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

Chapter Twenty Four: Ptolemaea

((I want to give a big smooch to my two favorite Slytherins that have inspired some of this fun.)) 

((CW/TW: Bondage, choking, burning/electo play, wand play, extreme sadism/masochism, verbal degradation and humiliation, and a heavy religion kink.)) 

There was a dim light that filtered in through the cracks of my eyelids sometime later. I wasn't sure how long I'd been drifting through that blanket of darkness, but it must've been time enough as something was trying to rouse me gently. It was that flickering radiance that kissed my eyelids, sweetly beckoning me to return to the waking world.

In those benevolent strokes of that wavering glow, it evinced a tale of satisfaction that had a very suspicious lack of foul play.

Open your eyes and find out, honeyed deceiver.

I knew it was the rippling flames of the pyres around us that crooned at me, to tempt me into that consequated wakefulness.

No thanks, I told those wisps of mischief.

Please return me back to that endless void, where I can rot for eternity instead.

For I knew of the chaos that lurked just past my lids.

I became very aware of every breath I took as a slight shuffle of movement shifted against stone, just to my left. There was that entropic shadow that I had very much pissed off.

Only inches away, a predator was lurking alongside those phantom flames of the pyres. That gloomy beast not only skulked about just past the threshold of my ears, no, I was certain that he was circling me like a dying carcass.

His eyes would linger on every inch of my decaying body hungrily, all with a wide, toothy grin on his maw. I knew that tongue would be licking sharp fangs as he watched me bleed out on the stone, waiting until that last breath of air stirred in my lungs when it pooled into the cracks beneath us.

Only then would he go for the kill.

There wouldn't be any hiding in the quiet limbo of my mind, not with him just perusing outside of my physical body. No salvation would come from that willful ignorance if he indeed planned to lunge at me with that hellish bite of his.

I was helpless, as I pretended to play dead.

Sebastian had tolerated my considerable amount of insolence and disobedience thus far, though I'm sure he'd only swallowed it because it amused him. Every challenge I threw back at him served some kind of purpose, one that aroused him the more I pushed back.

He hadn't looked quite as pleased with me tonight, given that I had provoked him with my own motives. Ones that Sebastian did not share the same sentiment with, when he called all the bets off the table.

Our match had finally ended, because I had taken one extra turn where I hadn't earned it.

In my hubris, I had taken at least two extra plays that went against the rules.

Firstly, I was guilty of attempting to meet Ominis alone.

That one was a foul because Sebastian had made it adamantly clear that if his former friend was involved, only death would follow.

Secondly, in my panicked idiocy, I had used an Unforgivable against Sebastian. While I had picked apart that make believe rule book, I had never thought that there was a stipulation to using your own opponents tricks against them.

I thought by playing dirty, I could up my advantage.

Given the wrath in Sebastian's eyes after I'd cursed him, I suppose it was safe to say that was another rule of the game broken.