31. Chapter 31
31
Chapter 31
Violet
Stay in the Night Realm. Those words were the only thing I could focus on for the rest of the day and then they kept me up all night.
Sebastian said I could stay here, be able to do whatever I want and live however I want free of the strict rules of the Mountain Realm.
I knew I needed to tell Calum what his mother did. I wanted to know how he would handle it. I’d been so lost with our relationship and now I didn’t even feel like the same Violet. There was so much darkness in my heart.
Darkness his mother created.
I wasn’t going to tell him until we returned home, but Sebastian’s offer changed everything.
How Calum chose to punish his mother was going to give me my answer as to whether I stayed in the Night Realm.
But I wasn’t ready to tell him yet. Not until I knew for sure about Astrid.
I asked Sebastian to give me some space unless he got word about Astrid. I needed time alone to process everything.
In the matter of a day, Calum and Nathara had sex in front of me, Sebastian and I kissed, and I found out I had endured weeks of torture after which a witch tampered with my mind to cover it up. A week ago, just one of those things, let alone all three, would’ve had me hiding out in my room.
I had already pushed Calum away and if I continued to spend more time with Sebastian, the tension between us might become more than I could bear. I couldn’t risk complicating things more than they already were.
Sebastian seemed like he understood so I didn’t worry about him showing up wherever I went, like he previously seemed to enjoy doing, so I decided to go to the library and find a few books to take to my room.
As I was walking down the hall, I heard Bronwen yelling at someone from a room I hadn’t been in before. “What is this? I said silver finishes not bronze! Where do you think we are? The Forest Realm? Please! We have more class than that!”
I pushed the door open a few inches to see what she was doing and there were several fae running around at her instruction. Some were taking off drawer knobs on the giant dark oak desk that sat in the middle of the room while others were packing up trinkets from the shelves that covered the walls.
“Violet, come here, I need your opinion,” Bronwen said as she faced the other way.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been spying but fae in the Forest Realm could probably hear your yelling,” I said as I walked in.
“I wouldn’t have to yell if anyone here had a brain,” she said while pointing at a bronze knob the fae removing them must have missed.
I couldn’t help but let out a small laugh when a fae walking past me gave Bronwen the dirtiest look.
“Anyways,” she began as she walked over to the chair sitting in the corner of the room. She leaned over and picked up two small pieces of fabric. “Which one for the window drapes?”
I squinted my eyes and looked between the two. “They aren’t the same?” I asked. They were both black and there was nothing to set the two apart from each other.
Bronwen let out a loud huff and threw the two fabric samples in the air.
One of the fae servants in the room let out a quiet laugh, and Bronwen shot them a glare.
“Well, you’re no help either,” she said.
“What are you doing anyway?” I asked while I turned around to take in the servants busy at work replacing some things and removing others all together.
We were clearly in an office of sorts, but I wasn’t sure who was using it.
“I am . . . cleaning out the old and bringing in the new,” she said. I knew by her pause that she was carefully choosing her words so as not to give too much away.
But I knew exactly what she meant. She was replacing the items that could be the object filled with black opal that was absorbing Sebastian’s powers.
“How many rooms are left?” I asked.
“Four.”
My heart sank. Four rooms left. What would be the odds that out of the entire castle the object was somewhere in one of the very last rooms they went through?
Maybe they had it wrong. They could be looking for something that wasn’t here, and it could be something else tearing Sebastian apart. They had been blindly following the words of a healer, and they could have wasted their time.
“That is one good thing to come out of this predicament. I’m able to redecorate,” Bronwen said, trying to muster up a smile.
She was always trying to lighten the situation, even if deep down I knew she was worried.
I left pretty quickly to continue my walk to the library.
As I stood there, trying to narrow down the selection of books I had pulled, I felt the presence of someone behind me.
I turned around quickly to see it was Sebastian. I stared at him, afraid to say anything as I waited for what he had to say because I knew he had the answer I desperately needed.
His face was solemn as he opened his mouth to speak before quickly shutting it again. He looked down at the ground for a moment, and my heart raced, waiting for an answer.
He looked back at me and slowly shook his head.
This confirmation was all it took to have me falling to the ground. The little bit of hope that I was desperately holding onto was gone.
Astrid was gone.
Before my knees hit the ground, Sebastian had me in his arms and fell to the ground with me. He held me tightly while he ran his fingers through my hair.
I held on to him as I sobbed into his chest.
I was broken, truly broken.