Page 14 of Heart Cradle (The Melrathen Saga #1)

Maeve dropped her gaze to the filthy floor.

The guards didn’t touch her, they went straight for Aeilanna, hauling her up between them like she weighed nothing, the door slammed and she was gone.

Hours passed, the dim light leaking under the door faded.

Maeve sat with her back to the wall, legs pulled to her chest, the pouch pressed tight against her.

She did not move, did not make a noise, just waited.

Near dawn, the door burst open, they threw Aeilanna inside like bag of rubbish.

She hit the stone hard, a ragged sound tore from her throat and Maeve scrambled to her knees, reaching instinctively, only to freeze when Aeilanna lifted a trembling hand.

The guards left without a word. Maeve stared, horror tightening her throat.

Aeilanna’s thin dress was torn, soaked through with blood and grime.

Bruises bloomed in dark, finger-shaped marks along her arms and neck.

Her cheekbone was split open, a raw gash angling towards her eye, when she tried to shift, she gave a sharp, broken sound.

“Fuck,” Maeve whispered, breath catching.

She crawled closer, slowly, carefully. She laid the cloth beneath Aeilanna’s head.

Aeilanna’s eyes fluttered open. Dazed, but aware. “Water,” she rasped.

Maeve grabbed the chipped jug and lifted it carefully. Aeilanna drank slowly and when she spoke, it was barely more than breath. “If the male guards enter,” she said, “never make eye contact. Don’t speak. Don’t move unless they tell you to.”

Maeve’s fists clenched at her sides. “Why?” she asked, low and furious. “Why the fuck can’t I help you?”

Aeilanna’s bloodied hand brushed Maeve’s sleeve, a whisper of a touch. “Because you are human,” she said, so soft it barely reached the air. “Because…if you fight, you’ll die here.”

?????

Only one other person came and went, a female guard, always alone, always silent. Tall, slim but broad-shouldered. She was striking, her long red hair was plaited high on her head in a style that looked almost defiant.

Aeilanna called her Nolenne.

There was power in the way she moved, but it was buried deep.

Like she had been muted, like someone had taken a wild thing and caged it, then taught it how to walk and talk.

She didn’t speak at first. Every day she appeared with a small jug of brackish water and a miserable lump of stale bread, her boots scuffing softly against the stone.

Her eyes, dark and heavy with things unsaid, lingered a moment too long on Aeilanna every time she set the tray down.

She never met Maeve’s gaze, never acknowledged the bruises spreading darker across Aeilanna’s skin, but Maeve noticed her hands tremble as she poured the water.

Noticed the way her jaw tightened when Aeilanna winced.

The way she stood a fraction too long in the doorway, as if every instinct was screaming at her to stay.

Nolenne didn’t smirk or posture like the other guards. She carried herself like a blade forced to turn inward. The day Aeilanna returned beaten, she spoke.

“I’m sorry,” Nolenne said softly.

She crouched just outside the cell, hands braced on her knees, angled away as if she couldn’t bear to face them directly. “For the provisions and conditions, it’s not by choice.”

Maeve froze, the sound of her voice startled her, not cruel, not cold, but gentle and frayed at the edges. Aeilanna lifted her head. Bruised, bloodied, but still she offered a small, aching smile. “We know,” she murmured.

Nolenne flinched. The armour cracked, just a little.

Her gaze flicked to Aeilanna and lingered, too long, too tender for strangers.

Then she stood, stiff and abrupt, like the moment had slipped through her fingers.

Just before she shut the door, she murmured, “Be careful what you say. The walls now listen.”

The door closed with a hollow thud but Maeve didn’t move, she sat in silence, the words echoing through her skull. That night, lying side by side on the cold stone, backs to the wall, Aeilanna spoke.

“She was conscripted,” she said barely audible. “As a child.”

Maeve turned her head slightly.

“Her parents refused to give their children to the Pale Court’s armies,” Aeilanna went on. “So the soldiers slaughtered them and took Nolenne and her two brothers anyway.”

Maeve’s stomach churned. “And now she’s… what? A prison guard?”

“Not willingly,” Aeilanna said. “She was beaten, starved, and then they punished her. All three of them.”

“How? ”

A pause. Then flatly, “They made her watch her brothers fight to the death.”

Maeve could barely breathe.

“The survivor, Davmon, the eldest, is now second to Vargen himself,” Aeilanna added.

Her voice was even, but laced with old, undiluted grief.

“She was nine. They were thirteen and fifteen. She watched them tear each other apart. Watched one brother die, watched the other become something else entirely.”

Maeve closed her eyes, a sour taste coating her tongue.

“And now,” Aeilanna whispered, “she survives. Not for loyalty or glory, but just survival. It is incredibly difficult being a woman around so many isolated men.”

Maeve didn’t respond, there was nothing to say but after that, she began watching Nolenne more closely.

Watched the subtle stiffening in her shoulders every time she saw the changing bruises on Aeilanna’s skin.

