Chapter 5
Persy
Sebastian’s color was back. And he’d started working out in his cell again. Good, he only had a day left.
I was sure he enjoyed some type of physical activity. Even a god didn’t have a body like that without working for it. His arms were quite big and he seemed very strong.
From what I could tell under his shirt, his back and shoulders seemed equally adept. He had rather large legs too. Whenever we were talking and he stretched out into a more relaxed position on his bed, he’d widen his legs a bit, his hips pressing forward as he stretched his thick muscles.
I had half a mind to ask him to refrain from doing that. It would be irrational, I reminded myself. I couldn’t ask him not to do that because it had made me trip over my words one time.
“Hello,” I greeted, turning the corner to his cell. I would be glad to see it go.
Sebastian was already standing, casually leaning against the far wall. When he saw me carrying food, he walked over to the door, waiting for me. For the past two days, I’d brought his breakfast and dinner myself, choosing to eat with him and trying to build at least somewhat of a comfortable rapport between us.
I’d focused the conversation on light topics, which had the unfortunate result of me rambling in front of him when he refused to answer questions about himself and filling the silence with information about me I didn’t normally give up so easily.
Every single time we got anywhere close to personal information about him or something that reminded us both why he was here, he’d shut down, resorting to cruel words and a sharp tone that he clearly hoped would made me run from the cell like my hair was on fire.
I hated running. It made my ankles hurt. So I stood my ground.
“Good evening, Persephone,” Sebastian said, his hand already reaching through the bars and towards the trays resting on my arms. I passed them off to him, focusing on the action instead of my desire to correct him for using my full name.
I didn’t normally like when people used it. I wasn’t sure why it didn’t bother me as much when he did.
When he finally moved his eyes from their deep, intense stare on my face and he looked down at the food, his muscles locked up.
“I’m not even going to request you say thank you,” I said, speaking more to the top of his head, his eyes still down on the tray. “Just don’t say anything.”
For once, Sebastian listened to me. I’d asked Kostas to make a dessert he’d mentioned passively the day prior.
Well, actually getting that little bit of information out of him felt like climbing down into a pit thirty feet deep and using a brush to move around dirt, seeking a bone two inches wide.
He moved over to his bed silently, giving me the room to open up the cell door. I was in my head a little more than usual as I did it, and the quick puncture to my finger startled me more than normal.
I jerked back, pressing my thumb in between my lips to try to soothe some of the pain and get rid of the blood.
A choked sound stole my attention. My eyes flew to Sebastian, who was taking measured breaths through his nose.
“It hurts you to open the door,” he said, his voice hard. He was speaking like I’d managed to sky-rocket his anger in a matter of seconds.
I turned back to the lock, realizing I’d accidentally left the door fully open. “The lock mechanism requires a dose of blood,” I explained. I turned back, closing the door but leaving it unlocked.
This would be a test to see what he would do. The wards protecting Prometheus prevented him from leaving—with a few exceptions.
Sebastian didn’t even seem to notice what I’d done when I faced him again. His stare was narrowed in on my hand. “That’s not what I asked.”
I folded my hands together in front of me. His eyes followed, now centered on my lower stomach. It was so potent, it felt almost like a physical touch. Like I would imagine his hand felt softly sweeping over the space below my belly button. “You didn’t ask much of anything, actually.”
Sebastian’s eyes dragged slowly up my body, taking his sweet time. See, this is why I didn’t play his game. It gave him leave to turn on the charm. “Does it hurt you to open the door?”
I paused, repeating the words in my head to make sure I understood his tone correctly. He’d spoken quite harshly but the question was objectively emotionless.
“A little,” I admitted. It wasn’t bad, but I definitely noticed it.
Sebastian looked downright offended at my answer. It was the truth. I wasn’t sure what else he was looking for. “Stand outside then.” His words were a rough command, punctuated by a sharp jerk of his chin towards the dark and dingy hallway outside.
I looked behind me, confused. When I turned back to him, his expression had somehow turned even darker. “You’d prefer to have our conversation separated by a row of bars? I’d have to sit on the ground to eat.”
I mean that just made no sense.
“I’d prefer not to be doing this at all,” Sebastian snapped back, so harsh I felt it like a lance against my skin. More painful than the lock. “But if you insist on piercing your skin as a prerequisite to that conversation, then yes, I’d prefer it separated.”
Oh. It took a second to click, but I thought I understood him now. “Is it the blood or the pain?”
Sebastian’s eyes blew wide, his brows slamming together. “Excuse me?”
“Which bothers you? The blood or the pain?” I asked, taking a step closer to him. I was almost in the middle of the room now, and Sebastian had taken a few steps back to the point that he was basically plastered against the wall. Almost like I scared him, but that couldn’t be right.
