The Keepers' Evil

Two: The keepers and Isidora didn't see eye to eye on the use of ancient magic

Song- My blood: Ellie Goulding

"I know from the memories I've seen that the keepers and Isidora didn't see eye to eye on the use of ancient magic."

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I listened for the Undercroft's body to creak.

I waited for the wind to howl at the window's glass.

I needed the never-ending chaos to pull me under.

Just one more time.

The stillness in the air held our voices hostage. It held our ability to feel calm chained up beside it. I suppose neither Sebastian nor I could settle in the arms of peace; I suppose the chance to know how to settle was buried in the same grave that we thought we were once destined for.

Maybe I pictured my demise in a grave,

But I knew Sebastian pictured his in a cell.

One day our destinies would run out of stars to align and we would fall and we would fall hard. Maybe not dead in a grave, maybe not shackled in a cell, maybe we had already fallen. Maybe this was why we craved the mess and called it beauty.

Fallen people can't find peace.

Oh, but how they could.

I watched Sebastian tirelessly fight the hands of sleep that tried to drag his eyelids down, his body jolting itself upwards every time he felt his back slide further down the rough stone pillar he was propped up against. Sebastian would've done anything to stay out of Azkaban, but staying out had placed him in his own torturous prison. A prison where sleep is a predator and your own shadow wants to suffocate you. A prison called guilt.

I had begged Ominis until my tears were so strained and hurt so badly that I wouldn't have been surprised if they had rained crimson trails down my freckles. I had pleaded with my hands wrapped so tightly in his that I was sure the desperate purple bruises on his wrists were still there to this day. I had sworn to forfeit Isidora's mission in return for Ominis' silence on Sebastian's crime.

I had lied for silence.

Sounds all too familiar.

The difference between me and the keepers was that I felt the earthquake of conflict about my lie. I shook when the ground shook, I watched when the buildings that were my shreds of self-respect crumbled whilst the keepers put their buildings back together with the help of each other; each brick rebuilt another layer in their skyscraper of a lie. Their lie that I was going to prove was a lie.

The magic cannot take away pain.

Sebastian's lungs caught his breath in a painful gasp as he jolted himself back awake from the split second of sleep his body had drifted into. He pressed his aching back firmly to the pillar, tilting his head backwards as he pawed at his tie as if it were the devil's hands around his neck. There was a small flurry of green and silver as he ripped it from his shirt, the fabric becoming a strewn pile on the floor beside him.

It took him a moment to lock eyes with me, to notice I was awake in the first place. "Sorry." He mumbled so quietly it was almost incomprehensible, his exhausted delirium unsure of why we had stayed here so late. In his defence, I was entirely awake and I too was unsure of why I was still here.

"You should go to bed." I broke the seal of the ache that my muscles had become accustomed to, clicking my limbs straight as I stood up which was almost a signal for it's time to go. Sebastian shot up from the floor, evidently reading the signal, his eyes suddenly very awake and his arm reaching desperately towards me.