16. Chapter 16
16
Chapter 16
Violet
Here’s what I’d learned after being in Night Realm for a little over a week:
You can’t believe everything you’re told. You have to learn for yourself.
Having to smile while watching Nathara practically hump Calum at dinner every night would eventually make me go insane.
I could spend the rest of my existence reading, and I would be okay with that.
Sebastian Kieran (I learned his last name in a book I read yesterday) would be the death of me.
It had been a couple of days since Calum and Nathara arrived back from searching for a place to honeymoon. They chose a small island in the Ocean Realm because of its seclusion. Like I wanted to know that.
The only time I had left my chambers was to attend dinners to show my face. I know I said I wasn’t going to spend my days in my chambers any longer, but Sebastian ruined that. Well technically, he didn’t. My dreams were actually to blame.
The moment I closed my eyes, all I could see was him. All I could feel were his shadows creeping up my body. And all I could hear was him saying, “She’s mine.” Over and over and over again.
So in fear of this getting any worse—if that was even possible—I didn’t want to chance running into him while I was alone. So I stayed in my room, reading anything Yara chose to bring me.
Knocking on my door woke me from dreaming of Sebastian. Half asleep, I opened my door to see who could possibly want to see me at this hour of the night.
“Calum?” I pulled him into my room and checked the hall to make sure no one was around. “Is everything okay? Someone could have seen you.”
I was so confused. He always transferred to my room and yet he was standing in the hall like he wasn’t afraid of someone seeing us.
“Don’t worry. Everyone is asleep. I have something to show you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s outside,” he said as he grabbed my hand and tried to pull me towards the door with him.
“Are you sure no one will see us? What about the shadows?” Maybe Calum walking though the hall in the middle of the night didn’t look suspicious, but I knew me and Calum in the hall together would set off alarms in Sebastian.
He may not care about an alliance with the Mountain Realm, but he definitely didn’t want anything to risk Nathara leaving.
It terrified me to think of what he would do if he found out about me and Calum. He may have protected me the other night, but if I interfered with his plans, I might be his next kill.
“You’re right. Meet me past the garden in ten minutes.” Calum left using the door. It’s not like he didn’t ever use doors, but he’d only ever transferred in and out of my room to make sure no one saw him. He was getting way too comfortable.
I put on my coat, waited a few minutes, and left my room quietly.
The castle halls were eerily empty. Faeries in the Night Realm stayed up later into the night, but it was so late that no one was up. There could only be one reason Calum would risk us being together outside of my room. He must have found the object that was draining Sebastian of his powers.
I didn’t know what he had been doing from the time he left my room early this morning until now, but he really meant it when he said he was doing everything he could to find the object.
I walked through the gardens, finding it using only the light of the moon and stars in the night sky. Any other time, I would be terrified of being out in the dark by myself, but the idea that Calum had potentially found our way out of here kept me going further into the darkness.
We had to leave sooner rather than later. I had to get away from Sebastian. He had taken over every thought I had and all I could hope was that those thoughts would leave once I was out of his realm.
When I got past the gardens, I saw Calum facing the other direction, looking into the woods.
He must have heard me approaching because he said, “There you are. Come here.”
As I walked towards him, I watched as he turned to me and transformed into a tall, skinny black figure. A paramic. The thing Calum used to tell me about to scare me when we were faelings. A creature that shape shifted into someone familiar to lure their victims. Something straight from my nightmares.
I stood, frozen to my spot, while the creature closed the distance between us.
I turned to run but the paramic was standing in front of me again. I let out a partial scream before its long, skeletal fingers wrapped around my mouth stopping any further noise from escaping.
“Shhhh. We don’t want to wake anyone. This will be over soon enough,” it said as an evil smile came over its face. Its voice sent a chill down my spine.
I closed my eyes as I waited for it to take me away when all of a sudden its grip on me disappeared.
I opened my eyes to see someone had slammed it onto the ground and had their hands on its neck.
It was so dark that I couldn’t make out their face. It wasn’t until I felt something cool caress my hand that I knew who it was. I looked down to see shadows floating all around me.
Something that terrified me a week ago now made me feel safe. They weren’t going to eat me. They were protecting me.
Sebastian was protecting me. He was always protecting me.
I took a step closer so I could see and watched as Sebastian placed his hand on the paramic’s head. The creature let out a scream that pierced through my ears before it faded into a black mist and was gone.
Sebastian stood up, ran his fingers through his hair, and walked towards me. He was shirtless and wore a pair of loose-fitting black pants which made me assume he was asleep before he came to my rescue.
“Violet, are you alright?” he said as he looked all over my body.
“I-I’m fine,” I said as I stared at the spot where the paramic faded into nothing, trying to figure out how he could do something like that. But then I remembered one of his gifts. A gift that no other fae had ever possessed. Something so hard to explain that the scholars simply called it the “touch of death.”
And I just saw it firsthand.
Sebastian gently grabbed my chin and turned my face, forcing me to look at him. “I know you’re from a different realm, but you know more than most anybody about, well, everything. You know better than to go out into the darkness of the Night Realm,” he said.
“You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said as I turned to go back to the castle. I knew it was useless, but I was attempting to make an escape before he started asking questions, which was something he always seemed to do.
“Who could it have possibly been to have you follow it into the woods in the middle of the night?” And there it was.
I turned around to look at him. “It . . . it was my father,” I said. Maybe looking into his eyes would make him believe me for once.
“Oh bullshit,” he snapped, causing me to take a step back. “I’ve seen you and your father say all of two words the entire time you’ve been here. I don’t think you’d leave your room for him, let alone come outside.”
Nope. Looking into his eyes didn’t work.
He stopped searching for answers in my eyes and instead a look of understanding took over his face. “It was Calum, wasn’t it?”
“What? Of course not,” I said, trying so hard to stay strong. How could he possibly have any idea about me and Calum? I’d been in the Night Realm for just over a week, and I’d only been in the same room as him, excluding my room which presumably no one knew about, at dinners with everyone else.
“He put a ward on your room. I knew as soon as he did it, but I just assumed that it was so your father wouldn’t worry about you. But I’ve seen the glances you give each other when you think no one is paying attention.” He paused as his eyes began to darken, shifting closer to black than their normal blue. “You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”
Tears started rolling down my face. There was no way out of this. He’d known every time I’d lied to him, and I was backed into a corner now.
He put his hand on his face, turned around, and started to pace away from me. He stopped and looked up at the sky. After a moment, he came back to me and said, “You should know by now that I won’t hurt you. And I’m telling you now, as if these past two encounters haven’t already proven this, I won’t let anything happen to you, but you have to tell me what’s going on.”
His eyes were normal again, and he looked at me, pleading with me to tell him the truth for once. And he was right. No matter how hard I’d tried to convince myself otherwise, deep down I knew he would protect me. I didn’t know why, but he would.
“We’re together. We’ve been together for about sixteen years now,” I blurted out. I probably shouldn’t have been so specific, but I had nothing to lose anymore.
“Bloody hell.” Sebastian threw his arms up as he walked away from me again.
I stood there waiting for more of a response, but he didn’t look at me again. He was tapping his finger on his side as he looked up to the sky. “Violet, I think you should go back to your chambers now. We can talk about this later.”
I couldn’t say anything. I wanted to be back in the safety of my chambers, where I should never have left in the first place.