Anne Bishop - Sebastian

She pressed a hand over her mouth and stared at him, feeling as if she’d glimpsed the person she might have become if she’d stayed on the farm with Pa and Mam. Mam’s tone of voice. Mam’s harshness. Mam’s way of cutting at a person with words, even when she didn’t reinforce it with a blow. Teaser’s fear was real—just as her fears, as a child, had been real. And harsh words that implied inadequacy, when it wasn’t said outright, had never done anything to extinguish the fear.

“Teaser…I’m sorry. That wasn’t kind.”

For a moment his blue eyes were sharp with a predatory anger, reminding her that, no matter how he acted or how distant he was from the roots of his kind, he still came from a race of creatures that could kill you with your own emotions.

Then he looked away and was back to being the Teaser she knew.

“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbled.

“Yes, it does.” She walked up to him and took his hand. “My…the woman who raised me…she sounded like that. She would have said things like that. I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to sour the world that way.”

He gave her hand a friendly squeeze and let go. “You’re scared. So am I. So we’re both acting like we’ve got half a brain between us. Time’s passing. Let’s do this if we’re going to.”

When they reached the clearing that held the bridge, she felt the difference. This was a resonating bridge. They had as much chance of reaching Sanctuary as they had of dancing on the moon.

Teaser huffed. “We’re doing this for Sebastian, right?”

“Right.”

“We’ll be able to get to Sanctuary because we’re doing a good thing, right?”

“Right.”

“And if we end up in a snake-infested pit of a landscape, it was your doing because you were mean to me, right?”

She sighed and took his hand. “Right.”

That said, they walked to the spot in the clearing that would let them cross over to…

Sebastian sat on the floor, his back against the wall under the broken window. With the shutters closed, not much air came through the fist-sized hole in the glass, but he told himself the air smelled fresher in this part of the room.

He couldn’t keep the voices out, couldn’t do anything to block the relentless whispers.

No one will come for you. No one loves you. No one ever did. You don’t deserve to be loved. Dreaming of daylight, incubus? There’s no daylight for someone like you. There’s no daylight in someone like you. Your heart is stone and barren earth. That’s all you are. All you can ever be. That’s all you deserve. A hard life. A barren life. A cold life. That’s all you are, Sebastian. That’s all you’ll ever be. No one will come for you. No one loves you. No one ever did.

So many voices, all whispering the same thing. Some sounded cruelly gleeful, and those, by themselves, he might have been able to fight. But it was the gentle voices, the sad voices, saying the same words that wore him out and rubbed at his heart, sanding away the feelings that would have shown the words to be lies.

He was bleak. He was barren. He was cold.

He couldn’t save himself from those relentless, whispering voices. So he put his strength into hiding the shining warmth that lived deep inside his heart.

Peace.

Lynnea breathed it in and felt her body relax. Despite the warmth of the day, there was an autumnal feel to the heat. Warm days, cooler nights. Did the leaves change and fall in Sanctuary? Did people walk through gardens that slept beneath snow? Or was it always summer here? No, not always summer. There would be a different kind of peace in seeing this landscape wearing its winter shades of gray.

“We’re here,” she said softly. She looked at Teaser, who had his eyes squeezed shut. “We reached Sanctuary.”

His eyes opened enough to squint at the gardens that stretched out around them. Then his eyes popped open as a man strolling through the gardens noticed them and turned in their direction.

“It’s all right,” Lynnea said to Teaser as she moved forward to meet the man. “I met him the last time. Greetings, Yoshani,” she added, raising her voice.

“Hey-a,” Yoshani replied, smiling. “You have come back. And you have brought a friend.” His brown eyes, so gentle and dark with wisdom, focused on Teaser.

Trying to ignore the tension building in Teaser, Lynnea shifted just enough to draw Yoshani’s attention.

“We need to find Glorianna,” she said. “Something bad has happened. She needs to be told.”

Yoshani studied them and nodded. “Peace is cherished more after one has tasted sorrow. Come with me. Glorianna will not be hard to find.”

And she wasn’t. Glorianna was among a handful of men and women tidying up the flower beds in one part of the garden. Her initial smile of greeting faded as she looked into their eyes. By the time she read the message from the Wizards’ Council that Lynnea gave her, her own eyes were green ice.

“Yoshani will take you to the guesthouse,” Belladonna said as she folded the paper back into a packet. “I need to think.”

For the first time since they’d arrived at Sanctuary, Teaser spoke. “Sebastian wouldn’t want you going to Wizard City.”

“I know,” she replied softly. Then she walked away.

Before Lynnea could voice a protest, Yoshani laid a hand on her arm.

“She needs time to think,” he said gently. “You need time to rest.”

“What’s going to happen?” Lynnea asked.

“What needs to happen,” he replied. “If they had not closed their hearts, the other Landscapers could have learned much from Glorianna Belladonna. It is so easy, so seductive, to think that choosing the Light is always the right thing to do. But sometimes it is not. She has never chosen the easy path. She will do what needs to be done…no matter what it costs.”

You are nothing, Sebastian. No one worth remembering, worth loving. Bleak. Barren. Empty of all Light. Cruelty birthed you. Misery suckled you. That is all there is for you. All there can ever be.

Hour after hour, they raped his heart, stripping away every memory of warmth and affection.

Helpless to stop the whispers, he curled up around the secret place inside him, keeping the shining warmth hidden, protected. He would never let them touch it. Never.

Glorianna sat on the bench near the koi pond. The heron had been by earlier that morning, and the fish were still hiding under the water plants. The message from the council was in her lap, held just firmly enough to keep the light breeze from snatching it away. It was tempting to let the air have the paper and take that taunting message somewhere else. Anywhere else.

When she heard the footsteps coming toward the bench, she didn’t look away from the pond. She waited until Lee sat on the bench beside her, then handed him the message.

“Sebastian wouldn’t want you to save him, not when it means bringing you within reach of the Wizards’ Council,” Lee said after he’d read the message.

“It’s not Sebastian’s choice.”

“This is a trap. He’s the bait. You know that.”

“I know.” Could she do this? Was she strong enough? What she was considering had never been done before, so the wizards would have no reason to think it was possible, let alone that it might prove dangerous to them. It also would mean putting things in motion and then leaving Sebastian’s life in someone else’s hands, but the strength and courage were there—if Lynnea didn’t falter when the time came. And it would have to be Lynnea’s choice. Every step of the journey would have to be Lynnea’s choice. But it could be done, leaving her free to seek justice for other hearts—and deal with the wizards.