Page 100 of Antiletum
She turned her head over her shoulder, inspecting the fountain again. Sebastian had a point, upon closer look, the fountain wasn’t drab at all.
It was severe. Intricate. And absolutely ancient. Lines and details worn by time. Arcane—same as the magic coursing through her veins.A gift disappeared since theNocturnelaid to rest. And she longed to dip her fingers into the fountain, lay her hand upon its statues, and channel her magic into them. See what might come of merging her magic with the past.
Delaney brought her attention back to Sebastian. He smirked. Like he knew precisely what was racing through her mind. “Exactly,” he whispered and produced a coin from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “You see it.”
She had half a mind to protest the coin based on the abundant indicators that Sebastian didn’t have much. Worried she might offend him, Delaney kept her mouth shut. Wrapped her fingers around his.
“Now, close your eyes.” She did as instructed. “Think of a wish.”
“Okay,” she responded confidently. “Got it.”
“Ah, ah,” Sebastian scolded quietly, a smile living in his voice. “Don’t be so hasty, Delaney.” She had the inkling that he very much liked saying her name. “Make sure it’s the right one. After all, throwing your coin into the fountain will send your wish straight to thedeos’Heartstones. The original sources of magic. They may hear you and grant your wish from where they rest. Or remember your offering if the day comes that they arise.”
Delaney took Sebastian’s urging, concentrating a little harder. But the integrity of her wish remained the same.
“Got it,” she whispered resolutely.
“Very good. Now, throw it over your shoulder.”
Delaney tossed her hand behind her head and barely heard the merry splash made against the water. When she opened her eyes, Sebastian was giving her the perfect, undiluted turn of his lips that she had so desperately wanted, directed entirely on her, and in that moment, she became whole. Taking his smile all for herself.
A low whistle broke their attention.
“I haven’t seen anything as pretty as you in a long time,” a dirty man slurred, leaning into the arched wall of the bridge. Highly inappropriate beyond the uncouth statement. He was easily middle aged while Delaney was clearly young enough to still be considered a girl.
Sebastian turned his head slowly, jaw clenched at the sight of the filthy, drunken man.
The man leered, his slimy gaze sliding across the pair. “Both of you, really.”
Sebastian tensed, fire billowing in his black eyes as his stare pinned on the interloper.
“Why don’t you come over here—”
The drunk man had no chance to finish his suggestion before Sebastian’s face had contorted with animalistic rage and he closed the distance, doing just as the man suggested, but not in the way he meant. Sebastian swung him away from the bridge, and pinned him, face forward, against a wall of the courtyard.
“Hey, I just meant…” he slurred, fear spilling through his voice.
Sebastian didn’t care what he did or did not mean. He grabbed a fistful of the drunkard’s hair at the back of his scalp. A yelp was lost as Sebastian smashed his head into the wall, his shoulders working visibly from where Delaney stared at his back in shock.
An earshatteringcrackemitted from the vagrant’s skull, his eyes rolling into the back of his head, jaundiced and bloodshot whites flashing. But Sebastian didn’t slow his attack, launching his arm forward again and again and again until there was a spray of blood with each connection of skull to stone.
The unbridled violence of it, so easily provoked—Delaney should have been afraid. Should have run right then, while Sebastian was lost to his rage. But she was entirely too transfixed, enchanted by the extreme level of defending her he was willing totake. And she wondered what all he may have endured during his life in the streets to be so easily, completely transformed by one simple (albeit, disgusting) comment. Committing blatant murder in the blazing light of day.
It awoke something within Delaney. All of it. The pain he wore beneath the rage. The steady warm trickle of devotion she’d never had before. And besides, Delaney knew death. She walked with it, hand-in-hand. And it appeared that Sebastian knew death too. Easily killing a man with his bare hands.
No part of her wanted to flee. On the contrary, she stood, hands clasped in front of her stomach, and patiently waited for Sebastian to finish meting out punishment. Unburdening a piece of himself in the process.
His heaving breath was apparent from behind when the dead man’s body slumped to the ground, his head nothing but mush and bone fragments with his brain spilling out.
The scent of death, it called to Delaney. Made her mouth water and she ached to walk forward, place her hand on his chest, and bring him back to life. Show Sebastian what she could do. Maybe they could repeat the whole macabre process after. Forge another thread in this unexpected bond.
Sebastian dropped his face in his bloody hands. “Fuck!” he said, panicked, mostly to himself. But then he froze, head cocking slightly, as if listening while he tried to catch his unsteady breath.
“You’re still here,” he observed, disbelieving, facing the blood and brain spattered wall.
“I’m still here,” Delaney responded calmly despite the galloping of her heart.
Sebastian turned, face dark and serious. “Why? I have just shown you that Iamdangerous.” The blood marring his face was absoluteevidence of that. She didn’t care. And she wanted to prove it, to wash him clean with her own hands.
