26. Briar
brIAR
T he shattered vase lies in glittering shards across the floor, water soaking into the rug in uneven blotches, stems of crushed flowers bent and broken under my bare feet. My chest heaves with the force of my sobs, each one tearing through my healing throat, ripping it to shreds once more.
After showering and rinsing off any remnants of this godforsaken night and drinking the remaining blood bags I had stashed in my room, my body’s already healing from the faint trace of the mist that began to eat at my shins and burned my throat and lungs.
I should feel happy that my body is healing, but all it does is make my guilt thicken.
My mom won’t be that lucky. I know they’ll starve her and bleed her, extending any healing process. She suffers while I heal.
The walls of this room feel too close, like they’re pressing in, and no matter how much I scream, it doesn’t strip the suffocating weight from my chest.
My hands sting from the things I’ve already broken between them, palms nicked where ceramic sliced skin, but I barely feel it over the storm roaring inside me. I don’t deserve to feel whole. I deserve to feel every ounce of pain she’s enduring because of me.
The memory of the mist swallowing my mother and her screams replay again and again, until I want to claw my own face apart just to be rid of it.
I don’t hear the door open, my own heartbeat in my ears drowning everything out, but I feel a presence watching me.
I whirl as my eyes snap open, swollen and burning, and there he is…
Elias. Standing inside the threshold of my bedroom, the door shut behind him now, with his stormy blue gaze locked on me like he’s ready to fight.
For a second I can’t breathe as fury sparks white-hot under my skin at the sight of him intruding in my space like this, uninvited.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” My voice is hoarse, undermining the weight I try to put behind my words.
The words may be harsh, but the truth is I’m stunned that it’s him standing in my room.
When I first stepped through the portal to our castle, I managed to choke out the bare bones of what happened with my mom.
My fathers had initially tried to console me, but their hands felt too heavy on my shoulders, their voices crowding me until I couldn’t breathe.
I escaped to my room because their comfort felt like suffocation and something I didn’t deserve.
But since then, there’s been silence from them. Not one knock at my door, not one voice asking if I need them. They must be downstairs now, pouring over strategies, calling in contacts, doing everything they can to get my mom back.
That’s where their attention belongs. I know that. I repeat it like a mantra, but still, some small, selfish part of me aches. A piece of me that hates how badly I wanted them to come check on me again, to sit with me through this. I swallow the guilt of even thinking it, but it lingers anyway.
Seeing Elias standing there as I ached for someone to come check on me feels like the universe laughing in my face, sending the least emotionally-nuanced person I’ve ever met.
His gaze softens as it sweeps over me and fixates on my bleeding hands. Somehow that’s all it takes for my mind to conjure the memory of him pressing against me in the car as we escaped, in an effort to shield me, and then when he took a bullet for me.
He hadn’t hesitated. He’d put himself between me and the gun like it was instinct.
The thoughts press at the edges of my heart, unwelcome and disarming all at once. I don’t know what it is about him that unsettles me every time we’re in the same room or why he sparks a fire within me that no one else has ever brought out.
He agitates me, challenges me, and yet something about it keeps pulling me back toward him, ever since the first barb he made that night on campus.
Now, standing here with his gaze locked on me, I feel the tight coil of it again. Just looking at his face has me on edge, every muscle tense and ready, my tongue itching to cut loose with insults. It’s like my whole body is already anticipating a fight, desperate for the release of it.
The energy swirling within me takes my breath away as I imagine what I look like, poised and ready to clash. The sketch of my self-portrait comes to mind. The version of me that is so full of life and ready to tackle anything. The version of me I never thought I’d be.
He helps bring that fire out within me. The woman who will fight for her dreams and not let anyone get in her way.
My chest heaves with the uneven breaths I take in an attempt to shove that realization far into the depths of my mind. The silence stretches as he just stands there, steady and immovable, like he’s daring me to start the fight.
A prickle runs across my skin with the desire to do exactly that and I seize onto it with both hands, desperate for anything to draw me away from the unwelcome memories of my mother and the softer thoughts about Elias.
“Does staring at me like that make you feel useful?” I bite out. “Or do you get off watching me break apart? That has to be why you stood there and watched Terrance rip me open.”
