Page 116 of Hellebore

I feel like I can breathe again. He’s okay. He’s alive.

A phone rings. Enzo answers it.

“Yeah?” he says.

Someone speaks on the other end. He turns to me.

“It’s for you.”

I take the phone, not recognizing the number, my hand trembling.

“Briar?” Lucille’s voice breaks into sobs the second she hears me. I cry harder, gripping the phone so tightly my fingers ache.

“Lucille?” I choke out. “It’s you—oh God, it’s really you⁠—”

She cries harder on the other end. I glance at Drystan. He gives me a small, encouraging nod.

I slip out of the room and sink onto the small bench near the window, my legs threatening to give out.

I tell her some of what happened, enough to explain without the worst details. I can’t bring myself to say them out loud. Not yet.

She listens through her tears, the sound of her crying breaking my heart all over again. In the background I hear a steady beeping.

“Where are you?” I ask, voice shaking.

She is quiet for a moment. “Hospital,” she confesses. I can tell she is trying so hard to stay calm for me.

“Why?” More tears fall. My heart feels like it is cracking apart inside my ribs.

“I went to water your plants and some men showed up. They—” She stops, voice catching. I cover my mouth to muffle my sob. “Your twin friends got there in time, but… I had to have surgery.”

“Because of me—” I say, terrified.

“No.” She stops for a second. “Because of Lawrence. Because he’s a fucked up person who deserves nothing but pain. But I’m safe now,” she says, her voice growing a little steadier. “Drystan placed me in a private hospital. Two men are always here guarding me.”

I hear a voice calling for her in the background. “My doctor is here,” she says softly.

“I love you,” Tears streaming down my face.

“I love you too, sweetheart. So much.” She ends the call.

“I will bring her here once she’s discharged from the hospital,” Drystan says quietly behind me.

I turn. He is standing there shirtless, dried blood smeared across his torso. His muscles are tense, his beautiful green eyes mirroring my own—tired and broken.

I reach for him. “Come on. You need a shower.”

He smiles faintly and strides toward me, picking me up with one arm like I weigh nothing. “You don’t take care of me,” he murmurs. “I take care of you. I make sure all the pain goes away. Me, my love.”

He leans down, lips hovering near mine. He doesn’t push. He waits. Slowly, I rise up to meet him. Our lips connect. Gentle, slow, full of everything we almost lost. For the first time in what feels like forever, my heart beats steady again.

Chapter Thirty-Six

DRYSTAN

Isit in the heavy velvet chair facing our bed, the ancient frame creaking beneath my weight like a sentinel chained to the shadows of Hellebore Mansion. It is four in the morning, and the world outside the heavy drapes is a void of endless night. Hours earlier, around eight in the evening, she had asked me for a sleeping pill, her voice a fragile thread. I had hesitated, selfishly, cruelly, desperate to keep her awake for me alone, to cling to the sound of her breathing as proof that she still lived. These past two weeks without her, haunted by visions of the worst. I had not slept then, and I cannot sleep now. I do not know if I will ever sleep again.

My fingers curl around the cold steel of the gun resting across my thigh, the weapon half-angled toward her sleeping form, half toward the door that might yet betray us. The entire mansion now pulses with an expensive alarm system wired directly to the twins, who left only a few hours ago. It is just us now, me and my Briar, yet after all that has happened, safety feels like a mocking illusion. I cannot feel it. I cannot trust myself to keep her safe. Not anymore. Not after failing her twice.