Silver and Green with Envy: A Sebastian Sallow Story

Chapter Twenty-Two

Another few weeks of the back and forth went by, and Sebastian did his utmost to step up his attempts at ruining my attempts. I knew he was helping with some of their routing through the highlands, but he must have been giving purposeful wrong information somewhere. Because for every camp I destroyed, there was another one that I would find abandoned. 

One had nothing but empty cages with a single red rose inside of each one. I almost came back and punched him for that one, especially when I caught him giving me a nasty smile from the chess table he was sitting at with Ominis.

But I didn't. Because everything stayed 'normal' in the common room. I'd read my books laying on one of the couches with my head in his lap while he ran his fingers through my hair, he'd play chess with Ominis and ask me for help deciding on a move (which angered Ominis to no end), and a couple times when there was no one else in there with us, we'd sneak off to an unused dorm room. 

Outside of it, however...I'd tear my hand from his, bicker with him as he followed me to class, and one time I completely lost my temper from him taunting me that I told him to fuck off loud enough that Professor Sharp yelled at me while threatening a detention and everyone else in that potions class lost it laughing. I didn't usually speak like that.

~~~Sebastian

Elena was infuriating. But I'd given up begging her to stop. I still had no clue how she was getting around me, I just knew it was a secret she was apparently ready to die for and I had to act accordingly to work against it. Natty and Poppy knew, I was positive. But they wouldn't speak to me. Not that I expected them to.

I thought, briefly, about bartering for information from them. A secret for a secret. But any time that idea wandered into my mind, I felt the burn of the vow I made wrapped around my arm and knew it was impossible.

Every time she came back with cuts, bruises, filthy, and out of breath I wanted to shake the hell out of her and try to get her to see sense. She didn't realize how fragile she was...even when she wasn't.

But the fire in her eyes also gave me pause. She was a fighter, and one I knew I ultimately couldn't contend with. Not without reverting back to the monster she'd saved me from becoming. 

A monster that had hurt her. Irrevocably. A monster that never asked for the forgiveness I knew I'd never deserve. 

There was a fight brewing, to rival the one we'd had at the end of our fifth year. I could practically taste it. It hung in the air whenever we were around the other, a tension hiding between the deep kisses and sweet whispered nothings as we made a mess of each other.

She knew I used her. I knew it. I cursed her without a second thought back then. I watched her scream, and writhe in pain, begging for it to end, and the only thing I thought at the time was that I was glad it wasn't me. 

I was of a singular mind and that was trying to save Anne. I was desperate and hateful.

But in the end, by fault of no one but myself, everyone had left. Everyone was gone. 

Except her.

I asked her to the Yule Ball, formally, at least a dozen times. She said no every single time. I watched as others asked her, seething with jealousy, calmed only barely by her repeated rejections of said invitations.

Eventually she said yes. And it wasn't until that night as I was lying in bed thinking about it I realized she only said yes because I asked her in the common room. Our normal room. 

I longed for the day where things between us might be normal outside of it.

~~~Elena