Black smoke wisps wound like thickened veins up my arms as they returned to me, pins and needles kissing strips along my skin. Pain had bubbled through my blood but all the same had been nothing more than background noise - a distant crackling to the calm that framed the very edges of my vision.
The edge of home.
Impossibly close but entirely unstable, only just unattainable.
I'd wanted to crawl forward, to inch to the edge and tip over - to let it swallow me whole. I'd wanted to feel my mother's cold fingertips through my hair and the deepened hug from my father. And yet, someone else had beckoned me back, had whispered through my breaths and pulled me to him.
Sebastian's brown eyes and flared nostrils calmed me. His fear, his pain, so thick it was nearly tasteable. And perhaps it was - a thick, burned, wooden sort of scent that hung in my nostrils and seared every breath inwards.
Coming back to myself was far more agonizing than leaving it had been.
His whispers had been the only remnants of will I'd had left not to dive back into the darkness.
"Sweetheart please.
I'm here.
Oh Atley.
Fuck.
My Atley please."
Over and over.
Persistant.
Pleading.
Decadent.
Pure.
Begging.
But for what exactly?
Black smoke filled lungs pinched deep as I took in a ragged immeasurable breath, opening my stinging eyes.
Sebastian's words chipped as he pulled me tighter. "Oh At-"
My eyes drifted over his shoulder, the chaos of a room all that remained.
Books torn from spines, parchments slashed to strips, ink splattered so dark the floors appeared to be deep pools and caverns. Feathered quills withered and curled in on themselves, the candles that had been lit moments ago now piles of wax, crumpled and blackened at the tips. The walls scream in chipped stones but stacked and sealed as tight as they had been this morning. Cracked pillars and empty inlets now dusted in something similar to soot. A wall hung torch hung as an angle, its casing pulled from the wall, limp and useless. Moonlight fragments shattered over the wreckage from the stained glass windows that somehow gleamed untouched.
Against the floor, covered by a black edged parchment, lay the tip of my little wand - abandoned, rejected, forgotten. Sebastian's similarly, lay beside mine and a thick, ragged black book entirely unscathed.
"Atley." Sebastian whimpered.
It took a moment to find my breath, to pull the words from my lungs.
"Are you- you ok? What happened to the Room?"
His face scrunched, his brows pressed in and his chest rose quickly. His eyes flicked between each of mine. "Y-" Raspy and scratched, he cleared his throat and tried again."Y-"
Again nothing.
His face contorted once more but before the tears could slip he pulled his head to mine and placed a thick kiss to my forehead. The air from his nose sharp against my skin.
He spoke again, a whisper all he could produce, each syllable sending chills within my blood and down my spine.
"I will never forgive your parents for what they've done.