A muscle ticks in his cheek, the only crack in that stone-cold mask, and then the words lash out of him. “Is that what you want to think about me? That I tucked those memories of your pained screams away to use as spank bank material?”
He takes a step closer to me, somehow making me feel like the prey here, despite knowing my abilities make me the true predator between us.
“Sure, let’s go with that,” he muses in a deep timbre that sends a shiver down my spine.
He takes another step closer. “I stroked myself thinking about your lips parted and screaming, imagining filling it with my cock. You’d be helpless to me doing whatever I wanted to you, restrained to that metal table. ”
The mention of the table and restraints burns fury through my veins before despair can drag me under again. “Fuck you,” I hiss, lifting my chin to look him in the eyes. “I know you’re only saying that to rile me up.”
I want to think that the certainty in knowing he’s lying is what allows the smallest, most fucked-up part of me to not tremble at the thought of his cock buried in my throat.
“Perhaps,” he rumbles.
His boots crunch over broken glass and it’s like a bucket of cold water dumped over my mind, snapping me to reality.
Logic begins to set in, reminding me that’s the last thing I should ever be clinging to right now.
But as soon as I try to push it away, my heart hammers with the reminders of the images that will replace it.
A whimper crawls up my throat and I can’t even find the energy to be ashamed of that sound as Elias’s eyes narrow at me.
“Hurting yourself won’t bring her back, Briar.”
My eyes slam shut as my hands curl at my sides, my nails digging into my stinging palms.
I don’t want to think about any of it. I don’t want to feel my mind and heart ripping open, over and over.
A warmth covering my hands jolts my eyes open as he slowly pulls them up to rest palms up between us. The glimpse of sadness in his eyes as he looks at the ruined skin just beginning to heal makes my pulse stutter.
He lets out a ragged breath before his eyes fill with heat once more as they drag up slowly to rest on my face. “You want someone to blame and hurt? Fine. Blame me. Hurt me. We’re the reason you were in that hell to begin with and why your mom is there now.”
The fire licking at my chest is instantaneous.
“You think I don’t already?!” My voice fractures, a scream cracking into a sob. “Every time I close my eyes, I see your faces. I see you standing there while he carved me open.”
My hand lashes out before I can stop it, smacking a picture frame off my dresser, the glass shattering across the wall. He doesn’t duck or so much as blink.
“Throw it at me,” he growls out. “Scream at me. If you need a body to bleed your rage into, I’m right fucking here.”
My jaw clenches at his last words.
He is here.
Right when I needed someone, and he’s willing to take all of my anger head-on.
My vision blurs at the edges as rage tangles with something hotter and sharper, until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
“Why is it you?” The words rip out of me, trembling between anger and desperation. “Why is it always you who gets under my skin?”
His gaze locks on mine, unflinching and merciless. “Because I don’t lie to you. I won’t wrap you in pretty words and coddle you.”
The air between us hums and I hate him for being here. I hate that he’s the only one who came. And I hate, most of all, that a part of me is glad he did.
Before I realize what I’m doing, my finger is stabbing hard into his chest that’s slightly damp beneath his shirt.
“You don’t get to stand here and act like you know what I need,” I snarl, every word trembling as I dare him to correct me.
He doesn’t so much as flinch at my touch or words. His hand comes up fast, catching mine in his grip once more. The energy between us crackles, and I see him daring me to pull back in his gaze, and my own narrows, daring him to push harder.
“I know exactly what you need,” he bites out, as he uses his grip on my hand to pull me flush against him. His words vibrate from his chest and into mine. “You need somewhere to put the fire before it eats you alive.”
The challenge sparks low in my belly, furious and frightening, the kind of heat that makes my breath stumble. I should rip my hand free. I should shove him back. Instead, I lean in closer, because pretending I still hate him feels safer than drowning in my sorrow.
His grip holds fast, his chest rising against mine with each harsh breath. I can feel the heat radiating off him as my pulse thrums too quickly.
“Why the fuck do you even care about what I need right now?” The words are saturated with venom as my eyes narrow.
He doesn’t back down.