When he finally lifts his gaze to mine, something shifts, some curtain between us drawing back for a moment. His eyes search mine, not with predatory interest this time, but with a strange, unsettled curiosity.
I latch onto it because it’s either that or acknowledge the heat unfurling under my skin where his hand rests.
“Why were you in Anvaris?” I ask softly. “Do you really wear your Sunday best out before a school day?”
His eyes flicker downward, avoiding the question for a breath too long. Then his attention returns to the cuts, as though the safety of my skin offers him shelter from my curiosity.
“I had breakfast plans with my uncle and sister,” he says.
The wordsistercatches in my mind. Sebastian, for all his carefully crafted arrogance, does not strike me as someone with softness in his life. The idea that he has a sibling at all feels… incongruous.
Before I can press him further, he shifts gears.
“Your turn,” he says, swapping the rag for a small container of ointment. He unscrews the lid and dips his long, slender fingers inside. When his fingertips touch my skin, they glide slowly toward the worst of the cuts, moving just beneath the hem of my blouse. The ointment stings first, then warms. His touch is careful, too careful, and a part of me I should not listen to aches at how close his fingers come to sliding deeper along my ribs.
“When that man…” He stops, jaw tightening. “When he was going to hurt you, I heard you struggling.” His voice drops lower, almost a growl. “But when he turned, I saw you. Your eyes. They weren’t...normal. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The room tilts slightly as his words settle over me. I hold his gaze, feeling the pressure of recognition pressing in on both sides. His hand rests on my waist now, not applying anything, not pretending to work. Just holding me there, as though he thinks I’ll run from the truth if he lets go.
I swallow slowly. “I don’t fully understand it,” I admit. My voice trembles, not from pain, but from the vulnerability scraping raw edges inside me. “All I know is Liam and I were berated and beaten for years because our parents feared what I could do. It cost us our childhood. It cost us everything until Locke found us.”
Sebastian’s gaze flicks down, taking in more of me now, the scars, the tattoo curling up my spine, the marks that tell a story I’ve never let anyone read. His fingers drift over the edges of the old scars, tracing the jagged borders with atenderness so unexpected it sends a shiver racing up my back. He doesn’t comment on them, but I can feel the conclusion forming behind his eyes, the quiet, dangerous understanding.
“My turn,” I whisper.
I slide down from the table, wincing when the movement stretches the tender skin, but the ache is already fading under the ointment. Sebastian rises as well, straightening to his full height, which places him far too close, the warm scent of him curling against me like smoke and winter spice.
Without breaking eye contact, I take his bloodied hand in both of mine. His knuckles are torn and swollen, stained with someone else’s violence. I pull the rag from his pocket, soaking it in the same sharp solution he used on me. Then I begin cleaning the blood from his skin, brushing along each split with careful, deliberate pressure.
The reaction is immediate.
His jaw tightens, his breath sharpens, and he leans back against a nearby pillar as though grounding himself. Quiet grunts slip from him. The sound rolls through me with embarrassing ease, heating my cheeks. Every time I dab a tender area, he inhales as if he’s trying to keep something inside from breaking free.
“Why were you in Anvaris?” I ask again, unwilling to let him dodge the question a second time.
Sebastian tilts his head slightly, the motion slow enough that the dark waves of his hair slip forward and shadow part of his face. He doesn’t push them away. He doesn’t need to. The obscured half of his expression somehow makes the moment feel more private, more fragile, as if something between us is shifting without either of us fully acknowledging it.
“I skipped breakfast,” he finally says, his voice a little rougher than before, though it’s impossible to tell if that’semotion or exhaustion. “Didn’t feel like spending my morning being reminded of all the ways I come up short. My uncle excels at that particular talent.”
There’s no bitterness in his tone. No humor. Just resignation, quiet and practiced. The kind that comes from years of hearing the same message repeated by the same mouth.
He exhales slowly, his shoulders lowering as if he’s set down a weight he didn’t realize he’d been carrying. “I thought I’d go to the pub instead. Drink until the day blurred a bit. Clear my head.”
I move carefully to the next cut on his hand, letting the ointment spread beneath my fingertips. The warmth of it seeps into his skin, and he stiffens, almost imperceptibly, before grounding himself. He watches my movements with a guarded focus, but nothing about him feels predatory now. If anything, he seems… unsure of how close he should allow himself to be.
“Then I heard you,” he adds, almost reluctantly. “Your laugh. And Theo’s. I opened the door and saw the three of you. I knew Theo sent a raven, but I didn’t think you’d… actually show up.”
His gaze flickers briefly to my face, then away again, as if he’s not ready to let me see whatever is beneath the surface.
“I noticed Trevor getting… closer to you,” he says. The hesitation in his voice is strange, as if he’s choosing each word with unusual care. “He’s reserved most days. So I suppose it caught me off guard.”
He doesn’t say it bothered him.
He doesn’t say he cared.
He leaves the sentiment suspended, half-formed, like a thread he refuses to pull.
Instead he looks at the far wall, collecting his thoughts before allowing them to touch the air.
