Chapter 39
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
After my self-sacrificial plans, as Sebastian and Sawyer called them, were shot down, I sat in the armchair in my room, skimming a classic novel Sebastian had been trying to get me to read for months.
Plan number one and two didn’t go over well, but plan number three had definitely frightened them the most. I tried to explain that I didn’t want to die, but when I was the common denominator that created all our problems, it seemed like the smartest answer.
The conversation ended with Sawyer storming off angry and Sebastian and I bickering a bit more about the situation before I decided to return to our room.
Actually, the more I thought about it, angry didn't even fully describe how Sawyer reacted. He reminded me of how he acted when he came to see me after Lucan attacked me—like he was disguising his fear by being a dick.
Sawyer didn’t understand that part of me—the part of my brain that was constantly telling me to give up. Sebastian, did.
“Stupid controlling assholes,” I mumbled to myself.
It was painfully obvious that the Draemornian who had followed Leighton ratted us out when he returned home.
And if I had a guess, there would be more Hykahs here in due time—probably Beaumont, too.
At least now we knew how to kill them—and that they even could be killed—and I was thrilled that Kohen’s whole god theory was off.
“I heard that,” Sebastian called out from the washroom. He walked out with just a towel tied around his waist, his black hair wet and ruffled.
“Good.” I licked the tip of my finger and used it to flip the page of my book. “Dick,” I mumbled, knowing he’d hear that, too.
Water dripped from his tanned skin when he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at me. I ignored his steady gaze and continued reading.
“How’s the book?”
“Fine.”
He shook his hair out before messing it up some more with his hands. “What chapter are you on?”
“Five.”
“It’s about to get good.”
“Why? Does chapter six have a dirty sex scene in it?”
Sebastian chuckled, the innocence in the sound strumming something inside of me. “No. That's not until chapter eight.”
When he turned his back to me, I skipped to chapter eight, just to see if he was being truthful, and gods…I now understood why people read this stuff.
I slammed the pages closed when my view of his back switched for an up close spectacle of the hard mounds of his chest and abs.
“Bath is still warm. Want to wash some of that Hykah blood off, or are there any other surfaces in our room you want to rub it on first?”
Dipping my eyes to the armchair, I noted the red stains from the blood soaked into my clothes.
Not responding, I laid the book on one of the arms, then ripped my shirt off. Holding the fabric in the air between two fingers, I let go, dropping it onto the floor. “Better?”
“Still upset I see?” Sebastian blinked slowly, then added in my silence. “Fine. If I’m so horrible for not wanting you to hand yourself over to our enemy so you can’t be turned into a mutant or killed, then I can live with that.”
I rolled my eyes, then adjusted my position to cover my bra with my knees.
He started towards his wardrobe. “You know, if anyone should be upset right now, it’s me.”
I glared at him over the book. “Why?”
“Because it absolutely devastates me that you really think we would be better off without you.” He turned towards me, flashing me a brief glimpse of his nudity before stepping into a pair of lounge pants.
That brief glimpse was almost enough to make me slam my book.
Almost.
He sauntered towards me, hovering over where I sat.
“It bothers me that you want to risk your life, and that you are so insistent on throwing it around like it is worthless.” He took the book from my hands and tossed it to the floor.
“It is far from worthless. Your life is the most valuable thing I have the pleasure of owning.”
My eyes dilated. “You don’t own me,” I scoffed, scrunching my forehead.
Sebastian chuckled a deep, seductive sound. “Really? Because I think I recall you agreeing that you were mine last time you had my cock in your mouth.”
My entire body stilled at the filth of his words.
“I’m calling your bluff right now, because there is no way I was speaking while I was doing…that.”
A cocky smirk settled upon his lips. “No. But you nodded when I made the claim, and then if I remember correctly, you took me even deep—”
“If you think you're getting any today, then you're dead wrong,” I snapped, fighting back every temptation the view of his abdomen was granting me.
He shrugged with a tantalizing wink. “Hykah blood doesn’t do it for me, anyways. Not really my kink.”
My eyes rolled in tune with the shake of my head. He was right though—I smelt like rotting Hykah.
