Chapter 45 Bronwen
Bronwen
There had been days—entire stretches of time—where she was the only thing I thought about.
What she’d done. What kind of promise Carrow could have possibly made to convince someone to fracture the world with a single spell.
I had imagined her hands shaking afterward, imagined the moment the power settled into her bones and she realized what she had unleashed.
I had wondered if she’d been afraid.
If she’d regretted it.
If the magic had hollowed her out from the inside or devoured her whole.
But I had never once imagined this.
I had never imagined that the woman who shattered the world would be the same one that changed the fate of every fae and creature in Alentara.
If I met her under different circumstances, I might have praised her.
If only she wasn’t holding my husband fucking hostage.
“Let him go,” I snarled.
She smiled. “And why would I do that,” she asked, “when he is the most important thing in the world to you?”
My fingers curled slowly at my sides, nails biting into my palms hard enough to anchor me. Pain had always been useful that way.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
The ground trembled faintly behind me as hooves thundered through the trees.
Adar arrived a second later, riding hard enough that his horse nearly slid in the dirt when he pulled the reins. His sword was already drawn, his eyes scanning the woods in quick, brutal sweeps.
He started toward me—
Then he saw Violet.
Collapsed.
When did she fall? She was standing when I got here… wasn’t she?
Sebastian crouched beside her, shadows spiraling around them in frantic, violent patterns. Adar changed direction instantly. He yanked the horse sideways and vaulted down before it had even fully stopped moving.
Queen Mother continued speaking as if none of that mattered.
“I didn’t know the two of you existed until you used the blade,” she said calmly. “Even then, I didn’t understand who you were. Not really.”
Her gaze slid toward August.
“It wasn’t until he formed from the ground on my land that the pieces finally aligned.” Amusement flickered across her face. “I was shocked no one had stopped Carrow before now. He was reckless, annoying, and endlessly irritating. A nuisance more than anything else.”
Her eyes moved back to me.
“But of course, it was my descendant who finally did it.”
Descendant.
Behind me, Adar went completely still.
I didn’t have to look to know his attention had snapped back to her. He’d caught it too.
“You have everything. You bent all of Alentara to your will. Why would you care about us?” I demanded.
“Well… I’ve grown… lonely,” she said.
The word sounded almost thoughtful in her mouth, like she was tasting it for the first time.
It did nothing but repulse me.
“I never thought I’d see my family again. And yet here you are.” Her gaze drifted slowly between Adar and me. “All the pieces delivered straight into my hands.”
Behind me, Adar let out a sharp, humorless breath. “We are not your fucking family,” he snarled.
For the first time, her composure cracked. “Did none of the truth survive the centuries?” she asked.
When we didn’t respond, she sighed.
“I had a child once. A son. My father decided an unwed woman had no right to be a mother. So he gave my baby to my brother and his wife. They couldn’t have children of their own. They were set to rule the coven. They were deemed… better than me.”
Her eyes locked onto ours.
“So, yes. You are my blood.”
Ice slid down my spine.
“And the blade,” she continued, “may have been forged long before my time. But I was the one who gave it purpose. I gave it the power to move souls.” Her eyes drifted back to August. “Your August belongs to me now.”
August’s jaw clenched. Every muscle in his body went rigid, his eyes unfocused in the unmistakable way of someone fighting a battle entirely inside his own mind.
“I control him,” she said softly. “I control the blood of Sovereigns. And I will never stop hunting the people you love.”
She paused then, letting the threat settle.
“Unless…“ Her head tilted slightly. “Unless the two of you come live with me.”
The words lodged somewhere in my throat. My gaze shifted back to August.
I couldn’t lose him again.
I wouldn’t lose him again.
Not after three hundred years of surviving without him, only to have him ripped away the moment he returned.
“Bronwen, no,” Adar said sharply, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. “We will find another way.”
Queen Mother gave a small nod toward the guard restraining August. The man moved immediately. He unsheathed a wooden stake and pressed the sharpened tip against August’s chest.
Blood welled instantly where the wood bit into skin.
“No!” The scream tore out of me before I could stop it. Raw. Uncontrolled. I lurched forward, every instinct screaming to cross the border, to tear through the guards and rip them apart with my bare hands.
“He won’t come back again,” Queen Mother said calmly.
My vision tunneled.
“Just me,” I said hoarsely. “Adar stays free.”
“B—” Adar started.
“You will fix him?” I demanded, my eyes locked on August’s face.
“Once you prove you won’t leave or give me any trouble,” Queen Mother said, “I will remove Carrow from him. You will do what I ask. You will become the Bronwen I saw in their memories. And then—” Her gaze darkened. “—I’ll show you how to be so much worse.”
Adar moved toward me, panic finally breaking through the rigid control he’d been clinging to since we arrived. “Bronwen—”
I stepped away from him before he could reach me, but my eyes never left August.
“Wait,” Queen Mother said.
She gestured lazily to one of the humans standing beside her. The man flinched before he even moved.
I watched him approach, every sense in my body flaring to life as he stepped forward.
His heartbeat thundered in my ears the closer he came—wild and frantic, the rhythm uneven with terror.
A vein pulsed visibly in his neck, the skin there thin and pale and horribly, beautifully vulnerable. He stepped through the border.
The moment he crossed, the air shifted. The invisible line between realms rippled faintly before sealing again behind him.
He stopped only a few feet away from me.
Up close, he smelled like sweat and fear and something warm beneath it all—something that made my throat tighten.
Queen Mother’s voice floated across the barrier again. “Feed.”
