A Ballad of Snakes and Shadows // A Dark Sebastian Sallow Romance

Chapter Eight: Eyes On Fire // Praying

Eyes on Fire - Blue Foundation

Praying - Isabel LaRosa

It was silent after Sebastian left.

Silent apart from the near constant ringing that roared in my ears that sang with the frantic thrumming of my panicked heart. I was grateful for that little song, it drowned out the many questions and spiraling thoughts inside my mind.

That melody commanded me to stay where Sebastian left me, with my knees firmly locked and buried in the mud of the swamp Vivarium. But as the wind brushed my skin and time went on, so too did that song.

Now I had to look at everything that had been laid bare in that silence.

I had been right from the very beginning - not that such a thought brought me any comfort.

Instead it left me frozen in place, wishing that ringing would come back so it could consume my mind. I wanted it to tear through the last shreds of my consciousness, crush it to ash and dust, until my head was nothing more than an empty shell purely meant for decoration.

If I became empty, I would not have to feel the heart that painfully pounded in my chest, nor the churning deep in my stomach that mixed with growing shame.

Shame for getting hot and bothered by my ex-boyfriend, now turned psycho stalker, feeling up my body with his hands and mouth. With emptiness, maybe I would not care how sick and twisted those hands were or how I now ached for more of their touch.

Death, by way of an emptied skull, seemed almost preferable to the shame I felt.

It wouldn't have been right to die here and let the silence drown me though. It was determination that reminded me I would lose everything if I didn't fight against all of the hardships and despair I faced.

Sebastian being here, along with the dark wizards he ran with, was a blight on the school and its students, and by extension, all the people I loved.

He already snatched up Poppy. I couldn't let him do any more harm.

So I began the tedious task of picking myself up off the ground, one muddied leg at a time. Everything was clicking into place as all of the scattered pieces of the infinite Sebastian puzzle appeared.

It wasn't just the few pieces he'd left for me tonight, where he'd shown me he had been the one stalking in the shadows and the face in my nightmares.

Poppy had not been targeted as some random jab at me. It had been for Sebastian's own personal agenda, one that I assumed was filled with endless forms of revenge.

Still there were other things that made little sense. I would have to do a lot more digging in the earth to find the rest of those puzzle pieces that I hoped would tell me why he and those wizards were taking students. On the way I would find one that made it clear whether he was truly a part of what was transpiring.

Maybe this was something bigger than I could imagine and it was just convenient for Sebastian that I was in proximity to it. I'm sure it would have been easy enough to infiltrate a group of murderous bastards.

He was just like them after all.

I stumbled my way out of the Vivarium, patting off as much mud as I could. I needed to tackle each problem one at a time, I thought, as I paced a familiar path in the main hall of the Room. I'm sure I'd nearly driven a rut into the poor tiles with how often I found myself walking that same straight line.