I don’t have to look up to know that Sebastian’s moving closer. I am always aware of him when he’s close. He tilts my face up, guiding me to meet his eyes. “I heard about last night,” he says.
Everything inside me stills as images flash before me. The shower, so cold on my hot skin, and the firm, unrelenting press of Finn’s body against mine, his mouth on my neck. The way I begged him . . .
“Riaan just told me. He would have told me sooner, but for some reason he assumed that when you left the party last night, you came to my room.” He shakes his head. “I wish you would have.”
Oh. Oh. I can only stare. My mind’s a mess of questions and hurt and justifications I know I shouldn’t tell myself. But as I lose myself in those sea-green eyes, I feel the temptation of easy forgiveness. Everything would be so much easier if we could just go back to how things were when he left my room yesterday.
“I’m sorry about the other girl,” he whispers. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“Bash, minutes before, you’d been in here kissing me.” Pointing this out makes me feel like a complete hypocrite. Only hours after that, I was begging Finn to touch me, to kiss me. It hardly matters that it didn’t happen. I would have welcomed it if he’d been willing, and that is betrayal enough. Yes, I could blame the cocktail of drugs and heartbreak, but . . .
Sebastian’s eyes flash as he steps back. I see so much in that beautiful face—frustration, anger, maybe a hint of self-loathing. “I told you I’m expected to choose a wife, and while you try to talk yourself into even considering it, there are women who want the position.”
“I invited you to my bed and you walked away and found her.”
He squeezes his eyes shut. “I think I was trying to convince myself that what I felt with you wasn’t special. I wanted to believe I could feel it with one of them too.”
The words hit like a dull blow. “Did you?”
His gaze drops to my mouth, and he slowly shakes his head. “No. I never do, no matter how strongly I wish it.”
I turn away and walk to the window, hating that he wishes he didn’t feel so much for me and understanding it all the same. That’s the worst part of this: I get it. I don’t understand the rush to find a wife or a world where those decisions usually aren’t emotional ones, but trying to connect with someone he may marry while his mother’s deadline looms? I can sympathize. “You looked like you felt it just fine,” I say.
“I wanted to, but I didn’t.” He blows out a breath. “If I felt for her what I feel for you, I wouldn’t have sent her home.”
“Okay.” Right alongside my hurt, guilt ravages my chest. I spent last night begging Finn. I spent this morning loving the laughter in his eyes when he teased me, and the entire afternoon trying to figure out how to save him. And I don’t know where this puts me and Sebastian.
“Can we put all that aside for the night?” he asks. His warm hand slides down my arm until his fingers wrap around my wrist. “I want to focus on us for the next two days. I don’t want to think about you training with Finnian or my mother pressuring me to choose a bride or how soon I’ll have to take my position as king. Can we just focus on us for a while?”
“I’d like that.” Liar. While he thinks he’s taking me to Serenity Palace so we can have some quality time together, my focus will be on finding the Grimoricon and getting it back to Mordeus.
He smiles. “Are you feeling okay?”
I narrow my eyes. Does Sebastian know someone drugged me last night? Was Riaan involved? “Yes, why?”
“I came to your room after breakfast, and your maids said you were still sleeping. That’s not like you.”
Pretha must have put some sort of glamour on my room to make my maids think I was here and sleeping . . . or glamoured someone to look like me and play the part.
“I had a few glasses of wine at the party last night,” I say.
“I’m glad you went.” His eyes soften. “I like seeing you take part in events around the palace.”
But maybe a little more honesty would be better. “Bash, I think I was drugged.”
His faces pales, and those beautiful eyes turn as violent as a raging sea. “What?”
“I didn’t feel right. Hot all over, low inhibitions.” My cheeks heat in embarrassment. Thank the gods only Finn witnessed the worst of it. “When my—my maid found me at the party, I was trying to take my clothes off.”