Sebastian breathed in deeply, tracking his eye down my shoulder, my arm, and down to the finger I’d pricked while he did it. There must have been something about his power that made his stare uniquely intense, because it felt eerily close to a physical embrace. “If I said the blood?”
My lips quirked up in a smile. “I’d say I didn’t believe you. If the god of medicine was squeamish around blood, that would be quite the story, wouldn’t it?”
Sebastian looked at my smile. Stared at it, actually. But he didn’t return it. “It’s the blood.”
“I think it’s the pain,” I countered. Blood just seemed too unusual for the god of medicine. “That is very kind of you, thank you.”
Sebastian looked at me the way someone would if they turned their head back to you after you’d slapped them across the face. “Stop fucking thanking me.”
I shook my head, scrunching up my nose. “No, thank you.”
“Persephone,” he said, clearly exacerbated.
“Sebastian,” I returned, feeling oddly proud I’d gotten that reaction from him. “Anyway,” I said, clearing the thought. I sat down at the stool at the foot of his bed, one he hadn’t moved. “Please join me. I’m hungry.”
Not to mention I had something to talk to him about. While I waited for him to shake out of whatever stupor was keeping him still, I cleared a bit more of the blood of my finger with a quick swipe of my tongue.
Sebastian was moving a second later, sitting down at the farthest end of the bed, as always. “Kostas outdid himself today,” he said, looking down at the beautiful plate of food he’d dropped in my hands minutes ago.
I nodded in agreement, feeling my smile break even wider. It was just a name, but the fact that he remembered it was more illuminating to his character than he realized. No one truly apathetic remembered names.
There was a chance he was a master of manipulation, having no personal understanding of empathy but knowing exactly how to exploit it in others. I didn’t think that was accurate, though. When his temper flared, he seemed to be aware of it.
“He did,” I said, cutting into my food. “Do you cook?”
Sebastian answered me with silence. I was learning that meant he did. I made a mental note to make sure my kitchen was stocked with the right tools.
“I’m going to introduce you to the doctor you’ll be working with the day after tomorrow,” I said. He didn’t know it, but I would venture to guess that would be the part of his day he’d be least upset with.
“What makes you think the god of medicine requires a doctor?” Sebastian said, tearing off a piece of bread roughly.
I had to blink twice to pull my eyes from the veins on the back of his hands. “Everyone needs help. Even you.”
“And who helps you?”
I smiled again. He was still sarcastic, but was far less angry than I imagined. Progress. “My mom. My dad. Adrian. Niky.”
They were the four people I relied on the most, with Nikolas as the most recent addition. I’d probably include Reyna or Daphne or Rose on that list, but I thought the reminder might anger him.
He locked up regardless. “How blessed you are.”
“I am,” I admitted. I knew how privileged I was to have those people in my life. I was working on being more honest when they asked how I was doing. “Who is important to you?”
“No one.” He was either lying or it was true, and that made my heart crack.
I stood, needing to move to hide any latent emotion sneaking into my expression. He’d warned me about pity. I wasn’t pitying him at all. I was empathizing with him.
Something told me he thought those two were the same.
I’d spent most of my younger years feeling deeply alone, misunderstood by everyone around me and cast aside as odd after two seconds in my presence. I knew how isolating that was, and I wanted to make sure he didn”t feel that way.
His support system was actually why I’d come for dinner. Well, one of the reasons, a little voice in the back of my head corrected.
“What about Luce?” I asked, turning to him. He was close to Luce, the Diana heir, when he was younger. I remembered that much. “And Penelope, she was—”
“Do not fucking talk about Penelope.”
I was too focused on finishing my sentence to heed his warning. “I was really sad to hear about her passing. She was always very kind to me.” Kinder than most, but I left that part out. “And she was—”
In a flash, Sebastian was in front of me, roughly backing me up to the cage behind me, making them clang and rattle, the sound echoing loudly. It didn’t take an expert to realize that in a matter of words, I had severely, irrevocably pissed him off.
His eyes had lost all their bright color, breaking down to only the dark blues and greens. His chest was heaving and his jaw hard, and his hands had descended onto the bars on either side of my head, gripping with such force I heard the iron squeal under his palms.
“Did you not hear what I said or did you just choose to ignore me?” Sebastian snapped, his head bending down so that the words were thrown right into my face. He was clearly trying to intimidate me.
There was just one problem. I tended to have very bad judgment when it came to things that were supposed to scare me. I was able to recognize threats just fine, but I always forgot to shrink away from them.
