Chap 31
-WARNING this chapter involves a rape -
The palace slowly disappeared behind them.
Swallowed by cliffs.
Ancient trees.
Distance.
Sebastian and Penny followed a narrow trail through the forest, farther from the garden and castle than she had ever been allowed to wander.
Then the trees opened.
The sea stretched endlessly below.
Blue.
Silver.
Beautiful.
The salt wind struck her face.
And for a moment she simply stood there.
Breathing.
Home.
The word rose inside her so suddenly it hurt.
Her mother's hands.
Fishing boats rocking in the harbor.
The smell of seaweed drying on the shore.
The songs of her village.
The magic she had only begun to understand.
Sebastian had said there were boats.
Real boats.
Waiting just beyond the next ridge.
She could leave.
The thought hit her so hard she stopped walking.
She could leave all of it.
The prophecies.
The palace.
The kings.
The princes.
The ancient bones that trapped young women into marriages.
The old magic that collected husbands the way children collected shells.
She could simply go home.
The temptation was so strong it made her chest ache.
Then another thought followed.
A dangerous one.
If she left...
Who would she be leaving behind?
The king.
Wade.
Evander.
Even Sebastian.
Penny frowned.
That answer should have been easy.
It wasn't.
Sebastian tugged gently on her hand.
Breaking the thought apart.
They continued along the trail until they reached an old stone well nestled beneath leaning cedar trees.
Moss climbed the ancient stones.
Flowering vines wrapped around weathered beams.
The sort of place that looked as though it belonged in a story.
Sebastian reached the well.
Then immediately folded in half.
His hands braced against the stones.
His shoulders heaved.
His hair clung to his forehead.
Penny blinked.
The prince took another dramatic breath.
Then another.
Then another.
She looked back at the trail.
Then at him.
Then back at the trail.
Had he really become exhausted walking a hill?
Sebastian pointed at her accusingly between breaths.
"You..."
Gasp.
"Climb..."
Another gasp.
"Entirely too many things."
He straightened slowly.
Still catching his breath.
His gaze swept the trail behind them.
Watching.
Waiting.
Penny felt it through the bond.
Worry.
The same unease she had felt leaving the palace.
As though something might be following them.
That little tug of warning returned.
She glanced back toward the trees.
Nothing.
Just sunlight and shadows.
When she turned back, Sebastian had stepped closer.
His hand lifted to her hair.
The sunlight caught in the golden strands.
For a moment he simply looked at her.
Like he was trying to memorize her.
Then he took a step forward.
Penny smiled.
And took a step back.
The rough wooden beam of the well pressed against her shoulders.
Sebastian's head tilted.
His hand found her waist.
And he kissed her.
Softly.
Tentatively.
The kiss lasted barely a heartbeat.
Then another followed.
And another.
Small kisses.
Careful kisses.
The kind given by a man trying very hard to do everything right.
Penny couldn't help it.
She giggled.
Sebastian immediately pulled back.
His face fell.
"You laughed."
Penny blinked.
"What?"
"You laughed."
The prince looked absolutely wounded.
"Was I that bad?"
Penny stared at him.
Then laughed again.
"That answers the question."
"No."
Penny grabbed his sleeve before he could retreat.
"I wasn't laughing at you."
His expression remained unconvinced.
Penny stepped closer.
Sebastian froze.
"You think I am not as experienced as my brother or that merman?"
"I was giggling at how happy I feel right now."
She said, but his face still was clouded.
The look on his face changed from hurt to hard determination.
His hands grabbing her shoulders did surprise her.
When he pinned her against the rough wooden support beam that cut into the back of her that did worry her.
And when the old cedar bit through the velvet of her gown,
pressing splinters against her spine,
She realized she might have made a mistake.
Her gasp was swallowed at once by his mouth,
Greedy and searing,
Tasting of honeyed wine that was giving him this courage.
Her hands pushed at him trying to get him off her.
When his lips finally came up for air she pleaded.
"Please Seb, don't do this."
"Have my wife?"
He said as all the frustration that had been pushed down boiled up
"Have her after she has been passed around like book, or plate of treats, or."
His words trailed off as he words failed to convey his feeling of having to share her.
"Please let's just go back to the castle, you and I in your room, alone." She pleaded.
"Please stop."
Prince Sebastian paused a moment then shook his head.
"No someone always interrupts us."
His hands gathered fistfuls of velvet at her waist,
Moving her skirt so he could press himself harder against her,
Shuddering as his fingers dug into her waist.
Her own fingers found the grain of the old post and held on.
She kept her eyes closed and thought of the sea below the cliffs,
Of the smell of her mother's hair,
Of the shore she had not stood on in so long she could no longer remember exactly how the sand felt beneath her feet.
She tried not to think of the garden.
All the laughing teasing flowers.
The mermaid Alyrina swimming along in her lake.
The haunting sea prince Wade, who made her mad and laugh often in the same breath.
The crown prince Evander who had courted her even though she had recognized the formal steps he took.
