Sapphire Bones

Sapphires

Revised: 1/28/2019

AUTHORS NOTE: If you're reading this and haven't read "Blind and Free", it would be in your best interest to go read that first. This book won't make sense unless you read the first one in the trilogy. 

But I mean if you want to read this one first go right ahead - don't let anything stop you from achieving your dreams. 

Enjoy!

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Song: Split Stones by Maggie Rogers

Corvo

Four months after the recapture, I still couldn't get L's shrill cries from my dreams at night. She haunted every despondent moment whether awake or under the care of heavy blankets in the dead of night. L's slick hair tousled around her shoulders, the grin on her face wider and wider each time she showed up. In my dreams, L could see and the bright cobalt eyes I could hardly recall from the moon in the sky. But every morning I rose from the deep, suffocating slumber and found myself alone again in a dark room full of memories I wished I could erase. No matter the sleeping pills I threw to the back of my throat every night, and as many prayers I sent up into the sky, my dreams refused to cease. They attacked every sense I had until the nerves in my fingers went numb.

I sat up in bed and tossed a couple fingers through the tangled mess atop my head. The hairbrush in my bathroom went unused for days at a time. At the catch of a knot, I pulled my hand out and replaced it on my sunken eyelids threatening to close. I rubbed furiously to get dried over skin and sand from hidden crevices but they didn't budge without a little extra leverage from fingernails. A yawn forced my jaw wide and I stretched out, joints popping and shoulders shifting as I did so. Another day alone, facing a pack still mourning the death of my father. Four months later Alej couldn't rest in his grave without whispers from angry mourners at the foot of his headstone. They would never know what truly happened, only the tale I webbed to keep their curious and intuitive minds at ease.

A brief double knock on my closed door set my hands back on the bed. I grabbed a nearby shirt halfway on the bed and pulled it over my head to cover myself from whoever entered. After I shoved my fingers through my hair one more time I stood, legs pulsing slightly as I stretched up onto my toes. The hardwood beneath me was cold, a chill that stretched up through my feet into my legs.

"Coming," I muttered and scooted my way across the room. The knocking commenced again before I pulled the door open. Ethel stood with Damien, their frowns too apparent to ignore. My younger sister by several years had her mousy brown hair pulled back into a knot near the bottom of her scalp, with a couple combed through curls around her ears. Damien, on the other hand, resembled neither me or Ethel. Our adopted brother from a family of humans, Damien had slick black hair and narrow eyes with iris' the same color as his pupils. But he stood taller than Ethel, and only an inch or two below me. At their entrance, I turned on my heels and returned to the heart of my room. I replaced my backside onto the bed and let my shoulders fall onto the mattress. Above me the same blank white ceiling stared back, the miniscule spikes threatening to break from the plaster and pierce through my eyeballs at the right moment. At least then I'd have something in common with L. The thought sent a pained pinch through my nerves most likely delivered by my wolf, Zane, but I ignored him.

"What do you want?" I called toward my siblings who made their way into the dark room. Ethel split off from Damien and pushed the curtains open, a beam of sunlight that burned directly into my corneas. Her unusually casual outfit revealed itself at the introduction of light. She normally dressed like a college town sorority girl but today her dark gray jeans and black Tee revealed a normal side of Ethel I didn't get to see often. Damien, however, looked like he just crawled out of bed like me.