Free Black Briar by Sophie Avett

whenever the cap was left off the toothpaste, how was he living with himself having turned to this life of sin and trickery? How could she be worth it? To him, was she worth…honor? Was she worth…anything?
     
    “Sybille,” he kissed her neck, “what if I said that you move me and I am helpless to go against it?”
     
    Shut up.
     
    Hysterical tears lined her thick blonde lashes as he eased the fabric up her thighs, the look in his eyes—the mastery there. The confidence. The serenity. “What if when you look me like that, I want to conquer,” he rent her skirt down the side, “all of it.”
     
    Yes, yes, but what did he know of nightmares?
     
    What did he know of waking up, only to cry out in agony because you hadn’t simply died in your sleep? What did he actually know of a girl named Sybille?
     
    He crushed his mouth to hers and her eyes drifted closed. Everything.
     
    Twin dragons embraced, they smoldered into one another’s mouth. Tenderness and pain, and the graceless beauty of absolutely needing both. Nova started to pull away and she doubled up from the blossoms, rising like a corpse from the grave to wrap her arms around his neck. He hissed a little noise of surprise in her mouth, like he really hadn’t been sure he was winning up until that point. As if there could ever be a day he lost. Never. Not him.
     
    And there was nothing to fear here. Just white cicadas fluttering in the breeze. She was safe. Stone was so soft. Even when she was screaming, she was safe tucked beneath his bulk. He was heavy, pressing her so far into the bed she was crushing the flowers beneath her. Skirts from a long, simple, white dress she’d never seen before were bunched at her waist in a wanton knot. Cool air kissed her skin and her legs shook around his narrow hips.
     
    He caught her milky thighs with calloused hands and pulled them higher up around his waist as he laid wet and reverent kisses down the side of her neck, sucking softly on the intimate curve as his spine curved into a flex against her center. Contact—even through clothing, it felt like being electrocuted with desire. Fever running. Hot. Blistering. Anything to scrabble closer to the heat. Nothing to fear.
     
    And then…
     
    Nothing.
     
    He was gone.
     
    Completely and utterly vanished. The Fade vanished behind a blink and Sybille found herself lying on top of silk sheets in a shadowed bedroom.
     
    Groggy. Weak. Tired. She was awake again, her body still thrumming with the aftershocks of so much pain. From within and without. She almost felt like she was glowing yellow. Irradiated, saturating the room around her with poisonous radioactive fumes. “Nova,” she croaked, searching by way of the moonlight spilling through the barred windows.
     
      “Nova…” She curled her fingers into the plush sheets. I’m…scared.
     
    Pinpricks of awareness needled her skin. She was being watched.
     
    Her eyes drifted up to the massive winged idol dwarfing her, a gothic princess’s canopy and sentinel. Clawed feet biting into the flat of the massive stone headboard, her gargouille “slept” poised over her bed like Cerberus. In slumber, Nova was forced into full-shifted gargoyle and was completely taken over by rock, wings and horns bared to beautiful effect. Sightless soapstone eyes. Windows no more.
     
    It was written that the span between gargoyle waking and slumber hours would shorten until they never woke again. That was their version of death. There was no warning. There was never an indication that this would be their last dawn, so they lived with death. They did not fear it, nor did they give it inappropriate power over their psyches. It was a constant. Natural. And it was always accepted with grace.
     
    Well, most of them accepted it with grace. Not her gargoyle.
     
    Nova refused to meet Death without proper introduction for the lady at his side.
     
    “Nova?”
     
    She lifted a pale hand and the gargouille’s stone skin livened into