evermore || sebastian sallow

chapter 77 - aftermath

"Did some force take you, 

because I didn't pray?"

Taylor Swift

───•~❉᯽❉~•───

chapter 77 - aftermath

Y/n Gray

3 weeks later - the denial

The casket barely made it halfway down the ground before Y/n Gray's black skirts swooshed around her ankles and she turned her back at the impossible-turned-possible reality she couldn't face. Multiple heads turned in her direction, but they knew better than to say something and beg for her to stay.

Sebastian Sallow's hand brushed against hers, their fingertips touching in such a featherlight manner that Y/n barely felt the fight within himself on making her stay. But it was there in the way his fingers flexed. She felt it. There was nothing she didn't know about him at this point. She was glad he didn't fight her on it because she didn't have any fight left in her either. She had no more grace to give. So, she left.

No tears came. It was like she had exhausted all of it the night she lost her brother and her friend. Yet, a part of her still couldn't believe it either, and perhaps that was the reason she had turned herself away from the funeral, as selfish as that might have been while her younger brother and mother held tight onto each other, anchoring themselves from falling too far into grief.

Y/n hiked up the skirts as black as night and made her to the other side of the woods, away from the funeral proceedings they held for her brother in the meadow just outside of Gray Manor. Her mind was lost, just as much as her heart was.

They might have won the war because of her, but she felt anything but a winner. No one ever truly wins wars. Absolutely no one. She was convinced of that. There could be right sides, and there could be true peace, but no winners.

She walked and walked, and walked, weaving around and under branches so that her corset ribbons and seams wouldn't get caught, snow crunching under her feet. At some point, the perfectly fitting boots began to feel so tight against her toes and ankles that she had to take them off, heart pounding loudly in her ears for whatever reason she couldn't decipher.

She breathed hard, puffs of clouds streaming out of her pink lips. She felt no stinging from the ice at all, her shoes dangling from her gloved hand. It was like she was trying to catch her own death, barefoot in the wildest of winters, and yet the fates wouldn't allow her. With every step she took, the snow melted from her ancient magic. Her bones stayed warm.

She stopped suddenly, looking up at the space she ended up in.