by Edwards
“I can’t leave the house,” Amelie pleaded. “The sentinels will come for me. I can’t go back.”
“Woolly, stop.” I leaned my forehead against the cool metal chain suspending the swing. “Listen to me.”
The pressure on Amelie didn’t bow outward again, but neither did it release.
“I spoke to the Grande Dame tonight. She agreed to let Amelie move into the carriage house.”
Amelie paled. “But Linus—”
“I want Linus to move in with us,” I told the old house, ignoring Amelie. “We’re responsible for them both, and right now he’s what I need.” Thinking of Neely and the likelihood Cruz would ever let me see him again, I admitted, “He’s the only friend I’ve got right now.”
“Grier…” Amelie bumped against the barrier when she tried to reach me. “I’m your friend.”
“No, you’re really not.” I straightened and faced her. “You knew what he was planning. This whole time, he was confiding in you. You should have told me. You promised you would always pick me if things went south, and you lied. You chose him.” A lightning bolt of comprehension struck me. “That’s why you’ve been so weird around Odette. You were afraid she would glimpse the truth and out you both.”
“He’s all the family I’ve got left,” she whispered, not bothering to deny it. “I can’t lose him too.”
“I get that. Things have changed since you made that promise. Everything has changed.” I blinked until my vision cleared. “That’s why I asked permission to relocate you when it would be so much easier to hand you over to them.” I checked with Woolly before telling Amelie in no uncertain terms, “Boaz is no longer welcome in this house. The only way you’ll see him while you’re serving out your indenture is if you take the carriage house.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“I get that a lot,” I said on a watery laugh.
“After Maud died—”
“You and me? We’re not going there again. You can’t base your life choices on what happened to me.”
“You don’t understand what it was like,” she protested.
“You’re right.” I let my anger off its leash. “I can’t imagine how it must have felt to stay at home, with my family—who are all safe—and keep living my life the way I chose.” I tasted metal and realized I had bitten my cheek to hold back after all. “I don’t doubt you thought about me, I don’t doubt that you hurt for me, but you can’t use my past as a crutch to lean on every time you make a bad judgment call.”
“I wanted to protect you,” she pleaded. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
Meiko’s warning rang in my ears: There’s nothing wrong with lying until you start telling them to yourself.
“You made a grab for power that almost killed me.” It had cost several vampires their lives, and it was past time she owned her truth. “This? This hurts worse than that. This feels like someone punched through my ribs, fisted my heart, and squished it to a bloody pulp.” I worked my jaw. “I’m not saying a heads-up would have made this hurt any less, but it would have given me someone to lean on, a shoulder to cry on. You should have been the one to hold me when I broke apart, not Linus.”
“You can’t trust him,” she protested. “He’s the Grande Dame’s son.”
“The thing I’ve learned about Linus is no one trusts him. Everyone doubts his motives. His actions are examined under a microscope, his every word dissected. No one believes there’s any good in him. They all see him as the Grande Dame’s son or the Lawson Scion or the Potentate of Atlanta.” So many masks, I was sure I had forgotten a few of them. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m guilty too. I have a hard time trusting anyone, believing in anything, but I like to think I’ve earned my paranoia.”
Tears slid unchecked down her cheeks, glistening in the moonlight as she listened without protest.
“Do you know who has been there for me every single time I needed someone? Not my best friend. Not my almost-boyfriend. Linus.” It hurt looking at her, so I stared over her head. “Is he in his mother’s pocket? I don’t know. Had you asked me the same question about Boaz last week, I would have said hell no. But I would have been wrong. Goddess knows, I’m tired of being wrong. I’m tired period. The people I’ve trusted most of my life have betrayed me. How can he possibly do any worse?”
“You’re right.” She wiped her cheeks dry. “We should have done better by you. I should have done better. You are—were—my best friend, and I wasn’t there for you. I let you walk into this when I should have walked through it with you. I put my needs, and my brother’s, above yours.” She pressed her palm against the barrier. “I’ll go upstairs and pack my things, if you let me, Woolly.”
The old house didn’t budge.
“Woolly, Linus and I need a couple of days to clear out the carriage house. She must stay with us until then. We have no choice.”
The nearest window exploded in a fit of pique, the shards falling harmlessly to the porch when she could have shredded Amelie to ribbons with them. Lowering the barrier, she frog-marched Amelie into the foyer, but Amelie fought her there.
“I’m starting to understand,” she whispered, “the burden of someone loving you too much.”
“You’re getting a second chance,” I countered, fresh out of sympathy for the night. “Don’t waste it.”
With a concentrated shove of magic, Woolly forced Amelie into motion, guiding her up the stairs to her bedroom where she slammed the door behind her.
Needing a stronger connection to Woolly, I picked out a spot free of debris then slid my back down the wall to sit on the porch, stroking the boards with my fingertips, wishing there was some better way to lessen the sting.
“We’re going to be okay,” I promised her. “We’ve still got each other.”
A cool wind sighed through the eaves, and the house moaned around me.
