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

Chapter Fifty Two: Distraction // RUNRUNRUN

 What was only supposed to be a few days of being without Sebastian had suddenly turned into a week.

A week of telling myself that he was on 'Court business' and was no longer in the country. It meant telling myself that I had to settle with the tiny scraps of details he was allowed to share with me, and those pieces had only been enough to let me know he would be gone for a time.

All of that meant that I had to trust Sebastian and what he told me. But that was a short, thin rope that I'd been asked to walk. And with each day, it was growing more precarious to cross it.

Occasionally I'd peer over the ledge of it, only to find that I'd been suspended over a vast ocean. But right in the middle, right where that rope hung, was a very distinct line that separated the kinds of water in the sea.

One side was a current of worry, its color green and sickly. It made my stomach turn in nausea, because it begged the sort of questions that made me uneasy.

Perhaps he'd been held up by that business? Maybe he had meant to say he would be gone for much longer and had slipped up because of the Vow?

Maybe something had killed Sebastian and that's why I didn't hear from him, nor would I ever do so again.

I had to look the other way if I wanted to remain steady on that rope and the otherside of the raging sea brought me even less comfort. That side was a strange mixture of anger, mistrust, and irritation. Its color was a deadly shade of red.

It was red for the feeling of being lied to.

Had Sebastian meant to make me believe that he was only supposed to be gone those few days? Had it been a ploy for him to go do something nefarious? Or maybe to leave me behind? Was it all just to hurt me again?

With my head forward I ignored the danger beneath.

It was growing clear, as I took another step, that I was going insane.

Sebastian was a powerful dark wizard, perhaps one of the strongest I'd ever met. I'd watched him silence people without a sound from him, and had seen him turn a man into pureed blood without so much as a twitch of his fingers.

And there was the kind of magic he used to keep my body still for him, the time he had invaded my mind, and that of what he used to punish my flesh.

The possibility of something terrible happening to Sebastian was as small as the one where he had lied to me. There was nothing to be gained other than pissing me off for such a thing, and after our last few encounters, I would have thought he was done with those kinds of games.

So instead I had to keep walking that rope and continue to not only trust him, but trust that everything was okay.

For now I would continue in my efforts to entertain myself while he was out. It hadn't taken long for me to catch up on my studies and now I'd taken to strolling the castle in my free time. It was empty of almost all students, given that everyone had left for the holiday break.

Not many had chosen to stay at Hogwarts this year, as they had in the past, and for good reason.

The Court's movements were beginning to be harder to ignore, even to Hogwarts, and by extension, the Ministry. I didn't believe that the latter would do much other than pen an owl to the Headmaster, so he acted accordingly.

Black stated that this winter holiday would be extended, not by a week, but almost an entire month. The growing tension between the organization and the outside world needed to simmer down before he felt it safe enough for them to return to school.