I palmed his chest, pushing him away so I could stand up, then started for the washroom.
His voice paused me in my tracks.
“You know I love you, right?” His expression softened, and all of the teasing vanished from his tone.
“I just want to keep you safe. I need to. And the idea that you feel like we would be better off without you…it breaks my heart, Maeve. If something happens to you—by your own hand or anyone else’s—I—” He had to stop when his voice started to break.
I nodded through my regret at even coming up with the plan in the first place.
“I know. I love you, too. I just feel so guilty about everything lately that I can't help but think that the only way to fix it is by doing what Beaumont wants—to an extent, of course. I’m not letting him turn me into one of those things no matter how hard he tries.”
He stepped towards me, and I let him take my hands in his. He held them to his chest, where my own pulse matched the beat of his heart.
“Please don’t feel guilty for being a victim of your own mind. It’s me you're talking to. If anyone understands how you feel, I do. Do you think I haven’t thought about what the world would be like without me in it? Because I have. In fact, I did often until I met you.”
“The world would not be better off without Crown Prince Hawthorne,” I taunted amidst my sniffles.
Sebastian smirked. “The world would not be better off without your stubbornness and attitude.”
A genuine smile found its way onto my face.
“And as for all the other stuff that has happened,” his thumb ran over the veins on my wrist, “you don’t need to feel any guilt for that, either. Give all that pain to me; I will happily take it from you.”
My lips knitted to the side and my gaze deepened on the details of his skin. “I really, really love you, Sebastian.”
He smiled a glorious, life-altering smile. “I really, really love you. And I would kiss you right now, but you have Hykah blood right above your lips.” He dropped one of my hands to poke the spot he spoke about.
I stole a kiss anyway, then made for the washroom.
“Oh, and in regard to owning you,” he called out after me, making my heart flutter as I turned around. “When you’re ready, I’ll show you exactly what parts of your body I meant.”
I was so exhausted after our Hykah endeavor that I fell asleep in the bath, my cheek squished against the side of the washbasin. Sebastian had scooped me out at some point, drying my body before tucking me into bed and taking up residence beside me.
I only knew this however, because when I awoke during the middle of the night with my skin coated in a panicked sweat, I realized that there was no clothing surrounding my body.
Sebastian startled and shot upright at the pitch of my shriek. “What’s wrong!”
My breathing hitched, my lungs seemingly drying up. “Bad dream,” I forced out.
He scooted against the headboard and pulled me into his lap while keeping me covered with a sheet. “About?”
I could hardly even remember what the nightmare was about, but my body remembered. It clung to the feeling of terror and linked it to my brain, stacking it with an overwhelming urge to panic.
And for the first time in a while, the panic won. It consumed every cell in my body, replacing normal bodily function with my flight-or-fight response.
My breathing turned voluntary, forceful and labored. Stinging with each inhale.
I had made so much progress over the past year with my anxiety, but with everything that had happened since my first encounter with Beaumont and with Blythe, I was due for a good relapse.
I thought more about my plans, specifically plan three, and the more I considered what I was truly offering, the more I realized how Sebastian was right.
I was offering myself as a sacrificial lamb, and for what?
My death wouldn’t truly make things easier for my loved ones—being gone would only make things easier for me.
My eyes welled, but I looked up at the orb lights, using the brightness to dry the tears up.
“Love?”
“Mm.”
“Why are you crying?” Sebastian reached over me, using his bent arm to pull me back into his chest. “You are safe. I’m here with you. Always.”
“I just—” I choked on the harshness of my breaths. “I thought I was getting better,” I squeaked out amidst the cracks in my voice, the words nothing more than airy sobs as the brutal truth tore my heart in half.
“What do you mean, getting better?”
“I haven't felt the motivational pull to just…let go, for years. I know I may seem like a mess to most of you, but I’ve been better the past year. I swear. Way better than I used to be.” I had to pause to avoid suffocating on a blubbering sob.
“I don’t know what's wrong with me. Why is my brain so broken beyond repair?” I covered my mouth with my palm to try and muffle the instability of my breathing. “I thought I was better.”
Sometimes you don’t see the madness of the shadows until you're already completely lost in the darkness.