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

Chapter Forty Seven: THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND

This Chapter is dediCated to someone who's support I Couldn't have done this without. You know who you are, and I appreCiate you. ♥

((TW: Masturbating in front of a sleeping person, sleepy mutual masturbation, blood play, spit play.))

Another sleepless night only meant one thing.

A trip to the place where the reason for his troubled mind rested her pretty head on silky pillows, and where he'd take a seat in the comfortable armchair that sat just beside her bed.

Sebastian often found himself here when the nights offered no rest, and ever since the night Ominis had shown him how to enter it, it had become a habitual series of visitations. At first it was because he was so curious about her, what she did when she slept. There was this need to know absolutely everything about the version of Hyacinth that had been left after he was sent away.

And he immediately wanted to break the strange little woman that had taken her place.

She was sad, so alone, and her grief had turned into paranoia. She jumped at every shadow, every noise, and everything that she once would've ran straight at.

She hadn't been the Hattie he remembered. The vision that he'd clung to when he'd gone to Azkaban. She wasn't the version that he had wanted to burn to a crisp and dance on the ashes of.

That little savior had been something less than.

However the one that slept in the bed was something on the cusp of being more.

She'd seen the destruction she caused and she regretted it. She had shed the cloak of the woman she had pretended to be, and in that, whether she knew or not, she had been absolved.

At least in his eyes.

Being absolved didn't go both ways when it came to Hyacinth, it seemed. Not when she refused to let go of all of the traits that held her back, all of the ugliness that he had hoped would've stayed buried with the obsolete, sad and pathetic version of herself.

Arrogance, emotional instability, and above all, her selfishness.

In all of the time that they had reconnected it seemed that she'd been so intent on worrying about how she felt and where she could pin the blame on him. She hadn't had any concern for how he felt, nor what he had to say.

How could Hyacinth Hills be bothered to worry about anyone else, now that she'd decided to put down the heroism? She had no idea how to balance it, it seemed, and was not even interested in learning how to. She was content with being in the first stages of her new self, and he wondered if she was just simply too afraid to take another step. She would be worried that she wouldn't simply slip and fall down that flight of uncertain stairs, but completely spiral, never to come back up from its depths again.

Hyacinth didn't realize that he'd always be there, ready to catch her. To raise her up again and again.

She'd never be rid of him.

Sebastian let out a soft sigh as he leaned back in the chair, watching as the faux moon rose through the little window and casted its light on Hyacinth's sleeping form. She looked peaceful in the moonlight, her blankets tugged up to her neck as she snored gently. He could even see the drool that hung from her lip and it made him smile a bit.

She was cute, in a pathetic kind of way when she was like this. All worry lines had been eased, all of the flush in her cheeks had simmered down. She was vulnerable like this and it drew him in every time.