CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After lunch, Sebastian dragged me down the hall and refused to answer any of my questions.
We stopped before a door, and he swung it open, finally releasing me from his troll grip.
I peeked inside the room. Cool light poured in from the window lined wall, creating a reflective pool on the pale wooden floors.
The room was littered with drawing tables, easels with unfinished works upon them, paints of every color imaginable, and brushes of every size. I eyed him suspiciously.
“You only have this moment, Charlotte. You can’t wait for the world to change. You can’t wait for yourself either.” He stared me down as if he was prepared to catch me if I tried to escape.
Aching muscles, gasping breaths, and dead ends flooded my head as I remembered that night.
When I ran, and he chased me. A twisted part of me wanted to run right now.
But this gesture seemed too intimate to spoil.
And a lump formed in my throat as I realized it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for me, certainly the most thoughtful. Others rarely ever thought of me.
I stepped into the room, to the easel with the blank canvas right before the windows. Paints and brushes were set up beside it, right next to an empty palette. I sat hesitantly atop the stool. I had never painted before. I’d always just admired Olivia as she painted. I didn’t even really know how.
I glanced back to Sebastian who had sat behind me to my left, his arms crossed over his broad chest, looking awfully close to some guard making sure I completed my work. I wasn’t going to get out of this one.
I looked out to the window, to the lush garden and the heavenly mountains beyond. I squeezed out the thick paint onto the palette, an arrangement of colors before me. I picked up a random brush, dipping it into a sky blue, and I let out a breath as I pushed the color into canvas.
Shadows moved about the room as the sun made its way across the sky. The room grew dim. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it had been a lot since I was losing light. Sebastian had been watching me silently the entire time. His eyes remained on my painting.
At best, it appeared like an impressionistic depiction of a landscape. The vague depiction of a sky, mountains, green blobs that could be hedges, colorful spots that could be flowers. At worst, it was just a bunch of colors stacked on top of each other lost to the canvas and unable to take shape.
I looked to Sebastian who was still staring intently at the painting. He finally met my gaze, his eyes unfocused at first as if he were actually within my blobby world and had to adjust to reality. “Are you finished?”
I glanced over the painting once more. “Yes.”
He stood and picked up the painting, leaving the room without a word. Confused, I trailed after him. Once we were back in his rooms, he hung the painting. The nail had already been placed, in between two windows near what appeared to be a reading nook at the corner of the room.
“You don’t have to keep it,” I murmured.
Without taking his eyes off the painting, he said, “I want to.”
And I looked to the smudges and swirls of colors, something I had made.
Something that was a part of me, and it was on display.
When everyone, including myself, only wanted to hide me.
Or distract others from who I truly was.
No one had ever put me on display before.
I’d think he was just pitying me, but what turned in his eyes was more believable than any words.
It was a sense of awe. And I knew for damn sure it was not the quality of the painting. He was looking at what only he could see. And I wondered what it was.
* * *
“Are you going to get into bed, or are you just going to stare at me all night?” He said flatly with dead eyes.
I was leaning against the sofa before the bed, twisting the silk hem of my nightdress between my fingers, wondering if I had completely lost it.
I wasn’t used to such tenderness, such care, such attention.
And the last way I’d ever think Sebastian would treat me was tenderly.
An uneasiness skittered across my bones at his gentleness.
How he seemed to cradle bits of me when everyone else had only thrown me about not minding if I cracked.
I was already damaged anyway. It was only expected that I broke.
His care put me on edge. I couldn't understand it. And he was supposed to be the enemy, right? He was supposed to hunt me down like a predator. I should have been nothing more than prey to him.
I took a slight step back.
And it was enough to make him still.
“What are you doing?” His tone grew deeper. A warning intertwined through each word.
My breath caught as I recognized what flashed before his eyes. Fear. I took another step back, and he sat up straighter. Why was he afraid? I didn’t like that. What was hidden within his fear? Where did it come from? And what did it mean?
Another step, and he was standing.
He was only in his fitted black sleep shorts.
Every muscle tensed, poised to strike.
I took another step back. He matched it automatically, his control lost to primal instinct. Was this cruel of me?
“Charlotte,” he ground out. “What the hell are you doing?”
You wouldn’t hurt me.
My words from last night rattled about my head.
He was supposed to hurt me.
I was his prey. He was the predator. That was all I had known. What my world embedded deep within me. I was taught to kill vampires on sight. I was taught they would do the same to me. That was my life, a life among demons. How could it be any different?
I ran.
I shrieked at the growl that tore through the air.
I moved my legs as fast as I possibly could, flinging open the door and barreling down the dimly lit hall.
My feet slapped against the cold marble.
He was silent behind me, which was only more terrifying.
How someone as giant as him could be silent should not have been possible, maybe it was another one of his abilities. A silent hunter.
It was well into the night. The halls were quiet save for my ragged breaths and pounding steps.
I eyed each closed door, not wanting to risk checking if they were unlocked.
He was close behind. I knew he could have already caught me by now.
I shouldn’t have even made it out of the room.
He was playing. That primal part of him needed the chase.
I slipped through a darkened threshold. It was a sitting room.
Only the faint silver glow of the moon highlighted the shadowed shapes of the room.
I held out my hands in front of me, grazing them along the furniture that could take me out if I wasn’t careful.
A low growl reverberated against my bones.
Sebastian entered the room, sidestepping slowly.
His eyes fixed on me under a hooded brow.
There he was. The hunter. That was what he was supposed to be.
And he should stalk me. He should near closer with calculated precision, with that hunger in his eyes.
An arrangement of sofas and chairs separated us.
We circled them. He matched every step I took.
My chest tightened at the idea that he could lunge at any moment, he was certainly poised to.
I glanced around the room. There were no other doors, and I wouldn’t have time to open a window. I was trapped.
I stepped to the side. He neared closer.
We were bridging the gap, closing the distance.
Just as he was at arms length, I bolted in the opposite direction.
I threw down a heavy armchair right as he was about to intercept me.
He leapt over it. I squealed at his proximity, at how close he nearly came to capturing me.
I ran down the hall once more. My lungs burned, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. Giant double doors stood tall at the end of the hall. It was a dead end, and I had to go through them, no matter where they led to. I prayed it wasn’t someone’s bedroom.
I burst through the doors to find another massive corridor lined at either side with rows and rows of towering bookshelves.
A library. I had to force myself to keep moving, to not take in the expansive magnificence of it all.
The arched ceiling was dotted with exquisitely jeweled chandeliers and appeared to be painted with a mural that I couldn’t quite make out in the dark.
I chanced a look behind me and nearly fell to the floor along with the blood that drained from my face.
He wasn’t there. I slowly turned back to the empty corridor before me.
Each step brought me to a new intersection between the aisles of shelves.
He could be at my left or my right. Each turn of my head sparked another surge of electricity that burned through me.
And the dreadful silence pressed into me from every angle.
My mouth opened, a stifled squeak escaping as I silenced the scream.
A shadow moved down the corridor, peering out from one of the aisles.
He wanted me to see him. And before I could gather what little bravery I had left or wonder what I had gotten myself into, I screamed at the arms that wrapped around me in an ironclad grip.
I kicked and flailed my legs wildly, digging my nails into his arms. He grunted as he tightened his grip. I managed to reel my elbow back as hard as I could, getting him in the stomach. He growled but released me, and I took off again without looking back.
I turned sharply down an aisle, and right as I cleared it, a hard wall came at me from the side, knocking the breath out of me. This time he was not letting go.