CHAPTER NINETEEN
There was indeed a dent in the wall. Though the silver amulet was gone, thank the gods for that.
I stared at the chip in the crown molding for a long while, wincing at nearly every breath that moved my aching chest. Elsie had helped me get dressed, despite her protests that I should stay in bed and rest all day.
It was an effort to move any part of me, as if I had been tossed down a mountainside and thrown about like a rag doll. Everything hurt.
“I’d never seen you in so much pain.” Elsie’s bright green eyes roamed over me apprehensively as she helped me pack for my trip.
“It gets worse each time.”
“You know there’s no demon in you,” she said it as if she worried I’d started to believe there was.
“Of course not. I know that.” The weight of her gaze pressed into the fragile glass that was my body, and I wondered how bad could it really be to just tell her.
I had an awful suspicion that things were only going to get worse.
After Thomas’ death and Alaric forcing an exorcism, what I had worked so hard to keep at bay, what could I really protect anymore?
Who could I really protect? Everything seemed so far out of my reach.
“It may not be a demon, but there is something.” And I left it at that.
And though she didn’t believe in anything but what was before her eyes, I could see that she believed me.
She believed what she saw last night. I hadn’t even known she was there until she told me this morning.
* * *
“He was probably just being a gentleman. He has no doubt fled last night after leaving this house of horrors.” My mother’s eyes were filled with contempt as they landed on me over her cup of Earl Grey.
Sometimes I wondered if she genuinely thought this was all my fault.
As if I wanted to be an outcast that everyone looked down upon and no one wanted anything to do with.
I pushed around my eggs, attempting to find the will to eat. My stomach certainly felt empty, but each bite I took settled too heavily. My body too shaken to hold anything more.
“Lillian, they are to be married. He would not back out of a promise. He is an honorable man.” My eyes widened at my father’s words. It wasn’t just my mind playing tricks on me last night. Betrothed.
“I wouldn’t be so sure after what he saw. That would be enough to change anyone’s mind,” she scoffed.
And was anyone going to tell me? I was sitting right here, and no one had bothered to clue me in on my own marriage.
“Married?” My mouth hung open at my father.
“Well, certainly not now,” Mother muttered into her oatmeal.
Father looked at me for a moment before it dawned on him, before he realized he forgot to tell me. “Oh, Charlotte, of course.” By the look on his face, he finally considered me and realized I had no knowledge of this. “Sebastian had asked for your hand. I accepted of course.”
I simply gaped back at him.
“Father,” Olivia chastised. “If she doesn’t know he was probably planning for it to be a surprise, and you’ve ruined it,” she pouted.
I remained gaping in shock. Yeah, when was he going to tell me? And why would he ask for my hand?
Just then the dining room doors opened by the staff to reveal Sebastian. My gaping expression turned to him. He eyed my face, confusion flashing across his features before returning back to his perpetual blankness.
“Sebastian, I suppose you are here to end the engagement. Please, spare us the long speech. We can’t take another one.” Mother might as well have dramatically placed the back of her hand atop her forehead and fainted from exhaustion.
“Why would I do that?”
“Well, becau—I ...” she stuttered, which was quite a sight to see.
“I’ve come to retrieve Charlotte for our trip.” He paused a moment. “If you’re well enough to go?” He cocked his head slightly.
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.”
I rose from my seat and surveyed the table as I said goodbye.
To my father’s face of pride, my sister’s barely restrained giddiness, and then my mother.
I had never seen her speechless. I had never seen her mouth hang open.
I had never seen her proven wrong. And I couldn't stop the wicked delight that spread through me at the sight.
* * *
As soon as we were in the carriage on our way to the portal, or more so on our way to the edge of the Lost Woods where we would be dropped off at a beautiful inn as our cover for sneaking into the woods later, I expected Sebastian to say something.
Anything. I knew last night was hectic, maybe he didn’t catch that my father mentioned our betrothal, but my mother had outright said it just moments ago.
And we certainly never talked about this. I didn’t even have a ring on my finger.
