Chapter 18 Violet
Violet
I woke to the soft light of a Sun Realm morning. Warm air drifted through the open space, the pale gold canopy catching the light and softening it, turning everything gentle.
Sebastian lay beside me on his side, one arm still half-curled where it had fallen from my hip. Without the weight of everything he carried, his face looked different. Younger, somehow. The hard lines eased, his mouth relaxed, the crease between his brows gone like it had never existed.
I didn’t move right away. I just… looked at him.
Then something tugged.
Come.
I sat up slowly, careful not to disturb him. The pull brushed against my thoughts again, softer this time.
Don’t wake him.
My feet found the rug, then the cool stone beyond it. I moved through the room, then into the corridor. My father’s pets sat in the corridor, perking up as soon as they saw me. Without thinking, I ran my hand down the back of one as I passed it.
It purred.
Doors opened before I touched them.
Light gathered along the floors and steps, guiding more than illuminating, and I followed it without thinking. Down staircases. Through halls. Across a courtyard already warming under the early sun.
The pull sharpened as I moved, clearer now.
I followed it.
And then I saw him.
He stood right where the shadow of the palace ended, where stone met open desert. His back was half-turned, one hand pushing his hair away from his face.
Calum.
For a moment, everything inside me stalled.
He turned.
“You’re a Sovereign,” he whispered.
I stopped a few paces away.
Something inside me… dimmed. Like my reactions had been carefully wrapped and set aside where I couldn’t quite reach them.
“I am,” I said.
“I always knew you were special.” His eyes moved over me. “I think about this—about you—every night.” His hands flexed at his sides. “I made mistakes, Vi. I know that now. I was wrong. I’ll spend the rest of my life fixing it if you let me.”
I waited for anger. For hurt.
Nothing came.
It should have felt wrong. It didn’t. But still, the logical part of me came through.
“You chose yourself,” I said. “You were willing to let him die.”
“I chose fear,” he said, and his voice broke. “And then I chose to run from it.” He took a small step closer. “I love you. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Anything. I don’t care what it costs.”
“Calum.” I lifted a hand, stopping him.
The pull inside me loosened slightly, like whatever held it had shifted its grip.
“I loved you,” I said.
For a fraction of a second, he smiled. Then it cracked.
“Loved?” he repeated.
“But I love Sebastian,” I went on. “It’s different with him. It…” I searched for the right word and found none that didn’t feel too small. “He is a part of me. He doesn’t ask me to be less.”
“I can be better,” he said quickly. “I can be what you need. Tell me how to fix this. Anything. I’ll do anything. You want him? Fine. But I know you want me to. Why can’t you have both?”
I stepped closer.
Close enough to see the small nick along his jaw he never remembered to shave around. The part of me that catalogs everything noted calmly that the sand hadn’t touched his boots. That he looked like a man who’d been set down here, not one who had crossed the desert to reach me.
I reached up, resting my palm against his cheek.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said softly. “But I’m not yours anymore. And I won’t be again.”
Something shifted behind his eyes.
Subtle. Deep. Wrong.
“Violet,” he breathed.
His hand came up, covering my wrist. Like he meant to press his lips to my palm the way he had done a hundred times before.
And then his fingers tightened.
Too fast.
Too hard.
Pain exploded up my arm as bone gave way under his grip.
The scream tore out of me before I could stop it—raw and sharp—but it never had the chance to fully form because his other hand clamped around my throat, crushing my airway.
My heels dragged through the dune as he lifted me.
I heard it then—the sick, wet crack of bone giving way under pressure—and my vision fractured at the edges.
Air.
I needed air.
I could take it. Shape it. Force it into my lungs, rip it from the space around him—
Hush. Don’t fight it.
The calmness took over again as dark spots burst across my vision.
Then shadows hit him.
A full-force slam that sent him flying backward and his grip vanished from my throat. I dropped—
—but not to the ground.
Sebastian was already there.
One arm caught me, his hand cradling the back of my head before I could snap it against anything. The other closed carefully around my wrist, holding without pressure.
Shadows surged outward, forming a solid barrier between us and Calum’s body as it skidded through the sand.
Sebastian’s eyes were black. No white. No iris. The darkness swallowed everything else.
“Violet.”
My name barely existed in the air.
The sky didn’t answer him here—this wasn’t his realm. It was still blue with the near blinding sun rising above the dunes, but that didn’t matter.
His gaze moved fast—my throat, my mouth, my hand.
“Look at me,” he said. “Breathe. Where?”
I tried to answer. Nothing came out but a rough scrape of air. My throat burned, every attempt to speak catching and breaking apart.
I reached for the bond instead. I’m okay.
It wasn’t true. Not fully. But it wasn’t a lie either.
The black of his eyes lightened by a fraction, or I imagined it because I needed to.
On the sand, Calum coughed. He rolled onto his side, dragging in air. His gaze snapped toward us—first Sebastian, then me—and panic flared.
