Page 128 of Emylia

He didn't fight. He just looked at Sebastian, eyes burning with something I didn’t want to name. Then he turned to leave. But before the door shut behind him, he glanced over his shoulder–held Sebastian’s gaze, one last time, letting it linger like an unspoken threat.

“Just remember whose name she was screaming… before you tried to lay claim to something she’d given freely. To me.”

Then he was gone.

The door clicked shut with a finality that shook me to my core. Heart pounding, I turned–tears spilling down my cheeks.

Silence hung like something shattered. The echo of Maalikai’s last words still claimed the air between us, clashing with the storm still brewing in Sebastian’s eyes. And I stood in the wreckage of both, caught between two ruins I’d set ablaze with my own damn hands–smoke still curling from the flint I’d struck.

Sebastian turned his back to me, fists clenched, shoulders rising and falling like he was fighting a silent war, and losing.

“Bastian—”

He didn’t move.

I stepped forward, carefully. “Please… let me explain.”

He laughed once. But it was hollow. Shattered. “I think I got the picture.”

“No, you don’t,” I said, stepping closer. “It wasn’t like that. Not—” I stopped.

What was I even saying?

Itwaslike that.

“You didn’t sleep with him?” His voice was quiet. Dangerous.

“No. But we…” My throat burned. There was no way I could finish that sentence. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He finally turned—and it destroyed me.

Because he didn’t look angry. He looked broken.

“But you did,” he said softly.

I couldn’t breathe. I stood there, trembling.

A killer. A monster. A girl caught between two storms.

And still—he stepped forward. Brushed a thumb along my jaw like my soul hadn’t been stained with blood and guilt and ash.

“But I still want to be the one you fall apart with.” I bit my lip, but it didn’t stop the sob from escaping. “I still see you,” he whispered. “Even like this.”

He dropped his head to mine, his forehead resting against me, like he was trying to absorb all the pieces of me before I shattered again. “You don’t have to explain,” he murmured. “I don’t want to hear it right now.”

“But—”

He rose to his full height, towering over me, the golden strands of his hair brushing the impossible length of his lashes. “I just needed to be the one who stayed.”

My heart cracked wide open.

Not from the fight. Not from the aftermath.

But from the way he looked at me—as if I was still worth holding.

I collapsed into him without a word. And he caught me without question. No demands. No conditions. Just arms that wrapped around every broken piece like they were still whole.

He didn’t try to fix me. He just let me break. And that—Gods—that undid me more than anything else ever could.

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