Chapter 6 Sebastian
Sebastian
Violet slept with her forehead tucked against my throat, the way she always did when the world had been too loud for too long.
I stayed still, barely breathing as I counted her breaths without meaning to. I watched the fine hairs near her ear lift and fall with each breath and let myself stay where she was safe.
I should have been thinking about the petitions stacked in my study. The southern watch’s report. The shipment Bronwen had already warned me would arrive late and wrong.
Instead, I was thinking about distance.
If she crowned herself in the Sun Realm, she would belong there. Sovereigns did not drift between realms. They rooted. They ruled.
And I belonged to the Night.
I could transfer—tear myself across Alentara again and again—between thrones, councils, and crises until the magic hollowed me out. Between realms that far apart, it wasn’t a trick of light. It was a ripping. I could already feel it in my bones, a phantom ache that promised worse.
A bridge would have solved it.
If the Queen Mother’s lands weren’t wedged between us like a blade.
No one crossed her soil. Not Sovereigns. Not Commanders. Not even me.
But we weren’t there yet.
So I set the thought aside.
Violet’s lashes fluttered.
Then her expression shifted and fear surged through the bond, sharp and familiar. I had seen this too many times in the past weeks.
“Violet,” I whispered, sliding my hand through her hair.
She jerked, a broken sound catching in her throat. Images I didn’t want—could never want—rose unbidden. Knowing what had been done to her was one thing. Living it with her in her memories was another entirely.
I had tried everything to give myself closure. None of it mattered. Her nightmares reduced every solution to nothing.
And when she wasn’t here—when she was ruling in the Sun Realm—I wouldn’t be there to stop it if it came for her again.
The thought was unbearable.
Heat flared around her skin.
“Violet,” I said again, firmer this time.
She gasped and sat upright, breath ragged. The scars across her back caught the low light, and my shadows stirred instinctively. I fought the urge to touch them—to trace every line, every mark, as if memorizing them might keep her whole.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re okay.”
She turned immediately, dragging the sheet around herself like armor. The sadness in her eyes cut deeper than panic ever could.
“Will it ever go away?”
I would have taken it from her if I could. Every memory. Every echo. I would have carried it all.
But it was part of her now. Not because it defined her—but because she had survived it.
“It gets easier to live with,” I said honestly. “But it doesn’t disappear.”
She leaned back against my chest, careful.
I wrapped my arms around her and held on, knowing this—holding her while the world slept—was the only certainty I had left.
* * *
The throne room never forgave distraction—but it tolerated mine.
A trader complained about tariffs. I listened with half my attention. The rest replayed Theron’s face by the window the day before—the way he’d said my Sovereign to Violet without hesitation. He carried no walls in his mind, so I knew that he was fully devoted to her.
That was the only reason I allowed him to stay.
Celine’s name surfaced like a bruise. Word would already be moving—through kitchens, along riverbanks, folded into letters that looked like recipes and weren’t.
A girl with fire in her blood.
Hair like living gold.
Wings made of flame.
They might not know exactly what Violet was yet.
But they were guessing.
I signed decrees. Issued orders. Wrote a letter that might prevent a border skirmish if the faerie reading it valued sense over pride.
By the time the hall emptied, only castle guards remained—half-swallowed by shadow—and Adar, standing beneath the high glass, staring up at the sky.
He hadn’t slept properly since I killed my Guard. I could see it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his focus never fully settled. He was exhausted from rebuilding. Rebuilding a Guard could take centuries to perfect.
We didn’t have time for that.
He’d slipped in nearly an hour ago, late because he’d just returned from one of the northern villages.
“Leave us,” I said to the guards, without looking away from him.
They moved immediately.
Adar didn’t.
“How many have you recruited so far?” I asked.
“A few dozen,” he said. “Some won’t last another week.”
“That’s far from a complete Guard.”
His shoulders tightened, though I hadn’t thought that possible.
“Well,” he said flatly, “I’ve had a lot to do, but I’m working on it.”
I nodded.
He turned for the door.
“And Adar.”
He stopped—but didn’t turn.
“Do not embarrass her in front of the recruits again. Her training is kept separate for a reason.”
“She was late.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He turned then, fury burning hot and unmasked. “So let me understand,” he snarled. “Rebuild the Guard you decided to wipe out without hesitation. Train the girl. Maintain my command. And do it all while pretending none of this is absurd.”
He bowed—deep, theatrical. Mocking.
“What else can I assist you with, Your Highness?”
I let him go.
I also chose not to mention that the moment he stepped into the corridor, he was going to find Bronwen flirting openly with one of the castle guards.
Some lessons didn’t need interference.
* * *
Dinner used to be the worst part of the day until Bronwen decided it wouldn’t be.
In another life, I’d watched the same table hold a different kind of tension.
My father believed if his family ate together, the realm wouldn’t come apart.
He was wrong. My mother and I sat at one end.
Lilian and young Nathara sat with him at the other.
They were the perfect family, and we were the ones expected to pretend we weren’t breaking.
Then Bronwen moved in and insisted I sit every night with her and Adar until it turned into something I didn’t know was possible.
Violet arrived first and took the seat to my right.
Bronwen slid in opposite, piled a plate too high, and announced that whoever had mislabeled a crate of citrus as arrowheads owed her an apology and a drink.
Alastor greeted his daughter before sitting beside her; Theron followed, quiet and watchful.
Adar came last. He took the chair at the end of the table, far enough that he could pretend he wasn’t part of this and close enough that he still was.
“Commander,” Bronwen said around a mouthful of bread.
He gave her a look that said don’t and reached for a goblet.
