Carpathian 17 - Dark Celebration

wrong?"
    "Nothing." How could he not feel it? How could Francesca and Gabriel not feel the pain and sorrow weighing so heavily in the forest? The wolves did. She could hear them off in the distance, their mournful song filled with sadness and distress. Didn't Josef at least hear the animals?
    Skyler wiped her hand over her face, as if she could draw a veil over the truth. That man, so invincible-looking, so stern and cold and bleak, a man with ice in his veins and death in his eyes, had looked at her—looked right through her—and touched her somewhere no one else had ever been. She pressed her hand hard against her aching heart. It hurt. It shouldn't, but the feeling was like a vise squeezing with a steady, relentless pressure.
    "It isn't 'nothing' when you're sweating blood, Skyler. We're friends, aren't we? You can tell me what's wrong."
    Skyler didn't know if she had friends. She trusted her adopted parents and Lucian and Jaxon. Other than that, she never allowed herself to be alone with anyone. Francesca thought time was going to heal her, but Skyler doubted it. In order to preserve her spirit—
    her sanity, she had retreated from the world as a child, and perhaps she'd stayed away too long. She didn't know how to be a friend—or a partner.
    "Yes, of course we're friends," she said, giving the obligatory answer. Over the years she'd found if she just said what people expected to hear, they went away happy and left her in peace.
    Josef relaxed visibly. "Why didn't you come over to Aidan's and play the new video game? It's way cool."
    "I was helping Francesca make the gingerbread houses for tonight." She wrapped her arms around herself protectively.
    "Antonietta's making some cool thing for this dinner tonight. You should come over and help. I'm heading back there now."
    "I've met you a dozen times already and know you from online, but haven't met Antonietta. It's intimidating to think about meeting her. She's so famous."
    "She can play the piano," Josef conceded, "but she isn't stuck up or anything. She was blind before she was with Byron, but I don't think she sees much better even now." He grinned, white teeth flashing against the dark outline he used around his lips drawing attention to his tongue-piercing as well as the hoop in his lip.
    "I thought when one is converted, all the scars and imperfections disappear." She touched the crescent-shaped scar on her face. "And how can you be pierced? Doesn't your body heal itself?"
    Josef sighed. "It's a real fight," he conceded. "I don't wear them most of the time because the holes are always closing up within minutes, but I have to keep up my rep, so I just concentrate on it all the time around everybody and I can keep the piercing with no problem."
    "Is that why the skin's grown over the diamond on your nose?" Skyler asked, rubbing her chin along the top of her drawn-up knees. She stared out into the sparkling white world. It seemed a fairy tale, all crystal and ice. Cold—like she was. She closed her eyes briefly against the sorrow pressing down on her, trying to listen to the wolves, trying to sort out their song. She'd always loved them, always had such an affinity for them, and now the sound called to something lonely and primal in her.
    Josef clapped his hand over his nose. "Not again! I hope it wasn't like that when the prince saw me." He regarded her with a narrowed gaze. "You are coming over, aren't you?
    Antonietta's really nice. Byron is too, but he doesn't want me to know he is."
    Skyler shook her head. "I can't right now. I'll catch up to you later." She needed to be alone, to think things through for herself. She liked Josef, but he was a distraction and he didn't have a clue that she was upset. Dimitri would have known . The thought came unbidden and filled her with shame—with regret. With anger.
    "Come on, Skyler, don't be a big baby. Just because your parents think you need a babysitter doesn't mean you can't come with me. I'm over twenty-one."
    She glared at him. "Really? I thought you were Joshua's age. You aren't going to goad me into doing something wrong, Josef." Which made her feel even guiltier. He might not be able to goad her, but she intended to disobey her parents. The terrible weight in her chest pressed harder, the sorrow nearly choking her. She had to make it stop—make Dimitri understand it wasn't about him or her rejection of him. It wasn't personal. She would have rejected anyone. He had to move on.
    "You're just angry