Chapter 2
Persy
By the end of the first week of Sebastian’s sentence, I was worried.
By the end of the second, I was angry.
By the end of the third, the anger and worry had morphed into some combination of the two, but mostly had the effect of me deciding that something needed to change.
For the first few days of his solitary confinement, he ate the food supplied to him and slept a rather normal number of hours. He’d even get up and pace the length of the cell.
A few times, I’d caught him dropping into a workout. Quick, strong push-ups on the floor. Pull ups on the top bar of the cell that I was shocked he could jump and reach.
But as the days passed, each one dropped off slowly. He stopped working out, instead choosing to walk aimlessly along the bars lining the cell.
Then he stopped walking, spending the entire day sitting or laying down on the bed and stuck inside his own head.
Sleep started to command his day, his eyes only opening for maybe four hours out of twenty four.
And when he stopped eating…that was when I was the most angry.
At first, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not that it was deserved, but that was in my nature.
When his meals returned half-eaten, I told myself that maybe his stagnant days started to reduce his appetite. But then they started coming back entirely untouched.
He didn’t even try to move the food around in an attempt to make it look consumed.
He just stopped fueling his body.
It seemed like he was trying to kill himself. And he didn’t get to do that. As much as I didn’t accept baseless torture for anyone, he didn’t just get to evade repenting for his sins by slowly slipping into death from starvation.
Even though it was unlikely that he’d die by the end of the last week, especially when he still consumed at least a little water each day, I was over it.
“Wake up,” I snapped from his bedside, having opened the gate to his cell without him ever stirring. And he made me even more angry that I was forced to use a hard tone with him. Speaking that roughly hurt my throat.
Sebastian took a second to rouse, his eyes blinking slowly open. The wash of color in his eyes had dimmed considerably. What was once a vibrant mass of color was now graying and dull.
“Good morning, Persephone,” he said, his voice hoarse from lack of use.
I didn’t understand how he still managed a level of charming nonchalance despite the fact that he was wasting away into a shell of himself. That seemed tiring. “Sit up. Please.”
His dark brows pinched together in mock confusion. And he made no move to listen to me. “I thought you were nicer than this.”
“I said please,” I returned, crossing my arms over my chest. Sebastian’s eyes tracked the movement, dropping all the way down to where my thighs touched the edge of the bed then back up again. “Sit. Up.”
Sebastian pushed himself into a seated position, his body clearly straining under the weight of his body. His once strong, toned muscles already looked considerably leaner under his white, long-sleeved undershirt. “What can I do you for?” he asked, his mouth pulling into a crooked grin.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I nodded to the tray of food I’d rested at the foot of his bed. “None of that charming nonsense until you finish this entire plate of food.”
Sebastian leaned forward and lifted it onto his lap, looking at it with a barely concealed sneer on his face. “This is a portion for a child.”
I breathed in, trying to steady my voice. I didn’t like to feel riled up, and yet Sebastian was doing a spectacular number on my nervous system. “Yes, because you’ve done such a brilliant job of destroying your metabolism over the past few weeks that any more would make you sick and destroy the hard work of my chefs and the point of you eating the fucking food in the first place.”
“Such harsh words, love,” Sebastian chastised lightly. Like he just knew I didn’t curse often, like he could tell that the word was clunky and foreign on my tongue. “So unlike you.”
“You don’t know me well enough to decide what is and is not normal for me,” I snapped, feeling an odd desire to distract from the fact that he was right. “Eat. I’ll be waiting here.”
I turned away from his intense gaze, feeling the back of my neck prickle. I headed for the stool in the corner, dropping down and crossing my legs.
“Attempting to mother me?” Sebastian asked once I was seated. “Watching me eat like a toddler that needs to be monitored?”
“Yes,” I said plainly. “You clearly need to be. Eat.”
Sebastian held my gaze for another moment, his eyes growing more intense with each passing second. It seemed like he expected me to be the one to drop eye contact first. I’d never really been intimidated by eye contact, or rather I never understood why one might be.
Where else was I supposed to look when speaking to him? The curve of his mouth? The hollow between his collarbones? The strong line of his neck?
