Chapter 6
Then, the world shattered.
Garrick stiffened.
A jagged, guttural gasp tore from his throat. The hand that had been cradling her waist suddenly clamped onto his own right temple with such savage force that his knuckles cracked like dry kindling.
"Garrick?" she gasped, pulling back, her lips still tingling from his warmth.
He didn't hear her.
He fell backward off the oilskin, crashing hard against the damp stone floor. His legs kicked out convulsively, his boots knocking the tin kettle into the dirt, hissing and spewing boiling willow water into the embers.
"Garrick!"
He was clawing at his skull. His fingernails dug into the skin of his scalp, tearing bloody furrows through his brown hair. A high, thin whine of absolute, blinding agony whistled through his clenched teeth.
"The... the bell..." he choked out, his voice warping, deepening into a terrifying, guttural roar. "The bell in the courtyard... *silence the witch!* No—no, stop—"
"Garrick, look at me!" Aveline scrambled onto her knees beside him, grabbing his wrists, trying to pry his frantic hands away from his head.
His skin was boiling. Not with fever—with raw, unbound psychic heat.
Through his dilated pupils, Aveline saw the disaster.
The silver threads she had woven into his subconscious were not just holding; they were *fraying*. The sheer emotional weight of what he had just confessed—the authentic memory of his dead sister colliding head-on with the artificial construct of his devotion to Aveline—had triggered a catastrophic psychic resonance.
The lie was too close to the truth. The human mind could not bear two contradictory realities occupying the exact same emotional root.
"Blood..." Garrick rasped, thrashing violently. His massive shoulder hit the limestone wall, dislodging dirt and pebble fragments. "The bounty... seventy gold... *cut her hands off so she can't weave*... NO! Aveline—where is Aveline?! GET BACK FROM HER!"
Memory bleed-through.
The butcher was waking up.
Flashes of his real past were tearing through the silver lattice: the blood-soaked courtyard of Oakhaven, the cold laughter of the Inquisitors, the iron contracts stamped with Imperial wax, his own hands strangling a young weaver in the cloisters before moving on to the next cell.
And directly over that butcher's soul, like an iron mask bolted onto bone, sat her command to die for her.
The contradiction was literally shearing his brain tissue apart.
Dark, arterial blood began to trickle from his left nostril. A thin line of crimson leaked from his ear, dripping onto the cold limestone. His hazel eyes darted wildly, the pupils contracting to pinpricks, rolling back into his head until only the bloodshot whites showed.
"Aveline..." he wheezed, his right hand suddenly shooting out.
His fingers clamped around her throat.
The grip was iron. It was the lethal, reflex-honed grip of an executioner. Her windpipe crushed instantly beneath his thumb; her vision exploded into dancing constellations of black and silver.
He didn't see her. He saw an enemy in the dark. His muscles bunched to twist and snap her neck with a single, mechanical jerk—
"Garrick..." she managed to squeak out through her crushed larynx.
The sound of her voice hit the fraying silver threads.
He froze.
His eyes snapped back down to her face. For one fractional, horrific second, she saw both men staring at her through the same pair of eyes.
On the left: the cold, dead, merciless mercenary who had slaughtered her sisters without a shred of pity, his mouth curled in a wolfish snarl.
On the right: the broken, weeping guardian who loved her more than his own soul, terrified that he had harmed his little bird.
"Aveline?" he choked out, his hand instantly unclenching from her throat as if he had grasped a red-hot coal.
He shoved himself backward, his back slamming into the stone wall of the dolmen, panting like a dying stag. He looked down at his own trembling, calloused hands with an expression of sheer, unadulterated horror.
"I... I touched your neck," he stammered, his voice fracturing into high, ragged gasps. Blood was running freely down his lip now, dripping onto his chest. "I took your throat. Why... why did I do that? What is wrong with my hands?!"
"Garrick, calm down, breathe—" she wheezed, clutching her bruised throat, coughing violently.
"Something is in here!" he roared, slamming the heel of his palm against the side of his skull with enough force to knock an ordinary man unconscious. The sound of the blow echoed off the granite like an axe striking timber. "There are boots in my head! Swords... the smell of burning books... an inquisitor laughing... *Who was laughing, Aveline?!* Why do I remember the smell of your blood before I ever met you?!"
"Stop it! Stop striking yourself!"
Aveline lunged forward, ignoring the throbbing pain in her throat. She grabbed his face with both hands, forcing his head down, pressing her forehead against his burning brow.
She unleashed her magic.
Not gently. Not with the soft, soothing touch of a healer.
She thrust her consciousness deep into the churning storm of his mind, silver light flaring behind her closed eyelids.
What she saw inside his psyche made her want to vomit with horror.
The mental landscape was a charred wasteland. The silver construct she had built months ago—the bright, beautiful cage of loyalty and love—had turned into a monstrous, barbed-wire bramble. The threads were vibrating at a lethal frequency, cutting deep into his actual memories, severing synapses, drowning his core consciousness in a flood of artificial dopamine and panic.
His mind was trying to reject the foreign organ. But her spell was so deeply anchored into his guilt over his sister that the only way for his brain to expel the lie was to destroy the foundation itself.
The magic was devouring his sanity.
If she reinforced the spell, she would snuff out his intellect entirely, turning him into a drooling, mindless golem that knew only how to swing a blade until his heart burst.
If she unwove it... he would stand up, remember who he was, remember that she was a fugitive witch who had turned him into an enslaved pet, and take her head from her shoulders before she could draw another breath.
*You monstrous coward,* she screamed at herself. *You broke him. You took a monster and turned him into a corpse just to save your own miserable skin.*
"Aveline..." his voice was a broken whisper beneath her hands. He was crying now—harsh, heavy sobs that rattled his massive chest. "Please. It hurts. It hurts so bad. Make it stop... make the fire stop..."
Tears spilled from her eyes, hot and bitter, washing over the blood smeared on his cheek.
"I'm sorry," she wept, her soul tearing in two. "I'm so sorry, Garrick. Sleep. Just sleep. Please."
She gathered the frayed silver threads with her will.
She couldn't fix them. She couldn't repair the torn flesh of his thoughts. But she could numb it. She poured every drop of her remaining power into a heavy, suffocating wave of psychic cold, burying the bleeding memories beneath a thick sheet of mental ice. She forced the construct to clamp down, shoving the truth back into the dark cellar, locking the iron door once more.
