Page 96 of Taken By Touch and Torment

Against all odds, Rune was able to soothe me back to sleep.

The next day, I woke up depleted. I was exhausted in a way that weighed down my soul as much as my body.

“Your body is recovering,” Snow told me over breakfast. “Give yourself grace, Scar. You’re only hu—” She paused, her eyes flashing. “Demon.”

I snorted, and we both entered a fit of much needed laughter.

Rune was off doing clan leader things, and we were in his private dining room, faced with another insane array of food.

“Are you sleeping here in the castle?” I asked, swallowing a bite of smoked salmon and cheese on toast.

“Yep,” she said.

“With Uriah?”

She sprayed orange juice out of her mouth and maybe her nose before coughing like she was on the verge of death.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. She glared at me as I laughed even harder than before.

She chugged water and cleared her throat. “No. Though he is, unfortunately, sleeping next door to keep an eye on me. I’ve been here for a couple weeks now, actually. It was just easier.”

Snow had been staying in the castle, with vampires she at one point had despised, since I’d been taken. I fiddled with the tablecloth, imagining her, Rune, and his favorites gathered around the fire together because of me.

I brushed the strange image away.

“I haven’t missed anything of note between you two?”

“No!”

“Are there… feelings? Yearnings?”

“Yearnings,” she said with an eye roll. She violently bit into a scone. “He’s obnoxious. And brutish.”

That was so not a direct answer. And then she abruptly changed the subject.

“Rune wanted to see if you had any desire to hang out in the library?” Snow asked casually, doing that thing they were both doing where they pretended not to scan me for clues about my current mental state. When they absolutely were.

“Not yet,” I said.

Rune wanted me to visit my favorite room in the castle, the room of music and stars, with an endless collection of recorded music from all over Ravenia.

But what Snow and Rune didn’t understand was that it would only hurt me. I didn’t want to be reminded of how little pleasure I experienced doing things I used to enjoy. How prone to exhaustion and mood swings I’d become. How hard it was to focus, how far I jumped out of my skin at the faintest noises.

I wanted to go back to how I was before. My body, my mind, my interests and hopes. Rune had broken my heart when he’d told me that was never going to happen.

“Want to read? We can stay in, or bundle up and go outside? It’s cold, but it’s sunny,” Snow said, reading my features for hints of my desires.

“Sure, let’s sit outside.” I lifted a brow. “Are you hoping hunky vampires are out there sparring while you read smut?”

“I hate you so much right now.”

Snow glowered, and for a moment, I saw Rosalind instead. I was back in Black Sapphire, when Rosalind told me she hated me, but what she really meant was that she hated that she loved me.

“I love you too, Snow.”

39

SCARLETT

---