Page 5 of Fated Blood

Sebastian laughs and I close my eyes to savor the sound. It’s warm and rich, and I can imagine the sound of his laughter filling a home. “If that’s what you want to call it, then okay!”

“Got to look on the bright side, right?” I ask, remembering a sad story about a girl with no luck. “There’s a silver lining in every situation.”

“That’s true. I guess that makes you my silver lining?”

“And you, my bright side.” I lean into his touch again, sighing as his pinkie finger traces the line of my jaw.

Chapter2

Sebastian

It feels like I’ve been in this dank hole for half my life. Once a week, one of the winged bastards brings me spoiled bread and stagnant water, but I take it. They ask the same questions every time, trying to get me to reveal where my stronghold is, but I’ll die first. I’ll never tell them where to find my family, no matter what they do to me.

For longer than I care to try to figure out, the sound of the crashing waves somewhere in the distance is the only sound there is. That, and the skittering of rats. Half my day is spent protecting the loaf of bread I have to make last the whole week and the other half wondering what raw rat might taste like. It’s my personal mission to catch one and kill it with my bare hands.

My captors come late in the night, dragging something, or someone, behind them. They lock someone in the cell next to me and leave without a word. I crawl over to the rock I’ve loosened in the wall and pull it out. There, in the middle of the cell, is a woman. I gasp, hardly believing my eyes. I glimpse her for only a moment as the bastards leave with the lantern; she’s wearing a long cotton nightgown, it’s wet and covered in mud. Her dark hair was braided at one point, but now it lays around her head haphazardly, still tangled by the tie that falls below her waist.

Her face is angelic, even covered in filth, and I stare at her until the blackness takes her from me. I stay by the hole, listening to the sound of her breathing. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. The most beautiful sound to ever hit my ears. I wonder who she is, how she got here. What would Angelica want with a girl like her? What could she have possibly done to earn the same imprisonment as me?

When she wakes up screaming, I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been a kind man, someone who would comfort a stranger, but something about her distress gnaws at me. Without thinking, I shove my hand through the hole, ignoring the pain of the scrapes as the sharp rock cuts me. By some random stroke of luck she’s pressed herself to the wall right by the hole and my hand finds her face. There’s a moment of stark fear, but a trembling cheek presses into my hand and I’m set on fire.

Her skin is so soft, unblemished by time, and the merest touch of her flesh to mine makes me choke on emotion. My mind screams to push her away, it’s not my job to be here for her. Let her suffer, let her scream. Why should I care? I’ve never been interested in other people. I have a job to do. The only ones who mattered were the people I was protecting and the people I was fighting. There’s no time for a relationship, a flirtation. I watched my friends and family pair off and procreate but never felt a need to do it myself. I’d serve my needs and be done with it.

When Fayla vomits because of the bread I shared, my rock-hard heart fractures. Why do I care that she’s sick because of the foul bread? Emotions annoy me, I’ve buried them my whole life and feasted on rage and revenge. So why now does she affect me like this?

She falls asleep against my palm and I chafe at every moment of it, but I can’t bring myself to move. She’s weak, terrified, practically a child. Maybe that's why I feel something? The need to defend the innocent?

She whimpers in her sleep and my cock stiffens of its own accord. No, she’s not a child, and my body knows it. Having been so long since I touched a woman, her lips pressing to my palm as she sleeps is putting monstrous thoughts in my head. I know I can’t take her like I’d take the women at home, but I want to. I don’t even know her, don’t know where she came from or who she is. But as my arm falls asleep through the hole all I can imagine is what I’d do if these walls weren't between us.

The sun is coming up outside. I only know this because of the minuscule gaps in the row of stones at the very top of the cell. It sends spears of light through the room, almost an additional torture for the people Angelica throws in here. The holes are too high to be able to reach and see out of, and too small to see anything even if you could.

Today? Today I’m thankful for it, because as Fayla stirs and I pull my dead hand back through the hole, I see her. Her eyes meet mine, full of tears and fear. They’re so damn blue, like the sky I’ll never see again. A hint of gray, like steel, but molten.

“Your eyes are green…” she whispers. She’s looking at me as hard as I’m looking at her. Slowly, her delicate hand comes through the hole and I let her feel my face. She tangles her fingers in my overgrown beard and I close my eyes and sigh. I never let anyone touch me, but I crave her touch. I rub my nose in her palm, losing myself in the flawless silk of her skin. She smells like herbs and green grass, like a spring morning. I want to smell her for the rest of my life.

Who the hell am I turning into?

“Why is there hair on your face?” she asks, and my eyes fly open with a smile.

“My beard?”

“Is that what it’s called? It’s…curly?”

I laugh, I can’t help it. “Have you never seen a man with a beard?”

“Oh, well, sure I have. I just…didn’t expect you to have one.”

She's lying. Why is she lying? How has she never seen a beard before?

“Were you homeschooled or something?” I joke, and she rips her hand back through the hole.

I lean my head against the wall, watching her blush, watching her rack her mind for answers. I don’t tell her that I don’t care, that she could have lived under a rock her whole life and it wouldn't matter. But watching her squirm for an answer to my question is possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

“I learned at home, if that’s what you mean…” she says quietly, moving closer to the hole so all I can see is her eyes staring into mine.

“You must have been very sheltered,” I say, trying not to let her hear my voice crack as I stare into the endless depths of her eyes.

“Why wouldn’t I have shelter?”

---