For a moment, I hesitated.
The guard didn’t. The wooden stake drove deeper into August’s chest.
The sound that tore out of him—broken, strangled, dragged from somewhere deep in his lungs—ripped straight through my control.
“Winnie.” The word barely escaped his lips.
That was enough.
I crossed the distance in a blur.
The human barely had time to gasp before my hands were on him, one gripping the back of his neck, the other dragging him closer. I had fed on a human once before—centuries ago, in the chaos after I turned.
I did not remember it feeling like this.
The moment his blood hit my tongue, the world shifted.
It didn’t just sustain like fae blood—it ignited.
The taste flooded my senses, thick and metallic and burning with life. It surged through me like wildfire, every vein in my body lighting up like a fuse. My nerves screamed awake as if the monster inside me had been starving for centuries and had finally, finally been fed.
The human’s body went slack in my arms.
His heartbeat faltered once.
Twice.
Then stopped.
He hit the ground with a dull thud, but I barely noticed.
Power surged through me, flooding every inch of my body.
My senses exploded outward, the world snapping into brutal clarity.
I could hear every breath around me, every shift of armor, every frantic beat of August’s heart where the stake still pressed against his chest.
Fae blood kept me functioning.
Human blood made me feel whole in a way I hadn’t realized I was missing.
Queen Mother smiled. She gestured and another human stepped forward. “Again.”
I didn’t think. My teeth were already in the next throat before the man had time to scream. Hot blood flooded my mouth, richer this time, sweeter somehow now that my body knew what it was taking.
The rush came faster.
Stronger.
The second body collapsed.
Another human was pushed forward.
Then another.
And another.
By the time I lifted my head again, five bodies lay at my feet.
Blood pooled into the earth beneath them, soaking into the dirt in slow, dark spreads. It dripped from my mouth, warm against my chin.
My hands trembled.
Not with horror.
With want.
Every nerve in my body was on fire, humming with a power I hadn’t felt in centuries. It was the same electric rush magic used to give me before it slipped through my fingers forever. I was alive in a way I had forgotten was possible.
“Good,” Queen Mother murmured. “Now come to me.”
I lifted my head.
Adar stood rigid, his entire body locked in place like he was afraid that if he moved even an inch he might break something that could never be fixed again. Horror carved deep lines into his face, the kind I had only ever seen when we lost our parents and when he found me in that cell.
Sebastian was half-collapsed beside Violet, his shadows snarling uselessly at his feet as they strained against the barrier that kept them from reaching me.
And Violet—
Gods.
She was staring at me like she didn’t recognize what I had become.
I thought I loved them.
And I did.
Somewhere.
Distantly.
But that was the cruelest part of all.
I had spent centuries smoothing my edges. Making myself smaller. Safer. Easier to be around. I had spent so long pretending I was fine—pretending none of the things inside me were as sharp or dangerous as they actually were. I hid my pain so no one else would have to look at it.
And what had it earned me?
I didn’t have August.
I didn’t have my daughter.
I didn’t even have the one thing my body had been screaming for since the moment I died and came back wrong.
Human blood.
The truth settled into me with unsettling clarity. I had been a shell. A carefully constructed version of myself that everyone else found easier to tolerate.
What would really happen if I stopped trying to be good?
If—just once—I chose myself instead?
Would it hurt them?
Probably.
That should have mattered to me.
It didn’t.
It was as if that wall I had built around everything that had to do with August had crumbled and decided to rebuild itself around them, locking away any feelings I had for them.
I took a step closer to the barrier.
“Bronwen, no,” Sebastian said, forcing himself upright.
The effort alone looked like it nearly broke him. His shadows lashed violently around his feet as he dragged himself to standing, every movement stiff with the lingering pain Queen Mother must have forced through him only moments before. I didn’t even remember it happening.
The moment he moved—
the moment he stopped shielding Violet—
An arrow sliced through the air, crossing through the barrier.
The sound of it hitting flesh was wet and sharp. The shaft buried itself deep in Violet’s thigh, just above the knee. Her scream tore through the woods. It echoed through the trees, loud enough that every creature in the woods seemed to fall silent.
Before the sound had even finished fading—
Another arrow flew.
This one struck her arm.
Blood bloomed instantly across her sleeve, soaking through the fabric as she cried out again and collapsed against Sebastian.
“Save her,” Queen Mother said calmly.
She sounded almost bored.
“Or save your mate.”
I watched Sebastian’s face fracture.
For a single terrible heartbeat, he didn’t move at all. His gaze flicked between me and Violet, between the barrier and the blood already pooling beneath her. I could feel the war tearing through him even from where I stood.
But there was never really a choice.
There never was when love’s involved.
There was no anger in me for what he chose.
Of course he went to Violet.
Of course he gathered her up, one arm locking around her back while his shadows wrapped tight around both of them, ripping them from the woods before another arrow could reach them.
It was exactly what I wanted him to do.
Exactly what I would have done.
And I didn’t want him to save me.
Because for the first time since my world ended—since the moment I lost August and everything that mattered with him—I could finally see a way back.
A future where I wasn’t hollow.
Where I wasn’t pretending I was fine while every piece of me rotted beneath the surface. A future where I could have him again.
Where August lived.
Where the empty centuries between us meant nothing.
And I would kill anyone who stood between me and that future.
Do not try to stop me, I sent to Adar through the bond.
I felt the shock ripple through him instantly. The surge of anger, fear, disbelief.
Then I cut the connection.
And stepped onto Queen Mother’s land.