“Impressive.”
Sebastian’s compliment flowed through my ears. My head turned towards where he stood, his hands tucked into the pockets of his dark pants. The stars illuminated his features, taking my breath away as he had done since the first time I saw him.
He stepped towards me. “I see what Kohen is saying now about the glowing, though. Strange.”
I stretched my legs out so I could sit. “What are you doing out here?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh.” I had no doubts as to why. The things he experienced in Draemor haunted me, and I wasn’t even the one who lived through them.
“Are you okay?” I questioned, knowing the answer he’d give would likely be false.
“Of course.” He plopped down in the grass beside me, lifting his gaze to the sky.
I saw right through him. “No you’re not.”
His lips pursed as he drew in a taste of fresh air.
“If you want to talk about what happened in Draemor, we can,” I whispered, not looking towards him.
“I’d rather not relive it, honestly. I see it every night when I sleep, anyway.” Changing the topic, he asked me, “Areyouokay? With what happened today?”
“Um. Yeah. I think so. I mean, we would have had to kill her, anyway. I just wasn’t expecting it to happen like that.”
“None of us were expecting that,” he huffed out, attempting to add some humor to the conversation, though his followingwords broke the attempt. “Do you think she meant what she said? About the gods not letting my mother into the veil?”
My heart blew up like a balloon and then exploded everywhere, leaving pieces of bloody shrapnel in its place.
“Seb.” I reached out, placing a hand on his thigh. “No.Your mother was good. There is no doubt in my mind that she is beyond the veil watching over you right now.”
He scoffed, shuffling a bit from my unexpected touch. “Yeah. Watching me fuck up everything good in my life. She must be so proud.”
Before I could disagree, his voice dropped to a tone so hollow I feared I would never hear his normal tone again.
“What if I’m the reason that she died? By making the bond to protect me and upsetting the balance, the gods took her as collateral.” He gulped and turned his head from me, which I knew was to hide his watering eyes.
“Sebastian.” His name was a sympathetic breath of air as it passed through my lips. My hand roamed to his shoulder, then up to his chin where I grasped and pulled his gaze back into mine. “She made the bond toprotectyou. Not to save your life. I think one could argue that it doesn't even upset the balance.”
Sucking his lips in, he nodded and raised his eyes so they were in line with the sky.
Bringing my hands back to myself, I blew out a bubbled breath and dropped my head back to join him in staring up at the stars. I wanted nothing more than to tell him how much I missed him, but I had something else I needed to tell him first.
Disturbing the silence, he sighed heavily. “Where did things go so wrong between us?”
I didn’t answer the question. He knew exactly where things went wrong. “Maybe we both just suck at communicating,” I suggested.
He let out a soft chuckle. “That is painfully obvious. We also both seem to jump to conclusions.”
Air shot out of my nose. “Yeah. We do.” I paused, softening my tone. “Maybe we were just wrong from the start.”
I swear I could almost feel the pain emanating off of him. “No. You don’t really think that. Do you?” His voice cracked.
My shoulders shrugged as I sat upright and met his attention, the hurt in his ocean eyes blinding me. “I don’t know. It seems like there has been more bad between us than good. We’ve spent more time arguing than not.”
His jaw tightened and his cheeks sunk. “But the good has been really fucking good, Maeve. Maybe we're just two hurt people who don’t know how to stop hurting each other.”
“Maybe.”Hurt people, hurt others.My mother always used to say that. Sebastian had been hurt his entire life by the hands of his father. I’d been hurt by my own mind. Different kinds of hurt, but hurt all the same.
