Chapter 19: The Blade Between Us
The watchers stood in their ring, unmoving. Their burning eyes fixed not on Carrow, not on the men still struggling in the snow, but on me. Shadows writhed at my feet like dogs waiting for their master's call.
The girl's hand lingered in mine. Small, warm, impossibly steady. The rhythm of the earth surged through me with every touch of her skin, as if she were the thread tying me to its heartbeat.
"They are yours," she whispered. "If you breathe, they will breathe. If you command, they will obey."
Her closeness unsettled me more than the watchers' gaze. There was something tender in her eyes, something almost human—yet it carried a weight far beyond her years. I could not tell if she looked at me as man or vessel.
Carrow's voice cut through the silence, raw with fury.
"Do you not see it? She binds you like a chain around your neck. You call it choice, but it is a leash."
His sword quivered in his grip, black with gore and frost, yet his arm still held strong. His eyes—bloodshot, burning—never left mine.
"She is not your ally," he spat. "She is the pit itself wearing a child's face."
The girl did not flinch. Her fingers curled tighter into mine, her lips close enough that her words brushed like breath across my cheek.
"He does not understand," she murmured. "But you do. You feel it. The joining. The breath that is no longer earth, no longer sky—but us."
Her words stirred something deep in me. Not desire alone, but a dangerous intimacy. A bond forged in shadow and fire, as though we had been written into the same line of fate long before birth.
And yet Carrow's voice struck me like a hammer:
"If you let her bind you, you will no longer be you. You'll be it."
His grief rang sharper than his rage. Carrow had buried brothers beside me. He had shielded me in battle, raised me from mud and blood when I would have fallen. His fury now was not born of hatred, but of fear—fear of losing me as he had lost too many others.
For a heartbeat, I faltered.
The watchers sensed it. They stirred, shifting like trees in the wind. Snow hissed beneath their boots.
The girl saw my hesitation. Her other hand rose, feather-light against my chest. My heart thundered beneath her palm, beating in time with the earth. "Do not let him sever you," she whispered, eyes glimmering. "Without this bond, you will shatter. Without me… you will not survive what comes."
I should have stepped back. I should have broken her hold. Instead, I leaned closer. For one breathless moment, her face was inches from mine, her eyes pale storms, her lips parted in a question that was not spoken. The world fell away, leaving only her and the rhythm we shared.
Then Carrow moved.
Steel flashed. His roar split the silence. "Then I'll cut the chain myself!"
His blade swung not at me—but at her.
Something inside me snapped. Shadows surged upward, faster than thought. They coiled around my arm, poured into my veins, and with a single breath I raised my hand.
The earth answered.
Carrow's strike met a wall of black flame. The blade shrieked, sparks flying, but it did not pierce. The force hurled him backward, his body crashing into the snow. He gasped, stunned, his sword smoking in the frost.
The girl did not move. Her hand remained on my chest, her gaze never leaving mine. "You see?" she whispered. "Even now, you protect me. You protect us."
Carrow struggled to rise, his breath ragged. "He protects nothing," he spat, blood on his lips. "He is already gone."
But his words no longer rang true to me. Not fully.
Because as I stood there, the watchers bowing in silence, the shadows kneeling at my command, the girl's touch anchoring me to something vast—I felt no fear.
I felt whole.
And yet… in the space between her breath and mine, in the trembling silence that followed Carrow's fall, a darker thought slid unbidden into my mind.
Was it truly me she held?
Or only the breath within me?
The heartbeat thundered once more, and the question remained unanswered.
-to be continued -
Author: plz give your feedback and suggestions it helps me for continue next.