22. Briar
brIAR
L ong silver hair spilling loose down her shoulders to her waist. Red eyes fading into the blue ones I used to glare into when she scolded me. That familiar, unyielding line of her jaw is softened now as tears fall down her cheeks.
The moment my brain finally comprehends she’s truly standing in front of me, my world fractures. My body surges forward before I even decide to move, knees giving out mid-stride so I stumble the last step into her arms.
She catches me like she’s been waiting a lifetime, arms engulfing me and pulling me tight against the curve of her chest. The second her warmth closes around me, the scent of cherry blossom rolls over my senses, and it undoes me.
She’s really here.
My breath shatters on a sob that claws free before I can choke it down.
My face presses into her shoulder, cheek sliding against her battle leathers, and tears spill hot and relentless down my cheeks.
The world spins around me as my body seems to shut down in her arms, all the strength I forced into myself the past month disappearing now that I’m safe and with my family.
Her palm cups the back of my head, fingers sliding into my hair and holding me steady against the storm breaking open within me.
Her arms don’t ease for even a second. They cinch tighter around me, holding me in the solid, immovable embrace of her body as though she knows that if she loosens even a fraction, I might splinter apart and never find the pieces again.
The cherry blossom scent of her skin and hair threads through every shaky inhale, soft and sweet against the copper tang of blood matted in my hair and crusted along my body.
The comforting scent is so jarring my lungs can’t decide how to draw breath around it.
I want to breathe it in and wrap myself in it, all at once.
My chest stutters against hers, every gasp shallow and uneven, as if my body no longer remembers how to settle into the rhythm of simply breathing.
For weeks I forced myself to believe they’d never stop searching until they found me.
I clung to the thought, chanting to myself to just survive until then.
Now, here she is, and the reality of her holding me is almost unbearable as her presence bringing every emotion and memory I tried to suppress in my captivity to the surface.
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to feel it.
But with the slide of her hand brushing my damp cheek, the steady drum of her heart against my ear, and the warmth of her body bleeding into my own, I can’t ignore it any longer.
My mind knows she will be here to hold me through it, and I’m helpless to the way my body shakes and shudders with every heart-wrenching sob.
The chemical mist that burned my body.
The photos they took of me in that state.
My bones broken, one by one.
My fingernails and toenails torn out.
The blood that poured down my body from every cut of his scalpel in my face.
My dignity scraped away with every plastic bag I tore into like a starved animal.
“You’re safe now,” she whispers, voice trembling but resolute.
Safe. The one-syllable word crashes against everything I've conditioned myself to expect. My body doesn’t understand how to believe it.
My shoulders continue to quake as though bracing for the strike of a fist as the memories crash through me, and my legs shake with the urge to bolt even as she holds me up, and my nails claw desperately into her skin because some wild, broken part of me is terrified that if I don’t hold her hard enough, she will vanish and I’ll wind up right back there.
A fresh wail tears loose, my throat raw and the sound harsh in my own ears, but her hand only slides firmer against the back of my head. Her palm is warm and unyielding in keeping me anchored against her.
The words pour out of me before I can stop them, tripping over sobs that rack through my chest, each one catching on the next until I can hardly breathe between them.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen, I should have listened.
I’m so sorry.” The apologies tumble out over and over, senseless and frantic, as if saying them enough times might somehow erase the weight of everything I’ve endured and everything I’ve failed to do in my plan to come to this realm.
My throat burns with the force of it, salt flooding my tongue where tears slip into my mouth, and still I can’t seem to close the floodgate I’ve held tightly closed for too long.
Her hand cups the back of my skull, fingers tangling gently in my hair, the steady slide of her touch cutting through the chaos inside me, and her other arm wraps so tightly around my waist I can feel her trembling too.
Her cheek presses into the crown of my head, warm and damp with her own tears, and when she finally speaks, her voice is low and frayed but steady enough to catch me.