No, no. His eyes seemed more appropriate.
When it became clear I wasn’t going to surrender, Sebastian grumbled something under his breath then looked down to examine the plate in front of him.
I watched him, looking out for any sign of disgust. Disrespect, especially for Kostas’s cooking, would not be tolerated.
Sebastian hesitated—something that clearly was foreign for him. His eyes snapped back up to mine, his jaw pulsing once. “You are really going to sit there while I eat?”
Wordlessly, I pulled a bar made of oats that Kostas had made me from the pocket of my skirt, unwrapping the napkin it was covered in. I took a bite of it, answering his question.
No, I wasn’t going to just watch him eat. I’d have a snack while he did it.
I wouldn’t verbalize it to him, knowing he’d freeze up if he knew I was internally gauging his reactions, but this was part of the process here.
I’d learned, both through my own experience when I was younger and through the early days of my work, that people tended to freeze up when they felt like they were being watched. You would get nowhere if you felt like your every move was observed, your little reactions, your mistakes, cataloged.
So, I’d sit here and eat my food while Sebastian ate his—hoping it would make him more inclined to feed himself.
He watched my mouth as I chewed for a second, like the way my jaw worked interested him. I’d never considered that jaws could be of interest to anyone, so I cocked my head to the side in confusion.
That seemed to shake whatever trance he was in. Sebastian stabbed his fork rather aggressively into the chicken plated for him, lifting it to his mouth without ever dropping eye contact.
He bit off the food, chewing it slowly. It made his jaw pop, drawing my attention to it.
Hmm, I guess jaws were somewhat interesting. His was quite sharp, with a strong joint at the base. And his stubble complemented it nicely, I supposed.
The cycle of him stabbing his food then chewing slowly continued for another ten or so mouthfuls until his color started to pale and his breath picked up. It was making him nauseous. Well, that was what happened when you go from not eating more than a few bites of food to forcing down a real meal.
“You can stop for now,” I said, when his skin took on a particularly green pallor. “Let’s talk for a moment.”
That suggestion seemed to make Sebastian look even more nauseated. “Is speaking with me really that bad?”
Sebastian’s eyes blew wide for a second, shocked that I called him on it. I kept my breathing even so that the question would come across as intentional and bold, when really I’d spoken before I could think to stop it. “Yes,” he answered plainly.
I imagined that would offend another person, but I understood the need for solitude. It was shame’s best companion. “Well, seeing as you have another week or so of this solitary confinement, I’ll give you a choice. You can either feed yourself properly or I can continue to come back every day to make sure you don’t wither away into nothing.”
“I’m sure you would take great pleasure in knocking me down even further, until you have to monitor my every move,” Sebastian shot back, a bit of the color returning to his cheeks.
“I wouldn’t.” He looked at me expectantly, waiting for some type of expansion to that statement. I stayed silent, letting the words speak for themselves.
“I’ll take the rest of my days alone, then.” Sebastian set the tray aside, seamlessly folding his limbs into a proud stance. “Before you decide to fucking torture me with whatever you have planned.”
My shoulders tightened at his harsh tone, a fact his eyes clocked immediately. His gaze burned into the skin stretched over my collarbones. “Alright,” I said, moving to stand. “Please eat or I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I turned back towards the lock, my shoulders pinching involuntarily when the iron pricked my finger to open.
Just then, Sebastian’s voice rumbled behind me. “I don’t know which is worse—starvation or your company.”
I straightened, but didn’t turn, unsure what to do with the small pricks of pain that erupted over my skin. After a moment and a long breath, I simply opened up the lock and reset it.
Once shut away from him, separated by iron bars, I spoke. “I’ll suffer the pain your words inflict, Sebastian, but it will do nothing to change your situation.”
Sebastian’s breath heaved, fog gathering in the cold air of the cell. I’d need to do something about the heating if it was that cold. Or maybe it was something in the force of his breath that caused it.
Regardless of the answer, I left him sitting there. It took minutes for the tightness in my chest to dispel.
I knew what I was doing, but there was something about Sebastian that made me feel slightly … something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
A project for another day.
