Shadow of the Heir

I'd Tell Them Put Me Back in it. Darling, I Would Do It Again

Somewhere in the deep hours of the night reserved for horror stories and romances, Ella opened her eyes. It took several blinks of watching the lingering moon through Sebastian's bedroom window before she realized she was awake, and several more before she realized she didn't know why she was.

No nightmares. No monsters waiting for her in the dark recesses of her mind that came alive in the quiet hours of the night. It must have been the first time in a long time that very moon had seen her rise from sleep in tranquility.

There was only the soft smoothing of Sebastian's hand over her back. Calming and soothing. She tilted her up, only then realizing how smushed and stuck her cheek had become against his shoulder. She was surprised to see him already staring down at her. It might have always surprised her that his eyes could hold so much adoration, even through sleepy blinks.

Sebastian cleared his throat from disuse. "Did I wake you?"

Ella shook her head, softly. Fighting to keep her eyes open, she ran her fingers over his chest. Drew imaginary lines between his freckles. The same constellations she used to point out in the sky while he read to her. What a simpler time that had been, but what a happier time this was.

"Can't sleep?" Ella asked, blinking back up at him before she returned to her tracing across his chest.

"Can. I don't particularly wish to," He mumbled. "I just want to look at you."

"Why?"

"Hm." He paused like he'd never stopped and considered the why behind his staring. Perhaps he was just mocking her; she was none the wiser with her sleep-addled brain. "Why do you look at the stars?"

"That's deep introspection for the middle of the night, Seb."

"Humor me."

If he expected her to say they were pretty, she wouldn't be giving him the satisfaction of an easy win. "Because they are far away from all of this." And, more often than not, she wished she was, too.

At the moment, though, she felt just as far away from it.

"All of what?"

"The fighting. The social constructs. The blood statuses. The death."

There was a pause before he sighed and ran a hand over her hair. "Is it bothering you?"

"Killing them? No." She shook her head slightly. It wasn't bothering her, per se. She'd live in an endless cycle of violence if that was what it took to keep Sebastian alive. It might have been the first time she hadn't been chased around by the ghosts of what she'd done. "Are you bothered?"

His sigh sounded more frustrated that time around. "I told you I'd do—"

"No, I know that. Are you bothered that I killed them?"

"Els, you cannot be this dense."

She puffed out an indignant breath and pushed herself up on one elbow to glare at him. He'd been calling her some variation of dense since they were fifth years, and it had only partially lost its irksome quality and picked up the smallest endearing element. "How many times must I tell you my family doesn't circumvent the point as you lot do?"

"You dodge the matter just as much."

"I do not."

"Really? How long did it take you to admit you were still in love with me?"

"Ugh," she grumbled, dropping her elbow down to snuggle back against him. She closed her eyes in defiance. "I'm going back to sleep."

Truthfully, she hardly remembered a time when she wasn't in love with him. Everything before seemed like it had happened to someone else—someone softer and probably much more deserving of him.