Page 6 of Heart Cradle (The Melrathen Saga #1)

The silence that followed was not empty.

It thrummed between them, heavy with unspoken things.

Maeve swallowed, she did not believe in fate, gods, faeries, or signs from the universe.

She had only ever believed in evidence. Then, as if struck in the head, it dawned on her.

The gang from London, they had sent him to find her, to deliver her.

A finder.

Fuck.

Her heart thundered. Her skin burned and, head spun.

Suddenly the narrow Lisbon street was too loud, the café too crowded and the air too close.

The clink of cutlery, the scrape of chairs, the murmur of conversation, all of it crashed over her like a wave, pressing and suffocating.

Sounds blurred into a wall of static as she stood abruptly, the chair scraping back behind her.

Eyes wide, breath shallow, she didn’t offer an excuse or glance at Eiran. She just moved, instinctively.

She ran as he called her name, but she did not stop.

She bolted, fleeing like prey, compulsion and terror flooding every nerve.

As if all her nighttime sprints were in practice for this, she moved through the sunlit streets.

She sprinted past tramlines and postcard-perfect buildings, her dress whipping behind her, boots slapping against the cobbles in a frantic rhythm.

The city that had felt distant and gentle now roared around her, a trap in disguise, pastel walls, warm air, smiling strangers.

It had all been a lie.

Her heart was a drumbeat in her throat, every breath short and sharp as glass.

The sunlight sliced between buildings in stark white lines that were too bright.

Her boots slipped slightly on loose stones, but she didn’t stop, she couldn’t stop.

She barely remembered the way back. Just vague turns and muscle memory, using panic as her compass.

Her dress tangled at her knees, her hair stuck to her face with sweat.

A tourist turned to watch her pass, puzzled, but she didn’t acknowledge him.

She didn’t see anything, not the shops, or the signs.

Only flashes of colour and motion, sound and heat, the world tilting on its axis.

Noise became pressure, every car horn, shout and footstep was a threat.

Every open door a mouth waiting to swallow her whole .

By the time she reached the holiday flat, her hands shook too much to find the key.

She fumbled, breath ragged, until the lock turned with a click that sounded like salvation.

She slammed the door shut behind her, chest heaving, limbs trembling.

Her thoughts spun so fast they became solid, her vision narrowed and the room closing in.

It had happened again.

She was not safe, not there, not anywhere.

Maeve collapsed against the door, gasping like she’d just outrun death itself, and she wasn’t sure she hadn’t.

Her fingers fumbled for the lock, she secured it, checking it twice.

Then a third time, just to be sure, the sound of the bolt sliding into place should have been reassuring.

It wasn’t, she felt as if she were locking herself in with them.

They had found her.

It wasn’t a dream, they had been in Rome too

Lisbon was supposed to be a fresh start.

Sunlight, sea breeze, food she could really taste and enjoy.

Not this, not another stage for fear to perform on, and the second place she would die.

Her breath continued to race, chest tightening, her ribs squeezing inward as if bound by ropes she couldn’t see.

Her mouth opened and closed but air didn’t come freely anymore.

Her legs trembled as the floor swayed as the tiles beneath her boots suddenly tilted like a sinking ship.

She half-walked, half-staggered to the bathroom on instinct alone.

It was a safe place, a small room with no windows.

She flicked the lock shut behind her, and her body betrayed her as she froze.

The flat isn’t safe, they are already inside.

Her eyes darted to the vent, the sink, the crack of light under the door. The world had sharpened, everything was too loud and far too detailed. The pulse in her ears, the sweat on her top of her lip, the cold of the wall behind her where she leaned. Every sensation was heightened and unbearable.

She clawed at the lock again, checking twice.

Her vision narrowed harshly and the edges of the room blurred like watercolour dropped in a puddle.

Finally, her knees gave way entirely and she sank, sliding down the wall until her body curled in on itself on the cool tiles.

Her whole frame shook and she gripped her shins, pressing her forehead to her knees, hard.

“Oh fuck,” she whispered, the words trembling through clenched teeth. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. ”

The world fell away. She was back in London, in her flat, the one she’d scrubbed and scrubbed but could never quite make clean again.