I walked quickly away from the old cells in Prometheus, ones that were hardly inhabited anymore. Only those who had proved time and again they were beyond help remained there—those who had knowingly and wholeheartedly chosen violence over life.
I’d spent years fixing the rest of Prometheus, turning it into something soft and comforting. The power that fueled this place gave it the illusion that it was at the top of the world, the sky a dark, murky expanse with the promise of land and life far in the horizon.
It was remote and secluded, but that granted us some truly spectacular sunsets. Sunrises, too, but I preferred the latter.
There was a vibrant sunset in the sky now, although several hours before the rest of the world, a fiery orange that looked like it had been mixed by—
Well, it looked like it was mixed by Apollo himself.
I shook my head lightly to dispel the thought, walking through our main square. Off to the left was apartments for the residents, styled after soft stone used on islands. To the right were offices and treatment rooms—really anywhere dedicated to work.
It was important to me that I kept them separate.
And between them was my favorite part—the gardens.
Large bushes towered around the perimeter, secluding the interior. There were more species of flowers than I could count dotting the middle, nestled between benches and fountains and statues.
It was among those bushes that I saw a tall, lithe man jumping slightly to try and snip a flower off a high set bush growing out of the head of a sculpture.
“Niky, I do wish you wouldn’t do that. I would hate to see that break.”
Nikolas whipped around, his lips rolling in amusement. “Of course you would be the one to catch me. Can’t get away with shit in this place.”
I laughed softly, catching his sarcasm. Nikolas had been a resident—still technically was one—after his dependence on alcohol to soothe the grief of his father’s sudden passing and his guilt for abdicating his role as Lord Poseidon caused him to make a mistake that harmed Daphne.
He’d also decided, on the very first day of his sobriety, that he wanted to be my friend.
I was so shocked by the declaration that I had no choice but to listen to him.
I’d never had someone meet me and immediately decide I was a worthy friend. When I was younger, I always felt quite odd compared to others. For the longest time, Adrian was my best friend.
Rose, Daphne, and Reyna were my friends, too. Lukas and Dominic as well, I guessed. But that seemed to happen over time, which only made me worry that it had happened because they’d gotten used to me.
Whereas Nikolas talked to me for five minutes and declared we were going to be friends.
It was different, but I worked better with different than I did with normal.
“Persy,” Nikolas said, softly bringing me out of my thoughts. When I refocused on him, he was standing in front of me holding the flowers he’d clipped. “How did it go?”
I sighed deeply, fighting the urge to wring my hands together. “He ate. That’s something.”
Nikolas scoffed, pushing his dark eyebrows together. “On his own volition?”
I shook my head, my hair brushing over my shoulders. I absently felt some of the leaves on the plant next to me, feeling like I needed the distraction during this conversation. “I had to watch him. Eat with him.”
“He’s stubborn,” Nikolas said, and when I looked at him, he was studying me closely. I imagined he had a question he was hoping to ask, but in all honesty, I chose to ignore it.
I shrugged, dismissing his statement. “I have dealt with stubborn before.”
It was an understatement, really. I’d helped people, who most would have written off as beyond saving, find a new lease on life. It was my proudest achievement, and yet somehow I felt like I was lacking starting down this road with Sebastian.
“If anyone can do it, it’s you,” Nikolas said, catching on to my anxiety immediately.
“What helped?” I asked, not caring that I’d spoken a bit too quickly after he’d finished. “With you. What helped cut through the stubbornness?”
Nikolas smiled, the same smile Lukas had, as his eyes went a little unfocused, recalling all those days we spent trying to help him work through his pain. Finally, he breathed in deep and answered, “Persistence. Kindness. All things you’re quite good at.”
I nodded, forcing myself to take the compliment. “Alright.”
“You’ll be fine,” Nikolas said, his voice light with laughter. He walked over and smoothed his hand down my hair, the action full of brotherly affection. “He’s not that scary.”
The thing was—I wasn’t sure I believed him.
Because fear made your heart beat a little faster, your limbs feel jittery. It made you act without thinking and on impulse.
And my heart still hadn’t slowed down since leaving Sebastian’s cell.