Shadow of Thorns (Midnight's Crown Book 2)

by Ripley Proserpina

  The professor began to highlight parts of the artwork behind her, but all Briar could do was stare at the faces of people in the painting. The piece she showed now was the Battle of Salamis, and she zoomed in on one of the people in the painting. Somewhere in Briar’s mind, she imagined the sound the woman made, one arm wrapped tightly around a child in her arms, the other reaching toward a man on shore.

  It was as if Briar had stood on the shore herself and heard the woman’s cry. Briar covered her eyes with one shaking hand and focused on the professor’s voice. “Battles were especially popular during the neoclassical period…”

  With a deep breath, Briar focused on the art again. This time it was a portrait of a battle, a dying man held in the arms of his comrades. Horses leapt around the man, rearing up on tightly held reins. A horse’s injured whinny shrieked in Briar’s head, and she startled, upsetting the binder on her lap and knocking it on the floor. The jarring sound made the people around her jump. Sylvain immediately leaned over. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded but kept her eyes on her binder as she dragged it back in her lap.

  “Briar?”

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it, to see the detail these artists put into events that happened hundreds of years before their birth. Jacques-Louis David went back to Greek and Roman times with his portrait of The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons. Follow the line of the woman’s arm, what do you see?” The professor droned on.

  Briar couldn’t bring herself to look in case it brought back the sound. For a brief moment, she wondered if it was Asher in her head, but no. This was more like a memory than something that was actually happening right now.

  “Do you want to leave?” Sylvain asked, his voice a little louder.

  Briar took a deep breath and met his worried stare. “No,” she said. “I’ve missed too much school already.” But she took his hand and squeezed it tightly.

  For the rest of class, Briar kept her gaze on her binder or the art history textbook. She kept one finger in the appendix of the book, ready to skim through titles and find the portraits the professor noted. None of the pictures in her book bothered her, but if she happened to glance up, the massive, zoomed-in shots the professor had chosen overwhelmed her.

  “Now,” the professor intoned. “Let’s go back to Boston. And Bunker Hill. Look at General Warren’s face. Abigail Adams, upon seeing the sketch for this, said, her ‘blood shivered.’ You can see why. Look at the man holding back another bayonet thrust. The graying pallor on Warren’s face as the life seeps out of him.”

  Briar didn’t need to see it. The woman’s description was vivid enough.

  “Have you been to Bunker Hill?” Sylvain asked, distracting her from the picture forming in her mind.

  “No.” She’d had plans to do a tour of the sights in Boston, but between school and the vampires, she hadn’t. “I haven’t seen it. I haven’t done the Freedom Trail either.”

  “Next cloudy day.” He squeezed her hand. “We’ll take Hudson and Marcus. They’re full of history. You know, because they’re so old.”

  If he was trying to make her laugh, it worked. She nodded, holding back an ill-timed giggle. By the time she had herself under control, the lights were back up and her classmates were gathering their things.

  As she packed her bag, she felt Sylvain watching her. She wanted to tell him what she’d experienced, but didn’t want to do it here, in a room hall full of undergrads.

  And he didn’t push. Whatever he saw on her face only had him taking her bag and holding out his hand. She took it and sighed in relief as he wound his arm around her waist. They walked out of class that way, her head leaning against him, and into the hall.

  Sylvain led her back outside, pausing only to make sure she was covered. Together, they walked to Hudson’s lab. Somehow they both decided to go there without saying it out loud. But it would be quiet, and private.

  The door to Hudson’s lab had been outfitted with a keypad and a badge reader. Sylvain entered the code to get in and then took a card from his back pocket to swipe over the reader. With a click, the door unlocked and they went inside.

  It hadn’t closed behind them before Sylvain hugged her tight. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered into his chest. God, he smelled good. She breathed in the scent of him. Musk and something else, like the fresh air from outside had stuck to him. It was addictive. A rumble vibrated in his chest, and she pulled back, embarrassed. “You smell good.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” He leaned his face into her neck, breathing her in. “You smell good, too.” He set her back from him. “Stop distracting me. What happened, Briar?”

