DISGUISED || SEBASTIAN SALLOW

Chapter 22

TW: mentions of death 

________________

I was Sebastian Sallow.

I never really had a plan.

I decided to lead Cindy to an old place that Anne and me considered our secret home. It was most definitely overrun and broken, but it would do until I could figure out everything. Something was happening. Something wrong, and something completely unearthly and nothing that had to do with me  but more so to do with Y/N.

I held her close, and I could feel my arms grow tiresome from the fragile seconds I spent on edge as I made way to the haven of our eldest dreams. Cindy snorted to my left, an almost unhappy and disgusted tone that would've made my young self cry right then and there.

A tall tree lay ahead of us. It was much darker and greener than our surroundings, a sore thumb in the thin trees that sparked in my dazzling forest of Feldcroft's.  The tree had a broken and anchored wooden house lazily nailed to a longer branch that spiraled to the ground, an easy passageway to Anne and me's oldest treasure.

I could almost smell the magic, the fortitude and escape we'd built when we were kids with our parents' wands. Yes, our parents' wands. 

Anything was possible in the Sallow home.

"Here," I muttered. Feeling Y/N body tremble in my weak grasp, I gently propped her against our treehouse trunk, briskly entangling my fingers in her auburn hair before tucking the strands behind her ear.

I felt Cindy shoot to my right with a face of sourness and dread. "They've been after her for months." He whispered, a hoarse sound I hadn't expected from him.

My body tensed and I found myself crouched on the ground beside Y/N. I took her hand; rubbing my finger on her thumb, I asked, "who's endangered her?"

"An elite group." Cindy sat crisscrossed ahead of us, his voice dark and muscles tense against his elastic suit. I felt my arm reach for my wand as he continued. "The Syndicate, we call ourselves—"

"—that doesn't explain anything!" I yelled. Y/N shuddered beside me, but she was not yet susceptible of full consciousness. 

"I'll be damned, Slytherin, let me finish!" 

I remained quiet, taken aback by yet another thing he knew on me that I would never have guessed.

Cindy sighed. "The Syndicate. Most of Ranrok's troops dispatched and were destroyed. I mean, their leader was destroyed and obliterated by your one and only friend here. You'd expect someone to be a little butthurt about defeat, yes? That was the case.

"I'm not sure if he was a distant cousin or a good friend, but our leader is yet another goblin, one who befriended either Ranrok, Harlow, or both. This goblin found us who were left of Harlow's gangs and Ranrok's gangs. I was forced into The Syndicate, and I will admit watching my dearest love fall before me by the wand of Y/N's friend at our camp a few months back was horrifying...."