Silence fills the room for a long moment, but I can feel I’m no longer alone. A human soul feels different from just a body, I know that now that I’ve spent time with my uncle’s corpse. Warm hands close over my arms, gently tugging me away from the scene of my crimes and my uncle’s still exposed body. My eyes pin the fingers digging into my skin, then climb a chest to find the beautiful face of the man who owns them.
“Sable, please. Come with me, baby,” Hadrian’s voice itself is a music I never thought I’d hear again. My uncle’s blood is still coating my thigh. There’s no way, he can’t really be here.
“Say something, please,” he insists, and I’m not sure what to say when nothing around me seems real. Hadrian’s face is too beautiful, and his voice. It’s all an illusion. Am I dead? Alarm bells ring in my head. Did I actually lose the fight with my uncle? Rationally, that makes more sense. He was bigger and stronger than me. My sense of self shatters as I can’t decide what’s real anymore. I’m a hairsbreadth from giving in to the madness growing around the edges of my brain.
“Shit, Sable. What did you do?” My voice drops as a voice I never thought I would hear again fills the room. My old best friend, Liliana. I laugh despite the fact I still haven’t said a word to any of them, but is there really a need to be polite to hallucinations, especially ones you hate? She is one person who was invited here willingly, though, so I guess her sudden appearance makes more sense than Uncle Carl’s. I laugh at my own joke, the sound ripping out of me until it changes into sobs.
My eyes close, and I lose consciousness for the second time today, positively sure that none of this is real. If I’m lucky, maybe I didn’t even really kill my uncle.
CHAPTER 16
SABLE
“What the hellare you guys doing?”
The voice of my old friend starts again, bringing chills down my arms. There has to be something horrible to explain why I’m hallucinating, because there’s no way in hell both “Liliana” and Hadrian are here. I’m probably dead or brain-damaged.
“I’m not sure whattodo.” Hadrian’s voice calms me back down. “I wasn’t expecting there to be a body.” My hopes that I didn’t actually kill my uncle start to fade.
Blood seeping through his eye and soaking the sheets flashes in my head, and I can’t hold back my reaction to the imagery. My eyes snap open, and I suck in air, still terrified as if even dead, he still can squeeze my neck to drag me with him.
Above me stand two faces I never thought I’d see again: Hadrian and whoever her real name is. His face is painfully handsome, digging into my chest with a kind of lust and heartache I didn’t expect. She doesn’t look the same either. That’s her face, alright, but her hair was always light brown, and now it’s pitch black. The color sets off her ashy blue eyes like you wouldn’t believe.
Neither of them has noticed I’m awake yet, and it gives me a moment to try to make sense of the situation. Why the hell isshe acting so calm? I was the one who brought down another Briarwick, and I’m not feeling that calm myself.
“What about him? He isn’t even pretending to be useful. Did he get hit in the head or something?” “Liliana” talks again, and now that I’m awake, I have to accept this is not just a bad dream.
She’s really here? Her voice sounds the same, but I don’t recognize her tone. The person I knew was prissy and girly to the utmost degree. My chest burns as I realize why. It shouldn’t surprise me that she seems so different, given I never knew her at all.
“Don’t worry about him,” Hadrian says. There’s an undertone of animosity so thick, and I don’t follow what they are talking about. “I don’t get why you suddenly think you’re in charge.”
“How many bodies have you gotten rid of?” she asks with a cold assuredness that makes my skin crawl.
“How many haveyou?” His disbelief sounds nearly as thick as mine.
A thousand questions about the person I considered my best friend bubble up in my throat, but I doubt she would even entertain my curiosity. As I assumed, she doesn’t answer him, but shoots him a dirty look as she turns to the body, now on the floor while I rest in the bed. The bloody bed. Ugh.
The scene I watch is bizarre. I can’t see what she’s doing, but my eyes stay on her confident movement until I notice someone in the corner. The air leaves my lungs at once. For a split second, I think it’s Orion, but my heart leaps and hurts, and I realize immediately it’s not, though. Orion would have run to me; I’d be in the arms of that maniac in a second, and not in this bed. My wounded soul cries and bleeds out when my eyes lock onSoren. My eyes trace from the tattoos peaking out of his T-shirt, up to his gorgeous face, where I find his eyes on mine. For a long moment, I say nothing. He’s the only one who’s noticed I’mawake, yet he lets the moment between stretch until my eyes welled with tears, and I want to scream again.
What on earth is he doing here? He had a chance to stop me before I left, and he said nothing. Why would he come herenow?
“What the actual fuck is going on?” I spit, sitting up, head spinning yet eyes glued to Soren.
They’d better be hallucinations about to vanish. Otherwise, someone needs to start explaining right now.
“Sable.” Hadrian tries to bring me back to him, and when it doesn’t work, he bends down and snatches my face in his hands, carefully sliding his thumbs over my cheeks and lips. He looks me over, green eyes piercing me. I never thought I’d see anyone else again, certainly never thought I would see him. He kisses me hard, lips pressing to mine and sweeping his tongue into my mouth. Despite my relief and even joy at seeing him, I don’t return the gesture right away. Missing his tongue and kissing him back a moment too late.
“Sorry,” he says as he pulls back. “You clearly need a second.”
“No, I’m fine,” I lie again, but a chill still coats my skin from all the places my uncle touched me, all the times he covered me inhim.
Pain tightens the edge of Hadrian’s expression, but he forces a smile, hands falling from my face to squeeze my hand. “We’re just going to deal with this. You go ahead and relax.”
I blink at him slowly, letting the order sink in. I’m covered in blood from head to toe, so it’s hard to think I can relax, even if Soren, of all people, stands in the corner, no words coming from his mouth yet. I wonder what his first words for me will be. Will he try to explain himself? Instead of waiting on him, I glance at my uncle.
“He’s actually dead.”
“Doesn’t get much deader than that,” the girl I once knew as Liliana says.