  Peeling out of her gloves, she searched for the words to describe what she’d remembered. “It was the paintings.” Part of her whispered, duh, and she grimaced. “That’s probably obvious. But for a moment, it was like I’d been there.”

  “In war?” Sylvain asked, sitting in Hudson’s favorite swivel chair. He dragged her between his legs and gazed up at her.

  “Sort of.” She pushed his hair back from his face. In this position, she could see all the facets of brown in his eyes, and that he had a smattering of freckles along his cheekbones and forehead. She smoothed her thumbs over his eyebrows, pausing at the scar that split one. Leaning down, she kissed it. Sylvain leaned forward, his head pillowed on her chest, and she leaned her cheek on his soft hair, stroking it with her fingers as she went on. “It was like I could remember being there. I could hear the horses, and the screams.” Beneath her head, he jerked, and held her tighter. “Not as if it was happening,” she assured him. “But as if I’d been there when it had.”

  “Asher,” he said, and Briar nodded.

  “That’s what I thought, too. It could have been from what Asher had shown me. I mean, I’ve watched my share of war dramas, but this was different. This felt like I’d stood among the dying and heard them die.”

  Now, Sylvain tensed. A small step back allowed her to see his face again and read the troubled expression there. “I’m afraid he showed you my past,” Sylvain said and then shook his head. “No. I mean, I know he’s shown you the past, but I’m afraid of what he’s shown you. I’m not a good man, Briar.” She scoffed, but he stopped her by taking her hands to hold between their bodies. “No. Listen to me,” he went on. “Because I’m afraid I won’t be able to get the courage to say this again. I loved war, Briar. I was good at it. I wasn’t good at much before Asher. I failed my human family. Failed at being a human. But when Asher remade me, he remade me harder, stronger. I was fast, and I was deadly, and I loved it. I still love it, Briar.”

  His dark eyelashes rested against his cheekbones as he hid his gaze from hers. His fear was palpable, calling to Briar to alleviate it.

  “I’m not surprised,” she answered. When he whipped his gaze up to hers, she smiled to soften her words. “You’re a warrior, Sylvain. All of you are, but maybe it’s because of your human life that you’re harder. Stronger. Less yielding. I don’t know what happened in your past, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I imagine it fashioned you into someone who never wanted to lose the people you cared about ever again.”

  He sucked in a breath. For a moment, Briar thought tears gathered in his eyes, but he quickly looked away. When his gaze returned to hers, his eyes were still bright. “Yeah,” he said and cleared his throat when his voice caught. “Yeah. I guess it did.” He stood and swept her into his arms before sitting again, this time with her on his lap. “I wish you could remember what Asher showed you. It would be so much easier, I think.”

  “Easier why?”

  On her leg, he drummed a tempo with his fingers. Fast, fast, slow. Fast, fast, slow. “I don’t know. It would just be out there. You’d have seen it, so I wouldn’t have to watch the look on your face when I told you.”

  “Sylvain…” She placed the palm of her hand against his heart and held it there before resting her head against
him. Slowly, she sat back. It was her turn to gaze up at him. With everything inside her, she tried to show him that she wouldn’t run away—wouldn’t be frightened of him. “If you want to tell me. Tell me. Do it quick. Like ripping off a bandage.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, eyes narrowing. Then he gave a sharp nod. “I had a wife and a son. They were murdered. By Asher. He turned me into a vampire and instead of avenging them, I became his weapon. He pointed me in one direction and set me loose, and I hacked my way through his enemies.”

  A wife. A son.

  Briar swallowed hard. Why had she not expected that he’d have had a family? In this day and age, he was a young man. No one would expect him to have a wife and family now. But four hundred years ago? The surprising thing was probably that he only had one child, and not four or five to work alongside him.

  “What were their names?” she finally asked. She wanted to picture in her mind the kind of woman Sylvain had fallen for. She would have been tough. And beautiful, obviously. “Where did you live? What did you do? You lived in Canada? Was it Canada then? Were you born there?” With one question asked, a thousand more came on its heels. She had to shut her mouth to keep them inside. “Sorry. I’ll stop now.”

