Shadow of the Key | Sebastian Sallow

Chapter 22: Betrayal

"Why do I run back to you like I don't mind if you fuck up my life?"

- All Time Low, Demi Lovato, blackbear

Amelia's POV

Realizing that she fancied her once platonic friend was one thing.

But it was a whole other thing when he had been avoiding her even more than he did before.

If that was even possible.

Sebastian never showed up to breakfast or dinner the past few days. He didn't even show up to the Undercroft where they would all go once the classes wrapped up for the day.

If they shared a class together, his gaze would be down on his textbook and parchments with the same tired expression the entire time. He'd purposely sit as far away from her as possible, as though she was a disease and he didn't want to be infected.

When she'd actually see him in the halls, he'd pass by her as though she was a ghost.

It was destroying her.

And now that she knows her true feelings towards him, it was destroying her even more.

After that day in Potions class when she had smelled his scents in her Amortentia, she never felt reality slap her in the face harder than it did in that moment.

But when the class had finally wrapped up for the day, Sebastian bolted out of there faster than a leaping dugbog without so much as a glance in her direction.

She didn't miss the tears welling up in his eyes that were fixated to the floor on the way out.

What went wrong?

Everything was fine until their plan. Until he had slid his hand up her dress to pickpocket her wand so she wouldn't potentially be expelled, or worse, thrown in Azkaban. It was after that moment that everything seemed to crumble between them.

She just wanted to go back to how they were before it. Even before he brought her to his room and offered his clothes for her to borrow. Before they had slept next to each other. Before all of the tension that bloomed between them.

She just wanted their friendship back.

She couldn't bother with a courtmanship right now anyways, not with Death lingering at her doorstep waiting for her to make one wrong move.

When everything is over and she miraculously comes out of it all alive, then maybe.

When Harlow is back in Azkaban, or better yet, dead.

When she finds out who those mysterious cloaked figures are, and hopefully, also are put in Azkaban or wind up dead.

When everything is said and done, she'd consider it.

But with Sebastian pretending as though they never knew each other, she began to wonder if he thought everything that happened between them was a mistake. That she had gotten too close and he couldn't stand it.

She could live with him not reciprocating her feelings, but she doesn't think she could live a life without him in it at all.

She had never fancied a man before. The one crush on Garreth was so minuscule that it didn't even count as anything. Before Sebastian, she had never been touched by anyone like that before.

She had plenty of friends that were guys, even when she was a squib.

But that's all they ever were. Just friends.