Bishop is the only other one who is awake. He’s back at the top of Saint’s body with her head on his lap and I’m at the end, her legs draped over mine.
My eyes are locked on the flames from the fireplace. I only just figured out that we’re in the library. It’s interesting how if you have so much background going on, you can miss other important details. “You know what’s going to make this that much more unlivable?” I ask, unable to move.
“What?” Bishop breathes out in a sleepy voice.
“The fact I never once told her that I love her.” I hiss, curling my lips over my teeth. I need a fucking drink to calm my nerves, but for once, I don’t want them calm. I want them wild enough to catch her when she wakes.
“She knows you love her, Brantley.” Bishop shuffles farther down the sofa until Saint’s head is on his stomach and his head is resting against the top. “In your own way, she knows.”
“It doesn’t matter, B. I never told her.” I turn to look at him and his eyes flash glossy as they land on mine. “Bishop, this fucking girl makes me weak in all sense of the word. I don’t know how to be when she’s around, yet I somehow know that whatever I do, she will accept.” I shake my head. “You know she told me that she loved me weeks ago, and I never said it back. Now what if I will never get that chance?”
Bishop keeps his eyes on mine. “You will get that chance, Brantley. She’s a Hayes, a Vitiosis, and a fucking Stuprum.” He turns back to the fire. “There’s no way she’s going down without a fight.”
“Do you know how fucking useless I feel right now?” I squeeze my eyes closed. “I’ve always had control over her. What she did. Now, from my own fucking parents, I have nothing. Zero. She could die right now, and there’s not a fucking thing I could do about it.”
“Aye.” Bishop taps my thigh with his. “Stop talking like that and sleep.”
Angry flames, heat brushing against my cheek, and my ears ringing so loud they feel as though they’re bleeding.
I throw myself up from the sofa, dropping Saint’s legs in the process to cover my ears with the palms of my hand.
“Fuck!”
Saint is sitting upright, her face pale and her eyes dilated, wide and fixed on the wall in front of her.
Bishop has his hands up, his face clean from the sleep he was probably in and his mouth agape. I see shuffling from everyone at the corner of my eye, but I can’t see anything past Saint.
Because she’s awake.
Saint
There’s a pounding in my head that won’t let up. Thud. Thud. Thud. My eyes are fixed on a single spine from a book on the shelf. It beams at me like headlights guiding a stray car on a stormy night.
Tears pour down my cheeks as my heart cracks in my chest. No matter how hard I try, I know I’ll never stop the tears, so I let them run rampant. Run wild and free. My mouth slams closed and the silence that interferes is almost deafening, considering how loud my screams were.
“Hey!” Bishop pushes my hair back off my face and I turn to see him. Brantley must move closer, too, because his fingers wrap around my hand.
“Hi,” I whisper, but my throat throbs and my eyes sting. “What happened?” My mind is blank. I try to think over the last thing I remember but come up short. It’s not until I look down at what I’m wearing that I remember.
The wake.
The pool.
The castle.
The feeling of death.
People surround me, but I can’t see them clearly yet, not until I crawl onto Brantley’s lap. He stiffens before his heavy, long arms wrap around my body, pulling me into his chest. He spreads his legs out to cradle me comfortably. “What happened, Dea?”
I close my eyes. If it wasn’t for the fact my t-shirt was drenched, I wouldn’t have known I was still crying. “I—” It all comes back at once.
I whimper, moving into Brantley’s chest. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“No, it does matter.”
“Saint,” Hector says, leaning forward while resting his elbows on his knees. Scarlet is quiet beside him. “Please. It will be good to know you are not going to be haunted every time you close your eyes.”
“I won’t be,” I say, swallowing past the emotion that’s sticky in my throat.
“How so?” Bishop asks carefully, his thumb circling my arm.
I turn to face Tillie. My beautiful sister who is filled with so much strength and resilience that it bled down to her daughter. “Because my niece made sure of it.”
There are gasps.
I roll off both of the men who hold me and fall down in front of Tillie, whose eyes are filled with a pain I have not seen before. Either she conceals it well or I’ve unleashed something I maybe shouldn’t have.