Page 162 of The Nightmare Bride
Upstairs, I holed us up in her bedroom. Someone had apparently come and gone—Amryssa’s wedding gown now hung from the armoire, a complex waterfall of rose satin and white lace.
A groan slipped from my throat. “Goddess, I’m never going to fit into that.”
Amryssa gave no indication of having heard. She drifted toward the window, only stopping when her nose hovered an inch from the pane. She stared out, her expression vacant.
I sighed. “Are you okay?”
Her throat bobbed. “Would you be?”
“Well... No. Probably not.”
Then again, I never would have wound up in her position. I didn’t put faith in people. I didn’t trust. I didn’thope.
I knew better.
But I couldn’t hold Amryssa’s innate goodness against her, so I went and gathered her into a hug. She felt birdlike in my arms, as if she might crumble to dust and float away on the wind. “I’m sorry,” I said into her hair. “I wish I’d been wrong. But you agreed to do this my way, if I wasn’t. So let’s get you in the bath. Get you clean.”
“Me? But why? When you’re the one insisting on getting married?”
“Because. It’s still my job to take care of you.”
Her brow creased. “It shouldn’t be, though. You ought to just let me go. Live your own life.”
I stiffened. “Let you go? But...where?”
“Out there.” Amryssa nodded toward the window. “Into the forest. The swamp.”
I flinched, if only because I knew how deeply she longed for that. Every time she sat in the cupola and peered out like a butterfly pinned under glass, some broken thing was whispering its devilry inside her. She daydreamed of slipping among the poisoned cypresses, of crooning to the mutant animals and drinking the diseased water.
But if the brigands living out there didn’t find her, what would happen when the next nightmare came through? Would Amryssa just...willingly join the goddess in her eternal sleep?
No, fuck that. Ineededher. Maybe that made me selfish, but my mind couldn’t hold a future that didn’t include my best friend alive and breathing, in which she lightened this dreary house one caring word at a time.
“I can’t let you do that,” I said.
“Why not?” Something like despair rimmed her voice.
“Because,” I said. “You saved me. You’re the only person who’s ever even given a shit, and Ineedyou. Everyone does. You’re the only bright spot in this entire messed-up place.”
Her lips pressed together. “Is this really what you want, though? To just...save me from myself, over and over again? This is enough for you?”
I held her eyes. “Yes. It’s enough.”
Amryssa sighed, then turned back to the window. An age seemed to pass before she spoke again.
“Then I suppose I’ll have that bath, now. If that’s what truly makes you happy.”
5.
After I’d cleaned Amryssa up and brushed the snarls from her hair, I put her to bed. She’d barely slept last night, and while a nap wouldn’t restore her completely, it might ease the shadows beneath her eyes.
Once her breathing lengthened, I slid her wedding gown from its hanger and brought it next door to my room, where I spread it across my bed. The dress would never accommodate my average-sized torso and generous backside, and I didn’t have the sewing skills to alter it. But Ididhave another means to solve the problem. I slid my dagger free and went to my vanity, where I plunked down before the splotched mirror.
My lip curled. I looked like lukewarm vomit. Zephyrine knew I would’ve liked to stay that way—to repel Kyven through sheer disgust—but I couldn’t give him any reason to balk at this sham of a marriage.
Best reel him in with something at least halfway enticing.
I laid my dagger on the vanity. When I brushed the hilt, something quivered inside. I didn’t know what, exactly—Olivian had never told me where he’d gotten this thing, and I’d neverasked. But whatever witchery answered my summons felt...old. Primal, almost, though I’d never equated its single-mindedness with simplicity. I’d instead concluded that at some point, the dagger’s inhabitant had gotten broken. Fragmented. Like a sheared-off piece of something that had once been whole.