The way her mouth pressed into a tight line and how her hands always hovered, like they wanted to reach out and never quite dared.

Maeve didn’t ask, sometimes they exchanged a look, brief and bare, and it left Maeve aching with questions she didn’t know how to voice.

A connection that felt like it had been carved from shared terror.

Nolenne was a prisoner, too. No chains on her wrists, but shackled all the same and though Maeve kept her secrets close, though the Chain still pressed like a secret heartbeat against her body, something in her began to shift. A thread of kinship, the beginning.

?????

On the eighth night, Maeve could barely sleep.

Her body aching from the cold stone floor, every joint stiff, every muscle tender.

Her stomach gnawed at itself with hunger, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

An invisible pressure had begun to build inside her chest. Slow at first, then unbearable, like a snare drawing tighter with every hour.

It came in waves. Sharp, brutal throbs pulling through her ribs, her spine, her very bones, as if something essential was being unravelled, strand by fragile strand.

The separation from my mate.

Maeve curled tighter on the floor, arms wrapped around herself as if she could hold the pieces together through sheer persistence alone.

She still didn’t dare think his name. Not in this place where even silent thoughts felt like they could be overheard, stolen and twisted.

So she buried it, buried him, buried herself.

The ache wouldn’t fade, it only grew, a void that no breath could fill, no comfort could soothe.

An emptiness that scraped the inside of her chest raw, leaving her drained and gasping without a sound.

She pressed her hand to her pocket, fingers finding the familiar velvet pouch.

The Chain pulsed faintly beneath her covered touch, its hum thready but present.

The mate bond was screaming for him now, with every hour he didn’t come, with every heartbeat spent alone in the dark, Maeve realised something colder and sharper than anything she'd faced before. If she stayed here much longer, she wouldn’t survive it.

Not because of the imprisonment, not because of the guards, but because of the bond.

The slow, aching severing of something sacred.

When the door scraped open, far earlier than usual, she shot upright, fists clenched. Nolenne stepped inside, no tray, no water, just her. She was breathless, with loose flowing hair around her shoulders and sweat shining at her brow.

“Aei, we’ve got to go tonight,” she said in a low voice, looking at the other prisoner.

Maeve rose slowly. “What?”

“I can get you out, but we have to leave now.”

Aeilanna was already standing, one hand reaching for Maeve’s arm, the other for Nolenne’s. Her eyes, dulled so long by the gloom, now shone with something fierce and electric, gold flowing around the brown.

“You planned this?” Maeve whispered.

“We’ve been working on it for months,” Aeilanna said. “Mapping the shifts, watching the guards and timing the patrols. Waiting for the right night.”

Maeve stared at them both, her heart thudding. “And it just happens to be tonight?”

“Not coincidence,” Nolenne said. “We were close, but your arrival... it was the sign we needed. We could have done with another, and it looks like you need out. Fast.”

Maeve’s breath caught. “What?”

Aeilanna’s fingers touched her wrist gently. “The pain. It’s separation, I can feel it, even with these gods-damned shackles.”

Maeve’s throat tightened, she hadn’t said a word, not about the bond or about the pain, and yet, they knew .

She pulled back, pacing towards the wall. “This could be a trap.”

“It’s not,” Nolenne said, stepping closer. “I wouldn’t risk everything if it were. I’ve bled for this, lied, hidden and risked every part of myself. I’m putting my life in your hands.”

Maeve turned to Aeilanna. “You trust her?”

Aeilanna nodded. “With my life.”

Maeve knew what staying meant, it meant dying, not by blade or poison. By silence, distance, by the bond slowly cracking her open from the inside out. She looked at them both, these two women who had lived in hell and still found a way to fight, and her fear began to burn out.

“I’m in,” Maeve said.

The plan spilled out in hushed bursts. Nolenne laid the route bare, which corridor to take and which guards to avoid. The servant’s tunnel, long abandoned, hidden beneath the lower wall was a path to the forest, to their freedom.

“We’ll head south,” Nolenne said. “Off-road. No camps, just sleeping ad hoc. Three days’ run to the Melrathen border if we’re lucky.”

“And if we’re not?” Maeve asked.

“Then we’ll be hunted and caught.” Nolenne’s smile was thin and grim. “You must fall on your blade before that.”

Maeve flexed her fingers, her body remembered what it meant to fight and she met Nolenne’s gaze. “Then let’s give them something to chase.”

Aeilanna gave a rare laugh. “You’ll fit right in.”

They moved quickly, stripping the cell of anything useful. Rags for bandages, sharp pieces of stone and the jug’s handle broken into a makeshift weapon. Nolenne produced two small blades and handed one to Maeve. She accepted it without hesitation. The cool weight of it in her hand felt familiar.

“We don’t stop,” Nolenne said. “No matter what. We run, we fight, we move.”

Maeve nodded, she didn’t know if she fully trusted them, and definitely didn’t know what waited on the other side. But she knew one thing with absolute clarity, if she stayed, she would break, and she wasn’t ready to die, not before she saw him again.