Page 107 of Flameborne: Fury
She’s fucking perfect.
I told you.
I told you, he said.
I told you, he laughed.
I fucking told you, he grunted.
His voice was the only thing I could bear to hear.
I closed my ears to everything else.
43. The Vow
~ DONAVYN ~
It was the first time Kgosi had ever shown me something I wanted to refuse—as Bren’s voice whispered and hitched, she saw the memories in her head. She shared them with the dragons, and Kgosi shared them with me—yet, she shrouded the faces of the monster who’d done this to her, as well as hisfriends. No matter how I concentrated, or reached, their faced remained blurred. She carefully avoided thinking his name, and any time they called to each other, their voices were sucked into the void.
I had to watch her, violated and exploited, without a target for my rage. I pounded fists against the confines of the memory, desperate to see them, toknowthem, to identify them and hunt them down—but I couldn’t leave her there alone.
So, I lived it in her head, in her body, and in her soul.
And it wasdevastating.
Watching her sweet, pure love used against her as a weapon. Her naïve trust and childlike desire for approval turned on her as a weight… I wept for her. Roared for her. Would have burned down the fuckingworldfor her.
And the Bren of now, the woman, the Furyknight, the one who’d sprinted up a tower and thrown herself into the air to be caught by her dragon,thatwoman shrank in my arms. I felt her flinch when the memory grew sick, and I grasped for her, panicking, holding on, begging through the tears, promising her everything.
Never again.
No one willevertouch you again.
No one will ever use you.
Ever.
My soul recoiled from what she showed me, yet my heart expanded to fill that void in my chest, and the pain of the severed bond slowly eased away—but at cost to her.
Bren’s heart surged. Rose like a tide, then a tidal wave. Sucked her in and down until she was a shivering mess, reliving those torturous hours and unaware I was even there.
And no wonder.No fucking wonder.
I pulled her into my chest and held her so tightly her trembling became mine.
“I’m here, Bren. I’m here. And they’ll never touch you again. Ivowit.”
But even when it was over, even when I saw the image she held of herself, spent and sobbing and curled like a child into the corner of a bed against a wall, one possessive, masculine hand spread on her hip, it still wasn’t over.
Because these things never were.
I watched her walk in a trance for weeks. One moment convinced those awful memories were nothing but a dark dream. The next, her body convinced that the monsters had returned.
She stopped feeding the barn animals after dark.
Stopped leaving the farmhouse for anything but crucial chores—and only then after her father’s anger sparked about her suddenlaziness.
She stopped speaking if she didn’t have to, because any time she cracked her teeth she feared she might start screaming and never stop.