The general Roku that had been the lost child of Alyrina now a general in a kingdom far from his mother's homeland.
And the king Silvanus that still searched in his sleep for her, reaching for her.
She refused to measure this moment against what it should have been.
She did not hate Sebastian for it.
She felt his desperation as his mouth claimed hers again.
The bond opened up as he groaned into her mouth.
She saw the lost boy who had been told by his mother, his whole life that he was lesser.
She saw Kaida laugh at him when he asked for his needs.
She heard the harsh words that the blood running through his veins made him small.
She felt all his humiliation through the magic that bound them.
She did not hate him for it.
She simply waited for it to be over.
"Better than my brother yet?"
Then his grip shifted.
He swept her up by the waist and perched her on the rim of the well.
Cold stone pressed through moss and soaked through her gown instantly.
Her hands shot out to steady herself, crumbled green lichen breaking beneath her fingers,
the black throat of the well yawning open beneath her.
"Sebastian please this is not what you want."
He spread her knees.
"You are all I want"
Lifted her skirt, then ripped the cheaper velvet of the commoners easily, to split open to show her bare legs clenching the side of the well.
"Don't you understand, I love you."
Something cold moved through her that had nothing to do with the stone or the air that now flowed over her skin. The well felt ancient and unstable under her. Terror that she would fall if she let go and pushed him away was a real possibility.
"This isn't love Sebastian."
Sebastian's hands gripped her bare thighs painfully.
He pulled her forward until the edge of the stone dug into her legs, and the well yawned beneath her like an open mouth.
"Do you know they never let me have a flower, because I am human."
He murmured against her neck, voice dropping into something low and raw and long-held.
He pushed himself hard into her again.
As her words dropped.
"You mean by your mother."
The words landed like stones dropped into still water.
His body moved punishing her for her disparaging his mother.
The magic answered distracting her.
She felt the years he had grown up in the cold palace under his mother's tutelage.
Every table she had made him be seated below his brothers.
Every laugh at his expense when she mocked him being human.
Every reminder his mother had cast on him that he did not quite belong to the world he had been born into.
She heard it all through the magic pulling them together.
The sound of her bodice ripping pulled her away from the images of his life.
She looked down at the gown ripped from top to bottom.
Like an opened book, for him to enjoy.
While she clung to the edge of the dangerously old well.
He collapsed against her, his body spent.
She felt the guilt swelling inside of him.
"Seb, why?"
The word came out before she had fully chosen it.
She shook her head, as she made a choice.
She let go of the safety of the well wall and pressed her palms flat against his heaving chest.
Beneath her hands, she could feel the embroidered pattern of his vest, the hard little ridges of silver thread.
Sebastian pulled back just far enough to look at her.
"Why?"
It came out soft, almost gentle, almost amused.
As though she had said something endearing and slightly foolish.
His jaw tightened.
The afternoon light caught the pale edges of his face as something shifted behind his eyes.
For a moment he looked like the son of the queen.
"You belong to me."
His fingers closed around her chin, tilting her face upward.
"By the king's own word. By magic itself."
His mouth found hers again.
With bruising force.
This time there was nothing in it that resembled the boy who had whispered about first kisses under the flowering trees.
His body slammed hard into her, again.
She twisted hard away from him,
Her palms pushing against the solid wall of his chest,
Her heels scraping uselessly against the mossy stone.
"No. please Seb"
His frustration broke open into something she recognized from darker places.
"You'll bed every monster in the palace but not me?"
He looked down at her,
Her gown torn open like a flower blossoming and offering its nectar,
Her bare chest heaving with panic, and her eyes flashing fear.
Something behind his eyes went flat, cold, and decided.
"I thought you were different the flowers that spread their legs for any vampire that throws them a sparkly bobble."
The slap caught her across the cheek
The hit was hard enough that the cedar beam cracked against the back of her skull.
Her head snapped sideways.
Her eyes filled with tears before she could stop them.
"Mother was right you are nothing but a flower to be used."
He went very still.
For one suspended moment
He looked young again.
Looking at her tear-stained face.
The fear in her eyes.
The red imprint of his hand blooming across her cheek.
As though he were watching a stranger from very far away.
His fingers hovered near her face.
Like he might wipe away her tears.
Or strike her again.
Penny flinched.
The movement seemed to decide something.
His expression hardened.
And suddenly she saw it.
Not Sebastian.
Not her sweet prince.
His mother.
Cold.
Cruel.
Merciless.
"I should have let Mother's beast devour you."
The words hit her a heartbeat before the truth did.
Mother's beast.
Not some monster that had wandered into the castle.
Not an accident.
Not bad luck.
His mother's.
The queen had sent it.
And Sebastian had known.
The realization hit harder than the slap.
His hands slammed into her shoulders.
Hard.
There was no time to react.
No time to scream.
No time to understand why.
The ground vanished.
The sky spun above her.
Cedar branches.
Blue sky.
A glimpse of sunlight that only hours ago had smelled like home.
Then
Darkness swallowed her whole.