“It’s okay, Briar patch,” she murmurs, the name wrapping around me like a memory I thought I’d never hear again. “It’s okay now. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
My legs finally give out with the nickname, the last thread of strength snapping as the sobs wring through me.
She lowers us both down into the grass without ever loosening her grip.
The earth is damp and cold once more beneath my knees, but I barely feel it.
She folds me tighter against her chest, one hand cradling the back of my head as if she can shield me from the memories clawing up through my ribs, the other circling my waist to draw me into the steady rhythm of her breathing.
We sway together slowly, her rocking motion coaxing my frantic body into something calmer. My ear presses flat to her chest, her heartbeat a steady drumbeat beneath my cheek, the sound so achingly familiar I want to crawl inside it and never come back out.
Her lips brush the top of my head, and though her voice trembles, it carries enough certainty to root me in remembering I’m free of that place. “Shhh, you’re safe. I’ve got you. Nothing can take you from me now.”
I don’t know how long I cry in her arms, only that the sound of my own sobbing drowns out everything else. My mother rocks me through every jagged tremor, her whispered reassurances falling softly against my hair, but even as I cling tighter, the rest of the world begins to press back in.
Boots shift in the grass and a familiar voice cuts through the haze of my frazzled emotions.
“They can beg for a quick death, but they won’t be granted it.”
The words pierce through the fragile cocoon of safety my mother has woven around me, dragging my drifting mind back to reality. My breath snags, the flood of tears stuttering to silence as the words settle heavy in my gut.
Callum. Elias. Dante.
My head jerks up, throat still raw from crying, and I blink through the blur of tears. My fathers stand in a single line, metal pressed to the boys’ throats, their crimson eyes burning with the same fury.
In that moment the ache of my grief collides with a new terror, tearing me in two.
The sight of weapons pressed to their bodies wrenches me further from my mother’s embrace than I’m ready to be, dragging my mind into a battlefield that I’m not sure what side to stand on.
They were complicit. I know that. They stood by while Terrance bled me out, while restraints tore into my body in my attempt to break free, and while I slowly began to lose my will to fight back.
They watched and they let it happen.
My mind veers in another direction instantly.
They’re also the ones who carried me out when the chance came, the ones who turned their backs on what they’ve been taught to believe, the ones who risked it all to give us all the freedom we have now. They didn’t have to. They could have left me there and broken free themselves.
It would have been a hell of a lot easier without taking Terrance’s prize captive with them.
My breath catches, sharp and uneven as the opposing truths slam against each other inside me.
Rage and gratitude. Pain and something dangerously akin to loyalty.
I can’t untangle them and find where one ends and the other begins.
All I know is that both feel carved into me as deeply as the scars littering my heart and mind.
I press closer to my mother’s chest as a tremble of uncertainty shakes me, but my gaze won’t leave the sight of weapons against their bodies. My tears sting, fresh and bitter, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say…whether to damn them or defend them.
Words scrape up my throat before I even understand what’s going to come up. “Don’t–” My voice breaks, catching on another sob, but I push through it, pulling in a jagged breath. “Don’t kill them.”
Two sets of crimson eyes and one black pair snap to me, disbelief etched sharp across every line of their faces, and the weight of it nearly buckles me. Still, I force the words again, steadier this time even as my tears stream unchecked. “We have to bring them back to Sanguis.”
My mom stiffens at my side, her hand pressed to my back like she can hold me together single-handedly. It’s my fathers whose voices cut through first, harsh and incredulous, layered one over the other.
“Impossible.”
“Absolutely not.”
“There’s nothing you can say that will grant them clearance into our domain.”
Each refusal slams into me like another blow, but I lift my chin despite the wetness streaking my face.
“I promised them.” The words rip free before I can stop them, my voice breaking again, this time with a different kind of desperation to stay true to myself like Lyra reminded me. “They’re the reason I escaped. Without them I’d still be trapped in that vicious cycle of torture.”
I blink through the tears, and for a moment I almost can’t reconcile the sight of them with the memory I’ve carried in my head every day I was locked away. It hits me square in the chest as I let my eyes meet each of theirs, seeing how broken and angry they look.