Her home, where the air still smelled of bleach and blood and the echo of her own screams followed her.

The flat with the shadows that never softened, the home that had betrayed her safety.

She could feel it again, the tape on her mouth. The searing pain across her ribs, the smell of her burning flesh, the sound of her own breath stuttering in the dark. The certainty, absolute, unshakeable, that she was going to die. No one was coming, no one even knew. She had no one.

Eiran, was talking about fae, bonds, fate and soulmates like a storybook psychopath. She had let him touch her, let him see her, let the bracelet stay on her wrist like a badge of madness.

Shit, they had sent him.

It was all just part of the game. The long con, to make her feel special, seen, and then they would finish what they started. They knew she was lonely, they knew she had no one.

They’ll laugh at me again, they’ll laugh as I bleed, and die alone.

Her whole body went rigid at the thought. “No,” she said to the tiles, the word a threadbare whisper. “No. This is not happening. No.”

She looked at the bracelet as it pulsed, a soft thrum beneath her skin like a distant heartbeat.

“What the fuck are you?!”

As if in answer, it then pulsed deeper and reached inwards, it wasn’t soothing or invasive, just there.

A presence, trying to anchor her, trying to hold her together.

It didn't speak, but it pushed her out of fear, away from surrender, and into sense.

Steering her to clarity, giving her the ability to draw breath.

She looked at it like it might bite her, as if it might bloom into a serpent and snare her.

“What had he called you?” Maeve said out loud, pulling her hair in agitation. “The Chain.”

It sounded like a curse, like fate’s collar, and she was wearing it.

She’d chosen it, paid for it and put it on with her own hands.

She tried to drag in a long breath, but it caught halfway.

She must be sick, fully broken. Past the edge and down the slope.

This was madness, paranoia, psychosis from PTSD.

She needed help, therapy and medication.

She wrapped her arms around herself like she could keep the pieces of her from floating off the tiles .

Breathe

Maeve, come on.

Breathe

But her breath wouldn’t come cleanly, it was snagging in her throat like cloth on wire. Her lungs heaved, her eyes blurred. She wasn’t in control, she wasn’t even sure this was real anymore. The truth she could not speak out loud curled like smoke against the corner of her mind, hissing.

It felt real, that moment, the touch, the warmth and the knowing, it had felt so fucking real.

If she let herself believe that, really believe it, then nothing was safe.

Then everything else he’d said could be true, too.

So instead, she clenched her fists until her nails bit her palms and whispered again to the cold bathroom.

“No. No. No. I am not ill. I am not being irrational.”

She didn’t sound certain but that moment, it had felt real, genuine.

Delusion, Maeve. That was all.

A stress-induced hallucination.

Psychosis, triggered by trauma .

It all fit, it made sense. Of course it did, she was unwell.

That was the most likely explanation, the most rational.

Maybe he wasn’t real and she had imagined him.

The white shirt, the too-perfect face, the deep, smooth voice.

The way he had said bond like it meant something sacred, like it meant anything at all.

Shit.

She wailed, the sound was broken, feral, not human.

It ripped from her throat like it had claws.

She buried her face in her arm and screamed until her lungs burned, until the force of it shook her entire body.

Her boots clattered against the tiles, her shoulders shuddered, her chest felt caved in.

The room angled around her again, or maybe she angled inside it.

The edges distorted, the ceiling bowed, air thickened into paste and the corners of the bathroom pulled inward like a collapsing lung.

Her chest seized, her breath wouldn’t come at all now, not in or out. Just shallow stabs of air scraping her throat. She thought of the two most likely possibilities.

I’m unwell or they have found me and this was a trap.

The Chain, Eiran, all of it. An act, designed with elegance and cruelty.

Those bastards, the ones who had followed her home, broken her door, broken her bones and broken her.

They had failed to kill her in London, and now they were trying again.

This time with softness, it was clever, so fucking clever.

Of course she would fall for it, wrap the trauma in romance, dress the danger in mysticism, and let the lonely woman want it.