CHAPTER 29 #3
But because of the way he looked at her when she cried. The way he rose to meet her in every conversation. How he listened, even when he was angry.
Because when everything else had been stripped away – he chose her, over and over again. Like she would choose him back, always.
And she made certain he knew it.
Kara mumbled it sleepily into his chest as her eyelids became heavy. “I love you.”
She wasn’t sure if Sebastian had heard her, but then his whisper came in the dark:
“I love you too, Kara, so much.”
She fell asleep smiling.
But her nightmares didn’t respect the small sliver of peace they had carved out for themselves. Not long after she had drifted to sleep, Kara bolted upright, the scream tearing from her.
No! NO!
Smoke. There was smoke everywhere. Suffocating her. She couldn’t move her wrists. Her lungs were burning. Heat licked up her skin.
I’m burning–
“Please, please, put it out–”
A voice sounded in the darkness. “Kara, there’s no fire, you’re safe.”
“I don’t want to burn–”
“You’re not. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Her hand flew to her wrist. There was no nightshade, no ropes. The voice was right. There was no flame either. Reason returned. Slowly. Painfully slowly. There was hay. A broken barn. Moonslight spilling around her. Cool night air.
And Sebastian.
He was beside her, hands on her shoulders, voice low and firm. “Kara. I promise you’re safe. It was a dream–”
“No,” she choked out. “No, it wasn’t–” Her whole body shook. “I was there again. I could smell it – I felt the ropes – he–” She broke off, burying her face in her hands.
Sebastian’s arms came around her immediately, pulling her against him and stroking her hair. “It’s okay. I’m here now. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
She clung to him silently, her mind full of the memories she so desperately wanted to erase. Cade’s face, his hands, his–
No. Not again.
Her breath came too fast as she tried to ground herself against Sebastian’s chest – his warmth, his steady heartbeat. “I didn’t–” The words spilled out. “I didn’t tell you. What he did.”
Sebastian’s hand stilled on her hair.
She drew back just enough to look at him. “He took me there,” she said, voice hollow. “C–Cade. To the pyre. The night of my trial. They hadn’t passed sentence yet. No guards. Just him and a torch.”
Sebastian’s heart beat faster under her hand.
“He tied me to the stake. It was so tight that I couldn’t move at all. Couldn’t get free. He told me I was going to die. That no one would care. Then he–” She swallowed hard. “–he lit the fire. Let it burn until it choked me. Asked me to scream for him–” She broke off, her throat closing.
Sebastian’s whole body went rigid. Kara couldn’t say the rest. Cade had spat it at Sebastian with his final breath – that she’d screamed Sebastian’s name, begged for him – but she wouldn’t confirm the poison. Wouldn’t give Sebastian one more thing to blame himself for.
He’d never forgive himself.
“And then he threw water on it. Told me that it had just been for him. That I would make a pretty fire,” she said, staring at the floor. She couldn’t look at Sebastian’s face, couldn’t see his reaction. But she heard his sharp inhale. Felt his hands turn into fists. He was trembling.
“Animal,” he snarled. “That fucking–”
“It wasn’t real. Not really. It was a game to him. A rehearsal.” She closed her eyes. Took a breath. “He said he wanted to ‘show me the view.’”
Sebastian didn’t speak but his jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth ground together. He radiated barely restrained fury – quiet and lethal. It should have frightened her, but instead she buried herself against him, feeling safer than she ever had in her life.
“I begged him, Sebastian,” she whispered, ashamed, but needing to get it all out now she’d started. “I begged him not to do it. I screamed. So much. That’s what he wanted. And I gave it to him.”
She hated those words. How weak they sounded.
“You were terrified,” Sebastian said. His voice was low but dangerous. “He tortured you. Don’t you dare blame yourself for that.”
“I didn’t tell–” her voice broke. “I couldn’t – couldn’t find the words. It was like saying it made it real...”
“Gods, Kara,” he breathed.
She looked up at him, tears spilling down her cheeks. His expression was one of utter horror.
“It was the worst thing anyone’s ever done to me.”
He pulled her closer to him. “He deserved so much worse than what I did to him. If he were still alive,” Sebastian said coldly, “I’d kill him again. Much slower this time. Days. Make him feel exactly what he did to you.”
His tone was steady, full of conviction. He meant it. Every word. She could hear the threat, the violence in them – Gods help anyone who ever tried to touch her again. But Kara didn’t flinch.
“I know,” she said.
And the terrible thing was... she wouldn’t stop him.
She might even help.
“I’m glad you killed him,” she confessed. She didn’t feel any guilt about it. That surprised her most of all.
He searched her face. “You are?”
She nodded. “He would’ve done it to someone else. Maybe worse. There’s no justice for monsters like that.”
Kara reached for his hand, and held on tight. “You made sure he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again,” she told him. “He deserved it.”
Sebastian looked stunned, like he’d never expected her to feel that way. She’d never expected it either. But she meant it. Cade had changed her. He leaned into her, resting his head lightly against her temple.
“I should have gotten to you sooner. I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “So fucking sorry that you went through that alone, that he ever got his hands on you–”
“It’s not your fault–”
“You were there because of me–”
“Stop that. Right now,” she said fiercely. “I’m alive because of you.”
He pulled back to look at her. His eyes were dark, a storm of emotions. “Kara, if I’d taken a wrong turn, been minutes later, anything – I’d have walked into that cell and found–” His voice broke. He couldn’t or wouldn’t bring himself to say it.
“You weren’t,” she said.
“But I could’ve been. And that–” He stopped, dragged a shaking hand through his hair. “That thought hasn’t gone away.”
She pulled his hand away from his hair and to her lips, kissing each knuckle. Slowly. Reverently. These were the hands that had saved her life. But the guilt taking over him, and she wanted nothing more than to absolve him of it.
“You. Are. So. Brave,” she murmured in between kisses. “The bravest man I’ve ever known.”
She looked up, meeting his gaze with a raw intensity. “You want to know the first thought I had when I saw you in that cell?”
Sebastian managed a small nod.
“It wasn’t about the fire. Or what Cade did, or was about to do,” Her voice was quiet but sure. “The moment I saw you... all I could think was that I loved you.”
Sebastian inhaled sharply. “I–” he began but words failed him.
He tried again, “Kara – I–”
Giving up on words, he crushed her to him, as if any space between them was sacrilegious. They stayed like that a long time – holding on like the world might end if they let go. Kara’s breathing slowly evened out, her fingers loosening slightly on the fabric of his tunic as sleep claimed her.
The moment I saw you... all I could think was that I loved you.
The words played over and over again in Sebastian’s mind. He’d seen the pyre built in the square. The horror of her cell, what she had just confided in him. What that fucking monster had put her through. And she’d looked at him and thought about love?
Not death. Not revenge. Not fear.
Love.
Sebastian’s throat felt tight. What kind of strength did it take to look that sort of terror in the eye and feel that? What kind of devotion was that?
And how the hells had he become the person she gave it to?
Not even two weeks ago, she had knocked him unconscious, thought him a traitor.
And now? Now, she looked at him like he was her whole world.
Kissing hands that had killed. Calling him brave.
It all felt impossible. Like a dream conjured in a fever – too fast, too intense, too much.
And yet every part of it was real. He felt it.
He hadn’t earned it. Hadn’t protected her. He could still feel the seconds slipping by too fast, the ice-cold fear that he’d already been too late.
He might never deserve her.
But Gods, he would die trying to.
They had built a pyre for her. But if the world wanted her to burn, Sebastian Thorne would burn the world first.