Diadem of Blood and Bones by Ripley Proserpina

Author:Ripley Proserpina [Proserpina, Ripley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-01T05:00:00+00:00

Briar

Briar woke with her face buried against Marcus’s neck. His scent teased her, coaxing her from sleep. Behind her, Sylvain grumbled in her ear, kissed her, and rolled away.

For a blissful moment, she yawned and stretched, blinking up at the ceiling. Her brain supplied a to-do list: homework, class, call Mom, before an older, more instinctive part of her mind screamed its own information.

Pain. Injury. War.

Reality came crashing down. There was no school. No studying. There’d be a call to Mom, but the conversation would be filled with falsities and deflection.

Briar breathed in deeply and grimaced. She smelled horrible. Apparently, Marcus and Sylvain had put her right to bed without cleaning her up. Pushing the covers down, Briar saw she was in the same clothes as yesterday. The blood had flaked off and left smears of rust on the sheets.

“It looks much better,” Marcus said from by her side. Two fingers opened the rip in her shirt to display a pink, puckered scar. “By tomorrow, it’ll be completely gone.”

She nodded. “I need to talk to Hudson. I know he’s beating himself up.” Sylvain stood by the bed and took her hands when she held them out. She straightened and caught another whiff of herself. “I should probably shower first,” she said and took a step toward the bathroom.

Briar never thought there was a sound quieter than silence, but there was, and it descended on the room. She stopped walking to study Sylvain and Marcus. “What?”

They stared at each other and then Marcus cleared his throat. “Hudson is gone.”

He’d run away yesterday, but certainly he hadn’t kept going. He wouldn’t leave her when the world was on fire.

Would he?

“Do you know where he is?” she asked.

“He’s with Valen.”

Valen was gone, too. Of course, he was. If one of them ran, Valen would find them. Briar caught Sylvain swallowing hard. “He’ll be back,” she said, trying to comfort him and make it sound believable.

He will. Her vampire tried to comfort her. He’s ours. She wished she had the confidence her vampire did.

“I’m going to shower,” she said. Her stomach was churning, and she couldn’t tolerate the smell a minute longer. Also, she really wanted to cry and didn’t want to do it in front of Sylvain and Marcus. Valen and Hudson’s absence would affect them as much as it did her.

“Okay,” Marcus answered. “We’ll wait for you downstairs.”

She didn’t watch them leave. Instead, she hurried in the bathroom and turned on the water. Then she turned on the faucet. And then the bathroom fan.

The first sob caught in her throat. Maybe she could do it. Maybe she could cry and no one would hear her so when she was done, she could go downstairs and put on a brave face.

She didn’t bother to unbutton the shirt, she just ripped it off and the t-shirt beneath it. Her bra was ruined. In fact, every piece of clothing she wore she never wanted to see again. Blindly, she tore them off and dropped them in a pile before hurrying beneath the spray.

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