“I didn’t really register what you said. I was more focused on finishing what I was saying.” It was the truth, but also had the interesting side effect of breaking through Sebastian’s anger, like the sun cracking through storm clouds.
Although, it also gave him the space to take the route of sarcasm and charm. Maybe I was actually scared of him, because when he grinned it made my heart drop.
“Is this how you’ve survived this hell all these years?” he asked, his voice wickedly smooth.
“I don’t understand the question.” I couldn’t think straight. I had no idea how people still functioned under the oppressive weight of fear, because I certainly couldn’t form a coherent thought.
Sebastian grinned, pressing me harder into the gate. Hard enough that the rough iron was cutting into the backs of my arms, but I barely registered the pain. “You don’t seem to understand a threat, even when it’s staring you in the face.”
I frowned, my mind snagging on one part of his question. “I understand threats perfectly fine,” I snapped, defensiveness strong in my tone. A quick flash of shame followed.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed, then started darting all over my face like he was cataloging every inch before attempting to replicate it on page. “Then you’ll understand me when I say if you ever bring her up again, I will burn this place down with both of us inside it.”
I’d never been a reckless person, but I still asked, “You mean Penelope?”
Sebastian’s hand flew to my chin, the touch so hot and branding it sent a violent shiver through me that made me jerk away from his touch. I had nowhere to go but closer to the bars, and I’d moved so harshly that I scraped my bare arms over the iron.
I whimpered in pain, then made another broken sound when I felt blood warming my skin.
Then a few things happened all at once. Sebastian’s hand wound around the back of my neck, pulling me away from the bars and into his hard chest. I distantly registered his other hand moving down one of my arms, then flipping me so that my back was pressed to his chest and doing the same to the other, because someone’s voice bellowed into the silence.
“Let her go, right now,” Nikolas yelled, running around the corner. Sebastian didn’t listen, only held me more firmly to him, his forearm banding around my waist.
I opened my mouth to tell Nikolas I’m okay, but nothing came out.
“I don’t answer to you,” Sebastian snapped, and his hand pulsed once in its bruising grip on my hip.
My head was spinning, my heart about to beat out of my chest, but I was able to manage a few hoarse words. “Let me go.”
Sebastian listened, releasing me. He didn’t move, though. He was still firmly pressed to my back. I was sure he was trying to make a statement about something, but I was too dazed to remember what.
This was a very new sensation for me. Nothing knocked me out of focus.
Nikolas ran up and started pulling on the bars of the cage. “Persy, open this and get out of there.”
“I’m okay, Niky,” I said, my voice calm to reassure him. One thing I’d learned about him very quickly into his stay at Prometheus was that he still held onto a lot of fear that his loved ones would be hurt, his grief over his father’s early death still fresh.
“Get away from him,” he said, eyes still wide in panic.
“Go,” Sebastian said, his voice low and rough next to my ear. He wasn’t making any move to step away from me. “Before your boyfriend hurts himself trying to break in here.”
It took a second for my body to comply, but I took a small step forward. My back erupted in goosebumps, feeling cold as ice all of the sudden. I calmly headed for the lock, moving quickly through the prick of pain, until the door was opened and I was on the other side of it.
“Are you okay?” Nikolas asked, looking over my skin to make sure I was unharmed.
I nodded, turning back to Sebastian. My mind finally felt like it was working again.
“Sebastian,” I called, beckoning him towards me with my hand. He didn’t listen, just kept glaring at Nikolas. “Sebastian.”
This time he looked at me, a slow slide of his eyes over to my form, then up and down quickly. “I understand that she is a difficult subject for you. But your anger and grief does not give you an excuse to treat others with disrespect. That includes trying to scare me away from you.” Scare me away from helping him would have been a more appropriate thing to say, but it was too late to correct myself.
Sebastian did nothing but heave in a breath and hold heavy eye contact with me.
“I’m choosing to believe your silence means you understand me.”
This time, he answered with a low grunt. My mouth pulled into a close-lipped smile. “Good. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
To end his solitary confinement. Finally.
With one last look at him, I turned and started to leave with Nikolas.
“Persephone.” Sebastian’s voice stopped me in my tracks. I turned over my shoulder to look at him, finding something new in his expression. I would have called it remorse, if not for his next words. “You should be scared of me. I’ll make your life nothing short of hell. That’s the one thing I’ll be honest with you about.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t believe him for a second. I was sure he wanted me to be scared of him, but I didn’t think I actually had reason to be. He had plenty of opportunities to harm me, and he didn’t take any of them.
Especially because as I walked away with Nikolas, I ran my hand down the back of my arm, feeling nothing but smooth, freshly healed skin.