Chapter 19 Sebastian
Sebastian
The palace had rebuilt itself.
But everything else felt broken.
We sat at the same table as the night before, sunlight spilling across polished surfaces that hadn’t existed hours ago, and still the air sat wrong.
Alastor sat beside Violet, wrapping her hand with careful, practiced movements. Bruising spread up her wrist and across her knuckles, dark and blooming, stubborn in a way that made my jaw lock. The bones had already begun to knit, but healing didn’t erase what had been done.
I stared at her throat. At the five distinct marks of a hand that should have never been near her. Every time I blinked, his hand was there again like my mind had decided it would not let me forget for even a second what I had almost lost.
My shadows pressed against the walls, restless, coiling and uncoiling in slow, violent pulses. They didn’t like that I had stopped them. They wanted blood.
They wanted Calum.
And gods, I wanted to give him to them.
The urge sat sharp in my chest. End him. End the problem. End the threat before it could reach her again. My fingers curled slightly against the table.
Alastor tied off the bandage. “Grip.”
Violet flexed her hand around his wrist, and she winced. The table creaked under my hand before I realized I’d tightened my grip.
I forced myself to loosen it. Forced my voice to stay level when I said, “Why were you out there?”
Her eyes met mine.
Held.
Then slipped away toward the window.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I woke up and..” Her brow furrowed slightly. “I don’t know. I just went. It was instinct.”
Instinct.
No.
That wasn’t instinct.
Instinct doesn’t override caution. It doesn’t erase awareness. It doesn’t make someone leave without waking the person sleeping beside them—someone who would have followed without question.
I was still trying to think past the small, savage joy the thought of killing Calum would have bought me—planning what would be left of his body and how much less the desert would stink of treachery afterward—my shadows surged.
I forced them back.
“Theron,” I said, not taking my eyes off Violet, “leave.”
He hesitated, and looked at her. She nodded once. He left without a word, the door shutting behind him with a quiet click. Violet drew in a breath, causing her to tense at the movement, and something inside me snapped tight again.
“And I didn’t even think to wake you,” she said. “I should have. I know I should have. But the thought wasn’t there.”
My shadows lifted along the baseboards. I didn’t answer right away because the first thing that rose in my throat had no place at this table, not with her sitting across from me already trying to make sense of something that should not have happened.
When I did speak, my voice was as controlled as I could make it. “And now?”
Violet exhaled, her shoulders pulling in just slightly. “Now that I think about it… it scares me.”
Scares me.
I was barely keeping control. “What exactly did you feel?”
She hesitated. “Calm. Peaceful. Like everything was fine.” Her brows pulled together. “Almost… numb.”
A curse slipped under my breath before I could stop it. “Baby, someone touched your mind, too.”
Alastor’s eyes darkened, his focus sharpening. “Who?”
I shook my head once. “I don’t know.”
Violet’s shoulders slumped. She was still just as confused about all of this.
Adar had gone still in that way that meant he was already three steps ahead, already thinking in terms of threat and response.
Alastor’s hands pressed harder into the table, the fabric wrinkling beneath his grip, knuckles blanching.
I dragged a hand down my face, forcing myself to stay in the space of logic instead of letting instinct take over. Instinct would have me tearing through every realm until I found the one responsible. Logic would find them faster.
“Bash. What did you mean by Nathara being controlled?”
I stilled. I didn’t realize she had heard me.
For a second, I considered deflecting. Delaying. Letting it sit until I had something more concrete than a feeling and a pattern I didn’t fully understand.
But she heard me. And now I had her, Adar, and Alastor staring at me.
“When Nathara—” I exhaled slowly. “When Nathara and Lilian tried to kill me and take the throne… she said they were only doing what they were told.”
The memory sharpened as I spoke it, dragging itself forward whether I wanted it to or not. I saw Violet’s expression shift as the pieces clicked into place even before I finished.
“So I went into her head,” I continued. “I expected to find an order. A voice. A command. Anything I could follow back to whoever gave it.” My jaw tightened slightly. “I expected intention.”
