Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
Back in our room that evening, I laid sprawled on our bed, sporting a pair of Sebastian's boxers and a loose shirt. The map Archer had given me took up a good portion of the mattress, and my vision rapidly raked over the entirety of it.
“What are you looking for?” Sebastian stepped out of the washroom, steam surrounding his damp body, bare aside from a white towel wrapped at his hips and his glasses on his face.
“I figured we could use some fun. So I was looking to see where Caelestis was in comparison to Lumosia.”
The mattress sank a bit when he sat beside me, picking up a corner of the map in his hand. “I wouldn’t call visiting the ruins of Caelestis fun, but regardless, it's way too far. Too risky right now.”
I nodded. “I know. I realized that as soon as I saw the map. I just thought it would be nice if we could go to the beach like we all used to.”
He pointed to the eastern most portion of the map. “There’s shore this way. Still kind of far though, but I’m sure we could make it work if you really wanted. There's no major cities or villages that way, so it's not as risky.”
I sighed, making my disappointment obvious, then folded the map up. “No. It’s okay. It was just a random idea. Not good timing for tourism, anyway.”
“Probably not, love.” He pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. “We’ll get there someday. I promise.”
“Yeah,” I breathed out, swiftly switching topics to hide my disappointment, releasing a question that had been nagging at me for some time. “Do you ever think about your father and what happened to him after the battle?”
“I try not to,” Sebastian shot out with his next breath, though his lips formed a slight frown. “But, yeah. Sometimes. I’m sure he’s hiding out until the air clears a bit, but I dunno. I know the castle is gone, but Beaumont likely still wants him dead.”
I nodded slowly. As much as I despised Aldous Hawthorne, he gave me the man I loved with my entire being. And I hated to admit it, but he might actually be of some use in this whole mess.
Noting the rigidity of Sebastian’s body with the subject, I switched gears. “Do you really think we can trust Leighton? Like, do you think we're making the right move by sending her to Draemor alone?”
“Sometimes you have to take risks. But yeah, I do think we can trust Leighton. I know Venay proved to be less than honorable, but I believe that when she tested the integrity of others, that she knew what she was doing.”
“Ah. Yes. Five hundred people.”
His jaw tightened. “You remembered that.” He said it as a fact, not a question.
“I try my best to remember every little detail about you.”
Something between a groan and an exhale pooled from his throat.
“You don’t have to tell me about it—it doesn’t matter. I just worry about you. That's a lot of people, Seb. And what you went through in Draemor…I just worry.”
“Well, when you start killing as a child, it adds up fast.” He shrugged as if it didn’t even matter. “You have nothing to worry about. I’m perfectly fine.”
“You said that you dreamed about Draemor every night,” I pointed out, recalling what he had said that night under the stars.
“I do.”
“What do you dream about?” My eyes narrowed on him. We had never really talked about what happened to him in Draemor—he hadn't wanted to. But if I knew anything about Seb, it was that he was a master at harboring his feelings.
His mouth didn’t budge.
My fingertips explored his jaw, gently dragging his eyes into mine. “What happened to you there? What did Beaumont do to you?” My voice pinched out.
Hanging his head, his wet hair shook. “You don’t want to know, love. Truly.”
“Yes, Seb. I do. I want to know so I can support you the best I can. I don’t know if you know this, but you yell in your sleep now. Loud. And your body will thrash sometimes, like you're trying to break away from something or…someone. You never used to do that.”
His jaw ticked. “I’m fine, Maeve. It will pass like every other traumatic event I've lived through.”
“Love…” I used the pet name he always used for me, and something in his expression broke down, as if he finally allowed himself to feel what he’d been tucking away.
“I don’t want to talk about it, because if I talk about it—” He backed away slightly, turning his face from me. “I don’t want to cry in front of you.”
“Seb,” I said his name as an airy whisper of sadness. Every organ in my body screamed in pure devastation as I scooted over on the bed, closer to him. “I’ve seen you cry.”
“Yeah, and I hated it.”
My nose scrunched. “Well, I loved it.”
His brow arched.
“Not the fact that you were hurting," I clarified, “but the fact that you have feelings and are willing to share them with me. That's special. It's more intimate than anything we have done in the bedroom.”
I picked his face back up, pulling his attention back to me. “I’m not going to force you to talk about it, but if you need to—even if you just need to cry—I want to be the person you can share those feelings with. Okay?”
He nodded into my grip, and despite his claims about not wanting to cry, his eyes glossed over. “The days I spent without you were the worst days of my life. And I don’t even mean the time I spent being tortured. I mean all of the days where I could no longer call you mine.”
“I’m not that great.”
“You are perfect.”
A tear dripped from his nose, splashing silently on the duvet below us.
“Talk to me.” I prayed to the gods that he would choose to open up at that moment. I knew what happened when he held on to his emotions for too long, and I didn’t want it to get to that point.
“Fuck, how did looking at a godsdamn map turn into this?” He wiped his nose then glared up at the ceiling lights.
“Serious conversations at shitty times. Our favorite pastime.”
He huffed a laugh, then leaned into me, resting his forehead where my heart was underneath my skin.
“I’m afraid that if I tell you, it will hurt you. I don’t want you to blame yourself any more than I know you already do.”
My heart fucking shattered.
“You don’t need to hide the hard stuff from me. Remember?” I pressed my lips into his damp hair.
He blew air through his nose, then said into my chest. “It was worse every day I spent there. More strikes with a chain. More beatings. More cuts and bruises and broken bones. Every time I thought something was healing, he made the wound ten times worse. I’m sure you've seen them, but I have plenty of scars to remember every single thing that happened when I was there.”
My stomach twisted into a knot so tight I was unsure if I’d ever be able to eat again.
“And that's as much as I feel like getting into it, if that's okay with you,” Sebastian finished with a heavy breath, finally pulling his head out of my embrace.
I nodded through my queasiness, noting the small spot of wetness on my shirt from where his eyes had laid. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“Thank you for letting me.”
Leaning forward, I brushed my mouth against his. “I love you. I’m so sorry.”
I’m so sorry that you were brutally tortured because of me.
He broke our kiss to say, “I’m just glad it was me and not you,” then resumed it in a hungrier fashion.
Despite the moment not being home to the greatest conversation, the intimacy that clouded our room was to die for. We hadn’t had this in so long, and it felt so godsdamn good to be able to share something so sacred with him.
Unhurriedly, he pressed me back onto the mattress and lowered himself over me, deepening the angle of our kiss and the soft thrusts of his tongue between my lips.
My arms found their way around his neck, locking under the base of his hair and pulling him closer to me.
Our mouths curved together perfectly, devouring each other in a way that was much less frantic than our usual kisses. It was gentle and sweet. It was a kiss of pure love and devotion. Nothing more and nothing less.
At that moment, I knew. I just knew.
Everything we had been through had brought us here. Every stupid little argument. The bigger fights. The breakup. The stupid mistakes. The trauma. All of it led us here, and I couldn't be more grateful to the gods.
He was the man I would marry, godswilling. The man who would father my children. The one who would support me when things were tough. We would be at each other's bedside when one of us was ready to cross over, holding hands while the other drew their final breath.
He was the one I would run to with open arms beyond the veil.
Sebastian Hawthorne was it for me. He always had been.