“Where am I?” he choked. “What—what did you do to me? How did I—”
He pushed himself up, stumbling when the sand shifted beneath him. “Did you take me? Is this—what is this?”
He didn’t sound like someone who had just tried to kill me.
He sounded like someone who had just woken up in the middle of something he didn’t understand.
Sebastian didn’t move until he’d counted my breaths.
Then he shifted, easing me onto my feet while positioning himself slightly in front of me. The shadows behind him sharpened—ready, waiting, listening for what he wanted them to become.
Calum stood unsteadily, taking a step back. His eyes flicked to my throat, my wrist, the way I held it close.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked, voice breaking.
Sebastian laughed. It was worse than anything he could have said. “Me? No, you fucking hurt her.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t even know how I got here!” Sebastian’s shadows coiled around Calum, forcing him still. “Vi, don’t you see? He’s a monster!”
My body went rigid as I looked at him, my mind clearer than it was only moments ago.
It had only been a few months since my world shifted and everything changed.
The one person that used to be my entire world was now nothing more than a passing thought.
But he was here, and I came to him without any inkling as to why I would do that.
He looked at me with nothing but fear in his eyes. Was it fear that I was hurt or fear of what Sebastian was about to do? I couldn’t tell.
“Don’t move,” Sebastian said. “You won’t like it if you do.”
“I haven’t—” Calum’s breath came fast. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t even remember—”
“Yeah,” Sebastian muttered, stepping forward. “That’s the problem.”
His shadows rose, sharpening into points aimed at every vulnerable place on Calum’s body—throat, ribs, the space between breaths.
“Don’t,” I rasped.
It hurt. The word tore over bruised tissue and came out thinner than I meant, but Sebastian heard it. His shadows stilled as he looked at my throat again.
He tried to say something, but with nothing but black in his eyes, the war he was fighting within was too strong. He turned back to Calum. “If you fight me, it will hurt more. You have two seconds to drop your walls.”
Calum’s pupils blew wide. “Fight you—what—”
The rest strangled off as Sebastian placed a hand on him and stepped into his mind.
There was a way to do it gently, he’d told me once. If the person kept their defenses up, he could find the hairline cracks and go through the little spaces, careful and slow.
He wasn’t trying to be careful now.
Calum’s teeth bared on a scream. The version that escaped anyway was ugly enough to send animals running if any had been near. His shoulders bowed and shook against invisible pressure.
Something in Sebastian’s expression changed.
Barely.
Then he dropped his hand and his shadows let go of Calum.
Calum pitched forward and caught himself hard on his hands, then his knees, panting. Sebastian didn’t look at him. He looked at me. At the angle of my broken wrist. At the bruises blooming at my throat in the shape of someone else’s fingers.
When he finally spoke, his voice was very soft. “No.”
He turned back slowly, as if hoping the desert would supply a different answer if he didn’t move too fast.
“There is nothing,” he said, louder this time, for the figures I could feel coming fast across the sand—Alastor, Adar, Theron. “No memory of any of it.”
Calum lifted his head. His eyes were wild and wet, confusion carved deep. He flinched from the weight of Sebastian’s gaze.
“I told you,” he gasped. “I don’t know how I got here.”
The tug that had led me from our bed shivered like a plucked string.
And then went away.
I swallowed and reached for Sebastian’s hand with my whole, unbroken one.
I’m okay, I told him again down the bond.
His fingers laced through mine carefully, like he thought I might break under too much pressure.
“Then someone brought you,” Sebastian said, every word measured, “and took themselves away.”
Calum stood once more, shaking his head. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
Sebastian’s shadows slammed him to the ground again. “Not yet.” He stalked toward him. “You still fucking touched her.”
Bash, it wasn’t him, I said through the bond.
He whipped around to look at me, his eyes still black. “I don’t care if it wasn’t him. It was still his fucking hands on you. And honestly, I should have done this the moment his fist hit the wall next to your head.”
But—
“Violet.” His voice cut through mine, sharp and unyielding. “I love you. And when someone hurts someone I love, there are consequences.”
I didn’t argue.
“This wasn’t me,” Calum said, his voice breaking. “You saw it for yourself!”
Sebastian crouched in front of him, his shadows already wrapping around Calum’s hands and wrists. “Which is precisely why you’re keeping your hands,” he said evenly. “But this still sends a message—to you, and to whatever is in your mind.”
Calum screamed as the shadows coiled tighter, the sound ripping through the air, raw and animal.
“Do not,” Sebastian said softly.
Bones broke.
“Come after what’s mine.”
His shadows released him and Calum collapsed, clutching his hands to his chest, shaking.
“I thought you were just a spineless coward following Nathara. I didn’t know you were being controlled, too.” Sebastian leaned in slightly as if he was looking through Calum. “I know you’re in there. If you want me, come fight me yourself.”
He rose and crossed the distance to me in a single stride, lifting me into his arms without hesitation.
“Now get the fuck out,” he added. “Because if I have to look at you any longer, your legs will be next.”
I watched Calum disappear as Sebastian carried me toward the castle.