Page 103 of Antiletum
Sebsatian drew in a breath, like he felt it himself when she sent a pulse of vitality back into the dead bird’s heart, commanding it to breathe.
Its chest rose. And then it hopped to its feet. The bird fluffed its feathers, twittering like nothing had ever happened to it at all. It took flight, right out the paneless window to the inviting night, racing for the stars.
It would fall dead again before long, too far away from Delaney’s life inducing magic.
But it didn’t matter. Delaney’s mission was complete as she shared her deepest secret with this boy who gave her a magical day. A gift he might never comprehend the magnitude of for her.
Sebastian gaped at the spot where the bird only just lay. Unblinking. Absorbing the impossibility of what she had just done. Of how special she truly was. Understanding precisely why her parents hid her away in an effort to conceal their daughter’s arcane magic, shunned and fearedin its strangeness. Its extinction finding home again within her, for whatever reason.
There were no other necromancers. Only her.
Anxiety coursed through Delaney, waiting for Sebastian to respond. His face lifted towards hers slowly, eyes incredibly wide, his irises an eclipsed moon. She expected fear within them. Horror. Disgust. The same as her parents showed when she first presented her gift of necromancy.
But Sebastian’s stare was large with awe. “Delaney,” he breathed her name again. Different from before. Claiming and proud.
He closed the minor distance between them in just a few steps.
Breath caught in her lungs, feeling the press of his body against hers. Sebastian’s large hands raised to cup her face like she was the only priceless thing in the whole wide world. He leaned forward. Brushed his nose against hers. Once. Twice. Just the way the owls they so revered would with their beaks to show affection. Their lips hovered a hair’s breadth apart. So close. And she thought she might collapse on the spot if they did not touch.
“Tell me to stop,” Sebastian pleaded, quiet and caring. Asking permission.
But that was the very last thing Delaney wanted him to do.
Restraint dwindling, she begged him, “Don’t stop.”
And he smiled, accepted her urging, giving her a soft kiss. Sweet. Slow. Innocent and new. Their mouths remained closed while his lips tentatively explored hers, her hands covering his rested upon her face.
A silent explosion occurred—earth shattering—pulling between them and solidifying what they both already knew. That he was hers, and she was his, and there would never be anything to change that. No distance, time, status, or otherwise. Not as they chose each other inthat quiet moment. The same way their ancestors chose their lifelong mates when they could still call upon their owl forms.
A choice no longer given, now that Parliament sanctioned marriages. Especially within the nobility. If they allowed them at all.
It was powerful and ancient, a bond once completed withvinculumin a marriage ceremony. Tying chosen pairs together through life and beyond, the only way they would have it. A bond no longer spoken of—because they no longer existed. Except within them. An impossibility that they made real, against all odds.
The force of it had Delaney thinking that maybe what they sharedcouldchange the world.
But a creaking groan at the front of thespirlinarysevered their kiss and her naive ideations.
Delaney turned to the door just as Sebastian did to find Tenna, witnessing the end of their affection. Their pure, pristine moment tainted in a second.
A tight, ugly fist crushed her stomach, and Delaney felt sick. It overtook her so quickly she had to clutch Sebastian’s shirt, just to steady herself and not fall to the floor. It wasn’t the kiss that worried Delaney so much as the way the loyal woman in her father’s employ sucked in deep through her nose, scenting the use of Delaney’s forbidden necromancy.
“Stupid girl,” Tenna scolded, lip curled and shaking her head in derision. “What have you done?”
Sebastian’s demeanor shifted just as rapidly as before. He lunged for Tenna—who turned back to the door—with murderous intent. Delaney grabbed him before he got too far.
Tenna walked out thespirlinary, and exigency took hold.
“I need you to go,” she tried to say as calmly as possible, not wanting to alert him of the severe direness in the situation; he was already walking a razor’s edge. But her voice was shaky and quiet.
Sebastian forgot Tenna, looked down on Delaney. Terrified. Knowing their separation was about to come, no matter how neither one of them wanted things to end.
“Nothing more tedious than writing lines? Right?”
“That’s right,” she lied to his face.
“If that’s true, why are you suddenly so afraid?” But he knew. She could see the anguish overtaking him. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Delaney,” Sebastian said, the claim more of a vow. “They have to know that.”
“Please.” A tear fell from her eye. “You have to go.”