I continued to stare at him as he looked out the window, clearly not the least bit pleased by anything he saw by the look of his bored expression.
“How long do you plan on staring at me?” His eyes remained fixed out the window.
“Really?”
At my tone he finally met my icy stare. He frowned for a second and cocked his head to the side. Good grief he was actually clueless.
“What is it?” he asked, genuinely wondering.
“Betrothed? Our engagement? When were you going to tell me, at our wedding?”
“You’re unhappy.”
I stared at him for a moment, trying to grapple with how on earth he didn’t understand me. “Why did you ask my father for my hand? We aren’t actually courting, and you just took it a step further, a step that I cannot retreat from by the way.”
He nodded once and glanced around the carriage as he collected his words.
“At the rate things were going, we would have never made it to the portal. And in your world, the man seems to have quite a bit of authority over the woman within a betrothal and a marriage.” He frowned, not liking the taste of those words.
“I figured at this point I needed to take advantage of your ... customs.”
“So, you thought if we were engaged, then you’d have more sway over my father and me?”
“Yes.”
Well, he was not wrong. I supposed this would make things easier down the road.
And it had worked. We were now finally free to make it to the portal.
But I’d be left with the aftermath, a mess I was afraid I’d never be able to clean up.
I gazed out the window at the ancient oaks sitting on the hilltops.
“When you go back home after closing the portal, I won’t just have another failed courtship but a broken engagement. I will never recover from that.”
He was silent for a moment. “At that point, everyone will know who I really am. They will see that we worked together to save their ungrateful lives.”
I shot him an expression that was less than convinced. “Sebastian, to have worked with the enemy only makes my predicament even worse.”
A devilish smirk curled his lips. “I like when you say my name.”
“Now you’ll never hear your name come from my mouth again.”
“We’ll see about that.” An ominous tone crept into his words. His gaze was so penetrating I had to look back out the window.
“I’m serious. You vampires have effectively ruined my life,” I muttered.
I gasped as he was suddenly at my side. I leaned away as he leaned in, my head hitting the soft, cushioned walls of the carriage.
He draped one of his arms over the bench behind my back, and the other pressed into the carriage wall beside my face.
He caged me in and looked down to me with an aliveness I had never seen in his eyes. A ferocity.
“Charlotte, your world is comprised of fools. Though they may hurt you, you can bring far more harm to yourself than anyone can. Don’t fall down that path.”
He was so close. His warm breath skittered across my lips. It was minty, and it left my head within a haze. I nodded slowly, unsure of what to say. My words were swallowed up by his proximity.
“Believing what they say is the second blow, hiding who you are because of it is the third, changing yourself is the fourth, and so on, until you’ve pummeled yourself into the ground. We can’t control all that is around us, but you have far more power than you think.”
I nodded again, catching myself before I leaned in any closer. He had a magnetic pull, closing the distance only felt right.
Until I remembered.
“What did you do last night?” I whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“You did something. It felt like you took away my pain.”
His eyes shifted, hiding what I couldn’t catch. “I did not take away your pain. I took away your fear. Fear influences pain. It makes it worse. I calmed you down to the point of sedation.”
“You can do that?” I whispered. Moment after moment came crashing into my head as I recalled that strange sense of calm I had felt with Sebastian and Alaric.
I reeled back, plastering my body even further against the carriage wall. But he only came closer, not allowing me to escape him.
“You controlled my emotions?” I couldn’t believe the words that left me. He went inside my head, moved stuff around, took parts of me. It was a violation.
“I cannot control emotions in the way that you are thinking.”
“Was anything real?” The words barely audible, a slip of the tongue.
A thought I hadn’t meant to reveal. A thought I had hardly even revealed to myself.
A thought I did not want to see. Were my feelings for him ever real?
If he could manipulate them, then he could bend them to his will, shape them into whatever suited him.
His eyes darkened. He leaned in even further, any closer and our lips would brush. “What do you mean?”
I shook my head slowly.