I paused, choosing the next words carefully.
“Instead, there was nothing.”
Violet didn’t move.
“It wasn’t identical to what I saw in Calum,” I said. “The structure was different. But the absence of something…” I shook my head once. “It was the same.”
Silence followed, pressing in from all sides. Adar’s jaw flexed once, the only sign of movement from him. Alastor exhaled slowly, like he was forcing himself to stay calm.
“You never told me,” Violet said.
Her voice wasn’t accusing. That made it worse.
“Because I didn’t understand it,” I said, and there was no point softening it now. “and I thought that whoever it was would back off. I never thought they would come after you. Not like that.”
Alastor swore under his breath. “I heard her that day,” he muttered. “Didn’t realize you heard it too.”
Violet’s gaze locked on the window. Her skin had gone pale beneath the bruising at her throat. She looked… unsettled.
A shadow brushed along her shoulder. “I need to see,” I said.
She just nodded.
I knelt in front of her, bringing myself level with her. My hand found her thigh first, grounding me, but her eyes stayed on the window. I could feel through the bond how upset she was that I didn’t tell her.
“Look at me,” I said. Gods, I hoped no one else heard the plea in my voice.
When she didn’t, I brushed my fingers along her jaw, careful of the bruising. She turned to me then, and the moment my palm settled against her skin, the world narrowed.
The memory opened before I could think to prepare for it.
Her waking—soft light sliding across the bed, the quiet of the palace holding still around her. The sense of something just beneath the surface, unnoticed until it wasn’t. That shift—
A voice.
I stilled inside the memory, tracking it, trying to pin it down, but it wasn’t something I could grab. I heard it. But I didn’t recognize it, and I couldn’t see where it came from.
She moved without an inkling as to why.
My grip tightened slightly against her skin in the real world.
She walked through the corridors, through doors that opened before her fingers touched them, through light that guided instead of illuminated.
Then the desert air wrapped around her.
Then Calum.
I watched it unfold through her eyes—the calm in her voice, the steadiness when she told him she loved me. The way he broke, not all at once, but in pieces that didn’t fit together right.
And then—
His hand.
The moment his fingers closed around her wrist—
I felt it again, only this time it wasn’t the muted pain felt through the bond. It was the full extent that she endured. The bone giving. The sharp, sickening crack. The way her breath tore and then—
Nothing.
His hand at her throat.
The absence of air.
The silence where her voice should have been.
Something in me snapped.
My shadows in the present surged, slamming hard enough against the edges of the room that glass shattered, Adar cursed, and the ground shook, but I didn’t pull out.
I forced myself to stay in it and watch. I needed to see everything. Because if there was something there—something hidden—I needed to see it.
But there was nothing.
Just that same emptiness where something should be.
And then—
Me.
The way my shadows hit him. The force of it. The violence I had barely contained.
The need to kill him.
It was still there.
Still just as sharp.
I tore myself out of the memory.
The room snapped back into place, only now the windows were shattered. And Alastor and Adar were on the floor.
Whether it was my shadows or just them avoiding my shadows, I wasn’t sure.
My hand was still on her face, my thumb pressed too firmly against her skin, like I needed to remind myself she was still whole. My jaw was locked tight enough it ached. I forced my hand to ease, my thumb brushing once, grounding instead of gripping.
“Well?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. The words sat wrong in my mouth. “It’s not the same as Calum. But there’s still a piece missing in both.”
I was supposed to protect her.
I fucking failed.
“I didn’t question it enough with Nathara,” I said.
“I should have.” The admission tasted bitter, but I let it sit.
“But now—seeing it again with Calum… And the fact that they got to you at all.” My shadows shifted along the floor.
I couldn’t lose control. I had to focus on the only thread I had. “Did you recognize the voice?”
“What voice?” It was barely above a whisper.
“Gods, Vi. You didn’t hear it? It said come and don’t wake him.”
“I—I don’t remember.”
My shadows were sliding up the walls now and my grip on control was slipping again.“We need to get home.”