  Sylvain’s shoulders sagged, and he kissed her neck. “Why am I surprised you are asking more questions? I thought for sure you’d be upset.”

  Briar searched her feelings. What she felt wasn’t anger or disappointment. A little jealousy, yes, because somewhere in time was a woman who had Sylvain’s love first, but she wasn’t mad he’d had a family once.

  He was a vampire, and by some miracle of science, or maybe it was a miraculous combination of science and magic, he’d existed long enough for her to meet him.

  And care about him.

  Love him.

  So, no. She wasn’t upset he had a family. She was just glad she got a chance with him.

  “What kind of dad were you?” she asked. “Will you tell me about them?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, eyes wide, and then shut it, shaking his head. “God, Briar.” He raked his hand through his hair. “You… You fucking slay me.”

  Too much. She’d asked too much. “I can’t help the million questions I want answers to, but Sylvain, just tell me to mind my own business. I can take it.”

  He shook his head again. “No. I want my business to be your business. I want to tell you everything.” A smile grew, creasing the skin near his eyes.

  “So do I,” Briar answered. “Tell me everything.”

  “Juliet. And Jacques. I was so happy when he was born. He looked like me. A black-eyed, squalling terror. But Briar, he was the most beautiful, most perfect being I’d ever seen. Or could ever imagine.”

  She smiled at the faraway look he got in his eyes. He saw them as he spoke. She could tell by the way he seemed to gaze past her. “I can imagine.”

  “I held him in my hands, and he stopped crying and just looked at me. Stared me down. I’d never been so scared in my fucking life. And I have the bear scar to prove it.” He pointed to his eyebrow and winked at her.

  “That’s how you got it!” she said. “I wondered! I knew it was a bear. Or an ax. Or a fight with a bear who held an ax.”

  “A bear with an ax?” Sylvain lifted the eyebrow she’d become focused on. “That’s quite the imagination you have.”

  “Keep going,” Briar said, interrupting him. She bounced a little on his lap in excitement. She loved listening to him. Loved picturing his life and seeing the happiness associated with memories he may not have let himself linger on.

  “Once, when he was two, Juliet took him to our orchard. I heard her yelling for him, and then for me, and I barreled out of the barn, through the trees to her. She couldn’t find him, and that monkey was in a tree. Apple in hand, fast asleep in the crook between two branches. We searched for hours, but the leaves were so thick, and he slept hard. Didn’t wake up when we screamed his name. Woke up on his own and dropped out of that tree like it was no big deal.” Sylvain laughed. “Any gray hairs I got, that kid gave me.”

  Briar laughed with him and threaded her hands through his hair. “I don’t see any grays. Couldn’t have been too bad.”

  “Nah,” Sylvain said, smile still curling the edge of his mouth. It called to Briar, and she didn’t resist, leaning forward to drop a kiss on each end. He met her second kiss, turning his head to capture her mouth. His tongue tangled with hers, stroking lightly before he pulled away. “It feels good to talk about them.”

  “You loved them,” Briar said. “You should talk about them. Remember them. I wish you had pictures, portraits, or something, of them. Too bad you weren’t an artist.”

  “We have one of Annie, but back then, no. I was too poor to have anyone paint a portrait of my family,” he mused.

  “Who’s Annie?” Briar asked.

  It may have been because she’d just left Art History, but when Sylvain froze, all she could think was, Freaked out Vampire. In Marble.

  “Oops?” Briar asked when he remained unmoving—except for his eyes, which widened more and more with panic. “Slipped out, didn’t it?”

  He blinked rapidly and encouraged her to stand. He made sure she was steady on her feet before backing away. “I—It’s not only up to me to talk about her.”

  Which meant whoever Annie was, she was someone to all of them. It was on the tip of Briar’s tongue to ask, “A sister?” But she wasn’t stupid. She knew Annie wasn’t a sister. They’d been speaking seconds before about Sylvain’s wife and son. For Annie to be mentioned in the next breath meant she was probably his wife as well.

