Chapter 25
Persy
We were both ignoring what had happened.
Things were painfully normal between me and Sebastian. There wasn’t a single shift in our routine, apart from the fact that I stopped closing the door when I snuck off to the studio. One day, he’d even come with me, painting something on the other side of the wall while I played.
But nothing had changed. I couldn’t let it change, not when we’d just crossed the line into the last month of his time in Prometheus and I would hate myself if I fucked it up now.
In my darkest moments, I imagined Sebastian felt the same as I did. That he was also hanging onto the moments where it felt like I would be perfectly content if the world burned down around us, if only we were together.
But those were dark, selfish moments that had no basis in reality. Not when I still had responsibilities.
Not when this felt more dangerous than a passing crush.
That was why I forced myself to look at Sebastian and say, “I need to ask you a few questions.”
He was sitting at the kitchen counter, resting in the chair I never used. He looked up slowly from the book he was reading and said, “Of course.”
I nodded past the knot in my throat. It was a good thing I was busying myself in the kitchen making an afternoon cup of tea, or I’d never be able to handle this conversation. As strong as I was, as many uncomfortable situations I dealt with on a daily basis, there was something about this that made me deeply, deeply nervous.
“Do you have an idea of who you’ll instate as heirs?” I asked, needing to get through the worst part of it first.
Sebastian slowly closed his book, leaning back into the stool with his arms crossed. “What makes you think I haven’t chosen already?”
“Have you?”
“No.”
I smiled despite my nerves. “Point proven, then.”
Sebastian leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “I know who I’m choosing. Are you asking when I’ll do it?”
I nodded. From what my brother told me, the gods had the power to choose and rearrange heirs at their will. All Sebastian would have to do is decide who he wanted to take over, and it would be done.
Sebastian looked at me so intensely, I needed to turn around. I used the excuse of hunting for tea, opening a cabinet. “It’ll be done by the end of the month,” he said, his voice skating over my shoulders and burrowing deep. Okay, so he did know that this was part of what I’d been tasked with.
“Thank you,” I said, though the sound was somewhat lost as I opened up another cabinet and found my tea on the very top shelf. This is what happened when Sebastian wrestled the tea out of my hands when I tried to make it myself. He put it on shelves that even I couldn’t reach.
You know what, he could help if he was going to make this difficult for me.
“Love, can you grab a pot for me?” My voice was strained as I lifted up on my toes, reaching for a new container of tea. By the time I’d wrapped my hand around it and lowered my heels, I realized he hadn’t answered me.
He didn’t sometimes, just silently did whatever I asked, but there wasn’t a pot on the stove. I looked over my shoulder to find Sebastian looking at me with a slack jaw.
I immediately straightened. “What?”
“You called me love.”
I blinked, trying to recall my words. “I did?”
Sebastian nodded slowly, prowling towards me like a lion. I had the sudden instinct to run away from him, but masked it by lifting myself onto the counter top next to the stove.
He stepped between my legs, almost on instinct, and pressed close. “Are you going to start calling me that now?”
“Depends. Do you like it?” This was another thing that needed to stop, the easy banter between us. But if this was all I could take from him, I was doing it.
Sebastian’s smile turned evil. “I’ve called you love since the beginning. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have used it.”
“Are you sure about that?” I said back. “I’m not sure you liked me at the beginning. You made that quite clear.”
“A mistake I’ve surely remedied,” Sebastian said, placing more weight into his hands, still pressed on either side of my legs and leaning closer.
“You can remedy it further by instating heirs,” I said, then wanted to promptly slap my hand over my mouth. I really didn’t like to bring it up, and for entirely selfish reasons. The more I pretended like he didn’t have to be here, the more I could pretend that he was living here by choice. That the comfortable dynamic we’d built wasn’t an attempt to salvage an otherwise impossibly awkward situation.
Luckily, Sebastian’s grin simply widened. “What will you give me if I do?”
“I’ll let you teach me how to cook.” He’d tried, but I’d never really had the desire to learn before. A large part of that happened to be because I enjoyed staring at his back while he worked at the stove, shifting my eyes in between the way his shirt pulled over his muscles and the book I was reading to him that night, but he didn’t need to know that.
“That sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me,” Sebastian said, and I could have sworn I heard something deeper in his tone.
See, this was the problem. All I wanted was for him to stay, and I was looking for any reason to believe that he felt the same.
That thought haunted me for the rest of the night, drawing out my exhaustion until I damn near collapsed in bed.
This has spiraled far, far out of my control. I’d shown him things I kept firmly to myself, and now I didn’t know how I was going to deal with him being gone.