Shards of glass shimmered on the weathered planks like tears, and mine glided down my nose to mingle with hers.
Short of losing Maud, I had never hurt so much in my life.
Hours slipped through my fingers while Woolly and I grieved together. I stared across the lawn at the pinkening sky, waiting on the sun to rise so I could proclaim this miserable night over and done.
When the first rays of a new day caressed my face, the light touch was a benediction.
In embracing the new day, I accepted my new reality.
I had enemies. Ones I had earned and not inherited. Life had just gotten that much more complicated.
The Master, always so careful with me, had lost his patience. The Marchands, who might have proven to be advantageous allies, had declared themselves my enemies. And I had as good as killed my own cousin.
A hot sting behind my eyes warned the tank wasn’t on empty yet, and yep, fresh tears snaked down my cheeks to drip onto my shirt.
A throat cleared from some distance away.
Lashes gloopy and mashed together, I forced my eyes open.
Linus stood in the grass near the steps, hands shoved into his pockets. “Is there anything I can do? For either of you?”
Woolly’s consciousness stirred itself to drift down the steps toward him, and he must have felt the viscosity in the air. He reached out a hand, his palm facing up in supplication, and she enveloped him to the wrist in magic before tugging him slowly to where I sat. As if that small effort had been too much when she had already grieved so hard, she winked out and left me alone with him.
“I think she just gave you her blessing.” I patted the planks beside me. “Join me?”
Moving carefully, he lowered himself beside me, his gaze darting around like he expected Woolly to change her mind and expel him into the garden. “How did she take the news?”
“About as well as expected.” I let my head fall back as sleep tugged on my limbs. “She popped every bulb in the house as far as I can tell, and that’s only what I can see from out here.”
He angled his head toward me. “How are you holding up
?”
“I’m…” Leaning forward, I pinched a jagged sliver of glass between my fingers then held it glinting in the sunlight. “The part of me that believed in happily-ever-afters and true love triumphing against all odds is crushed to learn sometimes you fall in love with a prince who is actually a frog.” I didn’t fight Linus when he took the sharp point from my fingers before I cut myself. “Mostly I’m glad I can stop wondering.”
“About?”
“How he kisses, how he tastes, all the stupid things I always wanted to know.” It made me pathetic to admit it, but I hoped Linus wouldn’t hold it against me. “I got to be his for a little while, and he got to be mine. It’s what I always wanted, and I got to experience it. That makes me lucky, right? Not pathetic?”
Linus stretched his arm across my shoulders, and I curled against his side, resting my head on his chest.
Exhaustion tugged on me, leading me down a path I hated to follow but was helpless to resist.
“That makes you very lucky,” he murmured. “Not all of us get to know how that feels.”
Maybe Boaz was right. Maybe I was a masochist. Maybe pain was how I coped.
Or maybe I just wanted to sit here and ache with someone who understood how even the ends of your hair hurt when you pined for someone who either didn’t—or couldn’t—reciprocate. “I saw your office.”
“Meiko?”
“Meiko.”
“You’ve been my muse for a long time,” he admitted, his heart thudding faster under my cheek.
The sketchbook Boaz had stolen from him when we were kids proved his words. “Why me?”
“You’re not the only one allowed to carry a torch for the unobtainable ideal.”
“That almost sounds romantic.” I felt bad about wiping snot on his shirt now. “I had no clue.” A yawn cracked my jaw that I muffled against him. “You never said a word.”
“You had your heart set on Boaz.” His cool fingers stroked down my arm. “You always have.”
“Hearts are stupid.” I fisted his shirt as my damp lashes kissed my cheeks and stayed there. “Life would have been easier if I had fallen for you.”
As blessed darkness swirled away my consciousness, my breaths growing longer and slower, he brushed his cool lips against my temple and whispered, so soft I might have imagined it, “There’s still time.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hailey Edwards writes about questionable applications of otherwise perfectly good magic, the transformative power of love, the family you choose for yourself, and blowing stuff up. Not necessarily all at once. That could get messy. She lives in Alabama with her husband, their daughter, and a herd of dachshunds.
www.HaileyEdwards.net
ALSO BY HAILEY EDWARDS
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How to Claim an Undead Soul #2
How to Break an Undead Heart #3
Black Dog Series
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Dog Days of Summer #1.5
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Lie Down with Dogs #3
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Head Above Water #2
Hell or High Water #3
Gemini Series Novellas
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Over the Moon #3
Black Dog Universe Shorts
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The Bakers Grimm
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A Heart of Ice #.5
A Hint of Frost #1
A Feast of Souls #2
A Cast of Shadows #2.5
A Time of Dying #3
A Kiss of Venom #3.5
A Breath of Winter #4
A Veil of Secrets #5
Daughters of Askara
Everlong #1
Evermine #2
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Wicked Kin
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
How to Break an Undead Heart
Tree of Life
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Join Hailey’s Newsletter
About the Author
Also by Hailey Edwards
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
How to Break an Undead Heart
Tree of Life
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Join Hailey’s Newsletter
About the Author
Also by Hailey Edwards