Like the words were being spoken through him rather than by him. “And soon she will ruin everyone around her.”
“August?” I said sharply.
His gaze came back to me. Then his head tilted slowly to the side, and the smile that spread across his face was not his.
It was too wide. Too sinister.
One that I had tried to burn from my memory.
“Try again,” he whispered.
My stomach dropped. “No.”
“Come on,” he coaxed, his fingers tightening suddenly in my hair as he leaned closer. “You remember me. C—C—Carrow.”
August shoved himself away from me so violently the bed jolted beneath us. He flew backward until his body slammed into my vanity with a crack that rattled the room.
He clawed at his head, fingers digging into his hair like he was trying to tear into his skull. “Get out of my head!” he roared.
The sound tore through the chamber.
“Get out—get out!”
I was in front of him instantly. My hands shot out, gripping his wrists and forcing them down before he could claw at himself again.
“Hey,” I said urgently, tightening my hold when he tried to jerk away. “Hey—look at me. It’s okay. It’s over. He’s gone. It’s just… residue from the blade.”
August shook his head violently. “No,” he rasped. “No, it’s not. I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to panic.”
My chest tightened. “Tell me what?”
“He came out with me,” August said. “But when I woke up, he wasn’t there. I assumed…” He swallowed hard. “Since I was in my body that he must have come out the same way he appeared in the blade. His true form.”
His gaze darted around the room.
“I thought he ran,” he continued. “I thought he must have realized I could kill him for good this time. But—”
His expression shifted. The tension drained from his face. His posture relaxed.
And when he spoke again, the voice that came out of his mouth wasn’t August’s.
“Well,” he said lightly.
The cadence was wrong.
The tone was wrong.
Everything about it was wrong.
“This is inconvenient.”
My blood ran cold.
“We escape the blade,” Carrow continued through August’s mouth, sounding mildly annoyed, “and yet somehow we’re put back in the same body.”
He shrugged lazily, like this was all an irritating inconvenience rather than the collapse of my world.
“I took his body once,” he added with quiet amusement, “I can take it again.”
The sound of wood splintering filled the room.
“But I will not have you stop me again,” Carrow said.
Pain exploded through my chest. I gasped, looking down just in time to see it.
A length of wood protruding from my chest. My legs gave out. The floor slammed into my back as the impact drove the air from my lungs in a choking rush.
Carrow—wearing August’s face—looked down at me.
“Goodbye, Bronwen.”
Then he vanished.
No.
No, no, no.
The room spun as panic clawed its way through my chest.
I would not lose him again.
My hands shook violently as I reached for the stake. My fingers slipped on the blood coating the wood as I wrapped my grip around it. Each breath scraped the stake against bone.
“Fuck,” I hissed through clenched teeth as I dragged it free.
The moment it slid out, the wound burned hotter instead of closing. The flesh refused to knit, the magic in my veins stuttering and misfiring as pain flooded through my chest.
Every inhale felt like swallowing knives.
“Sebastian!” I screamed, my voice breaking as it tore through the room. “Adar! Violet!”
I forced myself upright, dragging my back against the wall until I was sitting. Blood slicked my hands and soaked into the front of my chest, warm and relentless as it ran between my fingers.
The room tilted.
I refused to let it take me with it.
Sebastian was there in an instant.
His gaze dropped immediately to my chest. “What happened?”
“Carrow,” I said, forcing the word out through clenched teeth. “He’s in him.”
My lungs burned.
“He stabbed me—and the wood splintered.” I swallowed hard, forcing the words out before the pain could steal them from me. “You have to get it out.”
Violet appeared beside me just as quickly, pale but steady.
“Oh gods,” she whispered.