Chapter Forty-Eight #2
‘I know that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still feel guilty for the way I behaved.
This is my last year at Valmora Academy.
You still have three years, Ria. By the time you’re out, I could be halfway across the continent.
There’s a ticking clock above us, one that will send me away from the academy, away from you.
So I can’t sit here and give you words that I’m not ready to take back if I’m forced to. I won’t do that to you.’
‘What about what I want? Do I get a say in this before you tell me how you’re trying to protect me again?’ I twist away from the hand he reaches between us. I hate it, the distance. But I need him to know how serious this is.
‘Of course you do,’ he insists.
‘Good. Because I want this. Whatever we are now. Whoever we are now. I like how you make me feel, Sebastian. When you’re not being an asshole, that is.
’ A small smile curves his lips. ‘I have spent my entire life trying to measure up, to be good enough to be seen. You were the first person that looked past my brother and found me. When put in front of us both, you looked at me first. No one did that. Ever. I was always an afterthought.’
‘I always saw you, Ria. Even when I didn’t want to because the thought of you drove me fucking insane. I still saw you in my head, like your face was carved there, right behind my eyes.’
I feel raw. Like someone’s cut into my skin and I’m bleeding out, showing him the most vulnerable parts of me: my insecurities about not being good enough or wanted or loved.
‘Then keep seeing me,’ I plead. ‘Keep finding me in a room full of people, just like you did on Ceremony Day. You found me, all the way in the back row with my hood pulled over my head. You. Found. Me. So please, don’t push me away again.
’ His eyes are twin pools of emotion. I want to swim in them and get lost forever.
Fuck the academy. I want to be here. In the green liquid of his gaze. I’d drown in them if I could.
‘I won’t,’ he declares, voice unyielding. He reaches forward and pulls me toward him.
My arms wrap around him as his weave beneath mine.
‘We’ll make it work,’ he kisses my temple, then pulls back so we’re eye to eye. ‘I see you, Ria. Always have, always will,’ he whispers.
‘I see you, Sebastian.’ I lean forward and kiss him.
I pour everything I am into it. Every ache and fragment of want and need and desire. Screw the consequences. I’m allowed to grieve for my brother. I can follow my father’s orders. And I am allowed this – him – something that is solely mine. Something untouched by the will of others.
Lukas may have been the reason our paths initially crossed, but some resolute part of me feels like we would have found each other once I got here anyway.
Ever since Ceremony Day I have shoved all my previous feelings toward Sebastian into a box and thrown away the key.
All those precious moments I shared with him and Lukas were hidden, stored where I couldn’t touch them.
Now though, it feels like the door to the vault has been blown open, and all those memories have been coming back to me in fragmented pieces over the past few days.
Reminding me that Sebastian isn’t the person who hurt me when I got here.
That was an act, a mask that he wore. And Stars, he wore it well.
Although, I saw cracks in his mask – glimpses of my Sebastian.
I don’t think he even knew. Like when I found him making my bed with fresh linen after he found out I had none.
Or when he carried me after Moira attacked me and stayed until I woke.
When he gave me a dagger and a way to conceal it to help me feel safe in my own skin again.
All these little things didn’t match up with the person he was trying to be and maybe some part of me knew that all along.
Maybe that’s why it feels so alarmingly easy to let myself fall into him like this.
Eventually I break our kiss and rest my forehead on his chest, savouring the feeling of being wrapped in his arms.
Having Sebastian in this way carries its own kind of guilt. Letting him hold me, kiss me, whisper against my skin. I imagine what Lukas would do if he were here and caught us wrapped up in each other’s embrace like this.
I also need to tell Sebastian about my plan with Tilly and Xavier, and about what my father asked of me. The duty I’ve felt bound to since I arrived. Finally, we’re both being honest with each other, instead of hiding behind masks and walls of indifference. But … I can’t seem to do it.
Everything that has happened between us, past and present, has been free of my brother’s reach. Perhaps it’s selfish, but part of me wants to keep it that way for just a while longer.
I’ll tell him eventually, I reason, because I have questions that I feel only he can answer.
Between what I’ve learned from Jed, Lillian and Professor Fern, the pieces in my head have started to slot into place and paint a different picture of what I thought Lukas was like.
But also, they have reaffirmed for me that he is innocent.
He was wronged by someone here. Blamed for dark magic he had no hand in.
I’m not sure if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but when I get into Agate, I’m determined to scour through every dark grimoire possible to find a spell that matches what happened in the Grand Hall at the beginning of the year.
I won’t tell him what I know now because I want the evidence first. I want to stand in front of him with hard facts to point to, because maybe there’s still a part of me that’s scared he won’t be on my side with this.
I’ve never outright asked him if he believes Lukas is innocent, but he’s never said as much either.
Just that he loved him and they were close.
Though there have been little things that made me suspect it. Not in the beginning, but now … maybe.
Jed, I am sure of. I think if I told him what I had planned he would support it – hell, he’d probably help me if I asked him to. Not that I would. Having Tilly and Xavier in the firing line already fills me with unease.
I won’t add anyone else into this mess.
I decide right here that I want to be selfish. What we have right now is new, yet not. Fragile, yet there is strength in the way he holds me. A comfort I have found only with him and no one else. Not ever.
One week. I will be selfish for one more week, until the Imber Stellarum celebration.