THE SUNDERING

SEBASTIAN

The horse plunged through the underbrush, its roan-colored flesh briny and glistening with a thickening coat of sweat. Sebastian of Zelal held the reins in a sturdy grip as he leaned over the horse's mane to avoid the low-lying tree limbs and the thorny bushes that reached high and covered the thin path. His gaze stayed watchful, for he wasn't the only predator in the thick woods.

He wasn't afraid of the beasts of the wild. They weren't the monsters, and he convinced himself he wasn't one either. No, it was the others on his path, ruthless men that dared to approach him when every motion he made was to warn them off, hunting after him as if he were the prey. Him, the Queen's assassin. Stupid bastards. Didn't they know that with a simple flick of the serrated knife hidden in his boot, or his bow and the quiver filled with poison-tipped arrows strapped along his back, that he could easily send them to their graves?

He had been taught, as all males in the Colonies were taught: to kill or be killed. Unlike them, he showed promise from a young age that his skills of deception and mercilessness far exceeded the ordinary man. It was a trait that the Queen found useful.
Without them, and if she chose, he'd gain the condemning sentence of destruction and death. Just like her, he was feared. A killer. A man who gained nothing by extending any hint of compassion or leniency.

He never wanted his royally given position. Gladly, he would've been content to work in the mines and to marry his childhood sweetheart. But Mato was dying, her family lived in poverty, and he knew the only way to save her was to give himself over to the needs of the Queen.

Nyssa, the Dark Queen. How he hated her, the loathing embittering him to his coveted role in her royal court. He was given the privilege to serve, but the job given wasn't one that he enjoyed. If she ever knew it, his head was hers, ready to pike upon a burning stake, his body a wasted crisp.

Mato lay dying, but her last words before he ventured towards Velle, the northernmost part of Yrurra, towards the Queen's royal lands, land laden with gardens and riches and many pleasurable things, repeated over and over in his mind. Mato grounded him with her sweet innocence, but it was her words that kept him sane. Her unassuming strength made him whole.

He recalled every moment they spent together. She was too weak to do more than squeeze his hand. Her eyes, darkly rich and soft with affection, focused on him and not her pain.

"Come back to me," she said. "Baz, no matter what happens or what she expects of you, please come back to me. Make me a woman. Make me your wife."

Mato never asked him what happened on those missions that kept him away from her. It may have been her fear that his promise of matrimony meant less to him than she did, or perhaps in her faithfulness she showed absolute trust, one from a loving woman to the man she believed in. That desire for deliverance from poverty and circumstance, her need for the intimacy and devotion that he had a hard time showing, remained unspoken-until now.

She didn't speak for a long moment. Her face paled when his eyes met her own and he didn't answer.

Accusations hovered like a soggy cloud over them, ready to burst open. The deluge never began, pandering off to a standoffish distance. His distancing, not hers, because Mato was too good to be selfish, and too good not to care for him, even if he couldn't care for her back.

Her fingers squeezed his larger ones, begging quietly with the simple caress. He indulged her affection, but only because it was Mato that gave it. Even though it was a struggle not to strain away, he knew she felt his reticence to touch her in return, to tell her all she yearned to hear. As her mouth puckered and tears stayed adrift, his silence became a mountain, a pinnacle she'd never be able to climb, no matter how she strained against rock and limb to attain it.