  And Hudson’s.

  Marcus’s.

  Valen’s.

  A stab of jealousy hit Briar square in the stomach. It was different than it was when Sylvain spoke about Juliet and Jacques. All of the reasons she had not to be jealous of Sylvain’s human family seemed not to work when she tried to apply them to this Annie girl.

  That’s not very kind. Her chiding mental voice was at war with the snarky part of her. She wasn’t being fair. With a sigh, she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. When she thought she had herself together again, she dropped her hands and met Sylvain’s worried stare. “Okay. When you’re ready. All of you. We can leave it here for now.”

  But her mind wouldn’t shut off. As many questions as she had about Sylvain’s human life, she had about Annie. Was she still alive? Was she a vampire? Why weren’t they together anymore? Was she the only person the four of them had shared? Was it the four of them? Or was it just Sylvain and Valen?

  “Stop.” Sylvain took her hands and drew her closer. “Briar. Stop. I can’t speak for anyone else. But what I had with Annie—” Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by Briar’s ringing phone. “You should get that,” he said when she made no move to answer.

  Eyes on him, she dug the phone out of her jacket pocket. “It’s my mom.”

  “Then you should definitely answer,” Sylvain replied. Briar had been better about calling her mom once a day and sending her texts, but the few times she hadn’t answered the phone, because she was asleep or in class, she’d gotten an earful on her voicemail.

  Briar nodded and answered, “Hi, Mom.”

  Her mom had nothing really important to say. She wanted to make sure Briar was wearing her hat and gloves, that her burn was healing, and that she was absolutely, one hundred percent sure she couldn’t make it home for Thanksgiving.

  She was. It was. And she couldn’t.

  “All right, honey,” her mother sighed across the phone, sending a blast of static over the line. “Keep in touch.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Briar hung up. During her conversation, Sylvain had migrated toward the rows of books Hudson kept in his lab. “This stuff is interesting to you, huh?”

  Edging closer, she read the spines of the books he stared at and smiled. “Yes. It’s very interesting. It’s not
so different from history,” she said, reaching toward one book labeled, Mitochondrial DNA. “Everything we are is written into our cells. And maybe, even everything we could become. Take you and me.” Briar replaced the book and went to Hudson’s computer. With a keystroke, the screen came to life. A few taps later, Chromosome 18 and its mutation, the one that made it impossible for her to walk in the sun, appeared on the screen. She found Sylvain’s, and placed the images side-by-side. “What is it about you that makes you a vampire, and what is it about me that makes me—”

  “Vampire lite?” he asked, using the phrase she’d come up with weeks ago.

  Briar laughed. “Yes. Exactly.” She enhanced the image. “What is it here that makes it possible for Asher to get into my head, but not you? Is it the same thing that makes me burn in the sun but not need blood? It could all be right here.” She pointed to the chromosome, and then glanced at Sylvain. “We just have to find it.”

  He was staring at her, his wide smile making the skin near his eyes crinkle. “I see what you mean. It is interesting.”

  Briar turned her attention back to the screen. “Erythropoietic protoporphyria, what I thought I had, can be inherited. But usually it comes from both parents. I had my parents send me blood samples.” She found the pictures she and Hudson had captured when they’d gotten the samples and brought it up on the screen. “See? There’s the mutation on my mother’s chromosome, but on my father’s? Nothing. My brother, he doesn’t show it. My mom didn’t pass it on to him at all. Usually, both parents’ recessive genes are passed on to the kid who shows the disorder. Not in my case. It’s just another example of why I don’t really have EPP. But it makes me think. Is there something else in my DNA that makes me susceptible to Asher?”

  “It could just be that he has mind control power,” Sylvain said, pulling up the wheely chair next to hers and rolling from side to side. “Couldn’t it?”

  “Nope.” She refused to believe that magic was what gave Asher the ability to get into her head. Magic she couldn’t control. Or understand. But science? Science she could do.