He hadn’t liked Theron in my sitting room yesterday. He hadn’t liked the way Violet’s eyes had lit with purpose, or the way mine followed her. He definitely didn’t like the fact that Theron was still here.
I kept my mask of indifference firmly in place. Everything changed once Violet was wholly mine, but that didn’t change how I wanted to be perceived when there was a stranger sitting at my table.
Wholly mine. The words echoed in my mind. She wasn’t wholly mine. She was the ruler of the Sun Realm.
Violet passed me a dish without looking and brushed my knee under the table. The bond shifted—a small nudge, a question.
I pressed back. Fine. Here. With you.
A shift in the air—probably from my shadows—blew a candle out.
“Oh, B, watch what I can do.” Violet lifted a single finger and a small flame came to life. Leaning over the table, she lit the candle.
She had been practicing so hard to summon her gifts, but they only came in small bursts. There were no wings. No violent bursts of fire. No new gifts that I could feel trying to come out. Only glowing hair, glowing eyes, and small sparks.
The day she saved me was an anomaly. I deduced it was because the danger kicked in and her body reacted to it.
Just like when Adar threw her off the cliff.
I was glad she hadn’t been in a situation like that again since.
She was safe, but I knew she needed to learn control over herself and her gifts.
Right now, they came when they chose to come.
She needed to feel confident in herself and her abilities so when they were needed, she wouldn’t have to just hope that they would save her.
It was like they were lying dormant, waiting for something to bring out the Sovereign I knew was beneath the surface.
“Well, we know who will be lighting the birthday candles from now on,” Bronwen said.
Violet shot her a look.
“At least she will be useful then,” Adar muttered.
Why did he have to do this?
I waited for Violet to say something back to him. He had laid the bait for her and was waiting to set off the trap. But instead, she looked down at her hands. In that moment, I saw the version of her that came here. The one that cowered down.
I never wanted to see that version again.
“Do tell me, Adar, what was your plan to get us out of the situation we were in a few months ago before Violet showed up? Oh that’s right, I distinctly remember you muttering down our bond ‘nice knowing you’ and had fully accepted defeat.
Violet got us out of that situation. You did what she told you to do, remember? ”
Bronwen snorted a laugh. Theron glanced at Alastor wearily. Gods, he had just gotten here, and I was ready for him to leave.
Adar didn’t say another word for the rest of dinner. He probably wouldn’t talk to me for a week now. Good.
After everyone left, Violet and I sat in silence for a while.
“I’m tired of him,” she finally said, softer. “Of the way he looks at me like I’m… a candle he can pinch out.”
The corner of her mouth twitched at her own comment. I let my thumb settle in the hollow of her wrist.
“He won’t stand in your way. I won’t allow it.”
“He doesn’t have to stand in my way,” she said. “He can stand in yours.”
“He won’t.” I let the certainty do the work. “He knows what I am. More importantly, he knows what you are.”
Her gaze studied my face. “What am I?”
“Mine,” I said first, because it was true, and then, because she deserved the truth beyond that: “A Sovereign. And the next breath the world is going to have to learn to take.”
Her laugh came out a little shaky. “Poet.”
“Don’t ever call me that.”
Violet watched my hand on her wrist for a moment, then lifted her eyes to mine. “I’d like to go to the Sun Realm,” she said.
I knew this was coming and yet I wasn’t prepared for it.
“Without notice,” she added. “If we can. I want to see what it looks like now.”
My first thought was calculation. Distance. Transfer points. Where the Queen Mother’s lands sat like a curse between us. How many ways there were to die on the road before we even touched Sun soil.
My second thought was every story I’d ever read about that place after it fell—fire that didn’t go out, stone that still remembered screaming, magic that warped instead of bent. The kind of ruin that liked to keep what walked into it.
The third thought was simply no.
My shadows rose before I could stop them, curling up my arms, reaching like they meant to wrap around her and drag her somewhere safer. I forced them down. But she had already felt it, the spike of worry, the sharp need to control what I couldn’t.
“It isn’t like I want to claim my throne tomorrow,” she said. “I’m not ready. But I’d like to know what I am walking into.”
A shadow wrapped around her waist.
“If I could, I think I’d wait a few decades. Have time to focus on nothing but the two of us. Time spent figuring out why I have such a hard time accessing my gifts and learning how to be the perfect Sovereign.”
Another tendril wrapped around her leg, even though I fought as hard as I could to keep them with me.
They never listened when she was around.
She stood and came around the table. “But we both know that isn’t going to happen. Theron is just the beginning.”
When she leaned back against the edge beside my chair, I set my hands at her waist and rested my forehead against her stomach. Her fingers slid into my hair, easing the tension in me slightly.
“One day,” she said quietly, “I’ll have to go.”
“Yes,” I finally said. It would have been kinder to lie. It also would have been worse.
“And you’ll stay.”
“My realm is here.”
She nodded. Her nails traced the back of my neck. I felt her swallow. “Then we’ll transfer,” she said, like she could force impossibilities to line up if she named them correctly. “We’ll make it work.”
I would have built roads across oceans if it kept her within reach. But there are lines even I can’t drag my power across.
“We’re not there yet,” I said.
“Not yet,” she agreed. “But when we are, we’ll decide together.”
I stood and she stepped into me, tipping her face up. I kissed her, and she made a small sound against my mouth that lodged under my ribs and stayed there.
“Bash,” she murmured.
“Mm?” I kissed her again.
“Sometimes I wonder if Adar is in love with you”
“Violet.”
“Mm?”
“Please never say something like that again when I’m kissing you.”