Papa stands on the left, his jaw tight enough to crack as his chest rapidly rises and falls.
His usually kempt brown hair is messy, the usually sleeked back golden strands catching the light when he shifts.
I used to think nothing could rattle him into disorder, his clothes always neat and pressed, but for the first time I see an entirely different version of him.
His pants are creased and his white shirt stained.
He looks like he hasn’t slept the entire time I’ve been gone.
Beside him, Dad is all shadows and edges, his lean frame draped in black tactical gear, silver rings and chains glinting when his fingers flex around the weapon pressed to Callum’s throat.
His usual soft eyes are somehow the sharpest of the three, the sight of it sends a shiver crawling down my spine.
I’ve heard of his dominance in the field, but I’ve never witnessed that side of him in action until now.
My brain can barely comprehend that he’s the same person who sprawled across my floor with me making bracelets.
Then there’s my father, the King of Sanguis.
Taller than the others, his suit stretched across muscles that could crush a man in half, his usually short and kempt beard is long and disheveled, and he lacks his usual composed demeanor, no matter the situation, like he’s losing himself to the monster within.
Black eyes practically melt into the black veins spidering from the corners down to his cheeks.
I can feel the raw fury rolling off him.
My family. My protectors.
With weapons pressed to the guys’ and fury spilling from every line of my father’s bodies, I don’t know how to make them hear me.
I don’t know if there is anything that would pull them back from the edge.
A hand closes over mine, firm and grounding, and I drag my eyes away from them long enough to find my mother’s face. Her grip tightens, tugging me closer until the weight of her gaze pins me.
“Briar,” she says, low but fierce, her voice carrying the kind of finality that has always cut through arguments, “you can’t ask us to bring them to Sanguis. It puts all of our people at risk. We have a duty to them.”
My chest lurches, because I know she means it. I can hear the conviction in her tone and feel it in the pressure of her fingers around mine.
Frustration rips through me all the same, hot enough to sting behind my eyes.
Of all people, she should understand. She and my fathers spent years mending the hostile lines between the slayers and the vampires, stitching peace between the groups.
No one thought the fragile situation would hold, but they worked tirelessly to turn long-time enemies into allies, to train together, to prove that unity was stronger than old hatred.
Yet somehow she looks at three battered humans and tells me they’re the danger we can’t overcome in Sanguis?
I can’t reconcile it. I can’t accept that after everything they built, after every bridge of peace they forced into place, she believes three humans are enough to unravel it all.
“I know what you’re saying,” I whisper, the words breaking out through the dryness in my throat, “but I made them a promise. I swore I would take them somewhere their family couldn’t touch. I won’t abandon them now after everything. I won’t betray myself like that.”
The frustrated tears slide down my face, but my voice steadies as I go on, a pleading edge threading through every word. “Please, Mom. They saved me and I can’t pretend they didn’t. We can’t throw them aside now.”
Mom’s eyes soften, even as her mouth presses into a line. She draws breath like she’s ready to argue, her grip on my hand tightening, but before the words can leave her lips, a different voice slices through the night.
“It’s okay.”
The sound of Callum’s voice startles us all as the two words hang there, soft but certain, and the silence that follows feels thick enough to choke on. My mother’s fingers tighten around mine and my fathers don’t move a muscle. Even Elias and Dante look stunned with wide eyes and parted lips.
Callum doesn’t flinch beneath the weight of everyone’s focus. His gaze is steady, his voice quiet but carrying with certainty. “Do whatever you need. Kill me. Hurt me. Leave me.” His throat bobs, the force of it pressing against the edge of Papa’s blade, but he doesn’t waver. “I deserve it.”
My chest caves at the sight of the tears spilling freely down his cheeks, glinting beneath the pale moonlight shining down.
He isn’t fighting. He isn’t begging. He’s just…yielding.
When his eyes bore into me, unbearably broken and full of sorrow, my heart stumbles in my chest.
“Leave us and go home, Briar.”