Page 38 of War of Her Heart

“Shhhh. We don’t want to wake anyone. This will be over soon enough,” it said as an evil smile came over its face. Its voice sent a chill down my spine.

I closed my eyes as I waited for it to take me away when all of a sudden its grip on me disappeared.

I opened my eyes to see someone had slammed it onto the ground and had their hands on its neck.

It was so dark that I couldn’t make out their face. It wasn’t until I felt something cool caress my hand that I knew who it was. I looked down to see shadows floating all around me.

Something that terrified me a week ago now made me feel safe. They weren’t going to eat me. They were protecting me.

Sebastian was protecting me. He was always protecting me.

I took a step closer so I could see and watched as Sebastian placed his hand on the paramic’s head. The creature let out a scream that pierced through my ears before it faded into a black mist and was gone.

Sebastian stood up, ran his fingers through his hair, and walked towards me. He was shirtless and wore a pair of loose-fitting black pants which made me assume he was asleep before he came to my rescue.

“Violet, are you alright?” he said as he looked all over my body.

“I-I’m fine,” I said as I stared at the spot where the paramic faded into nothing, trying to figure out how he could dosomething like that. But then I remembered one of his gifts. A gift that no other fae had ever possessed. Something so hard to explain that the scholars simply called it the “touch of death.”

And I just saw it firsthand.

Sebastian gently grabbed my chin and turned my face, forcing me to look at him. “I know you’re from a different realm, but you know more than most anybody about, well, everything. You know better than to go out into the darkness of the Night Realm,” he said.

“You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said as I turned to go back to the castle. I knew it was useless, but I was attempting to make an escape before he started asking questions, which was something he always seemed to do.

“Who could it have possibly been to have you follow it into the woods in the middle of the night?” And there it was.

I turned around to look at him. “It . . . it was my father,” I said. Maybe looking into his eyes would make him believe me for once.

“Oh bullshit,” he snapped, causing me to take a step back. “I’ve seen you and your father say all of two words the entire time you’ve been here. I don’t think you’d leave your room for him, let alone come outside.”

Nope. Looking into his eyes didn’t work.

He stopped searching for answers in my eyes and instead a look of understanding took over his face. “It was Calum, wasn’t it?”

“What? Of course not,” I said, trying so hard to stay strong. How could he possibly have any idea about me and Calum? I’d been in the Night Realm for just over a week, and I’d only been in the same room as him, excluding my room which presumably no one knew about, at dinners with everyone else.

“He put a ward on your room. I knew as soon as he did it, but I just assumed that it was so your father wouldn’t worry aboutyou. But I’ve seen the glances you give each other when you think no one is paying attention.” He paused as his eyes began to darken, shifting closer to black than their normal blue. “You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”

Tears started rolling down my face. There was no way out of this. He’d known every time I’d lied to him, and I was backed into a corner now.

He put his hand on his face, turned around, and started to pace away from me. He stopped and looked up at the sky. After a moment, he came back to me and said, “You should know by now that I won’t hurt you. And I’m telling you now, as if these past two encounters haven’t already proven this, I won’t let anything happen to you, but you have to tell me what’s going on.”

His eyes were normal again, and he looked at me, pleading with me to tell him the truth for once. And he was right. No matter how hard I’d tried to convince myself otherwise, deep down I knew he would protect me. I didn’t know why, but he would.

“We’re together. We’ve been together for about sixteen years now,” I blurted out. I probably shouldn’t have been so specific, but I had nothing to lose anymore.

“Bloody hell.” Sebastian threw his arms up as he walked away from me again.

I stood there waiting for more of a response, but he didn’t look at me again. He was tapping his finger on his side as he looked up to the sky. “Violet, I think you should go back to your chambers now. We can talk about this later.”

I couldn’t say anything. I wanted to be back in the safety of my chambers, where I should never have left in the first place.

17

Chapter 17

Sebastian

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