My Beautiful One

28. These stolen moments

Sebastian's POV

I never liked sleep. The thought of being vulnerable to all those people who would gladly kill me had kept me up at night to that the extent of my sleep was when I feel asleep at my desk.

Fear had kept me up, but now it was something different.

Some mundane once said that you know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. I considered that to be stupid because I'd never really had a good dream, and in reality, the person that I feared I loved hated me to the core of her being.

I sat up and ran a hand through my hair, looking around me at the black walls of my bedroom until my eyes met the clock on the wall, and I figured out that I had been trying to get to sleep for three hours. In my life, considering that I would be dead or not conscious of my actions in only a few months, three hours spent trying to get to sleep and not actually sleeping was a complete waste of my time.

I twisted around, freeing myself from the covers that had managed to ensnare me as I tossed and turned, and hopped off the bed to stand opposite the book shelf. 

It had been a week since my sister broke into the apartment and I'd let Amari go, and I'd thought that having Clary to tease and torment would keep me occupied, but it had done the opposite. After all that had happened, the thought of imprisoning another girl sickened me, and I had been thinking about Amari so much that my mind was too busy being miserable to beg me for blood.

I had the feeling that my sister was absolutely fine with not being tortured or raped or whatever it is she feared would come with my company, but I also sensed the slightest bit of pity. She didn't actively seek me out, and when we did speak, she snapped at me like a vicious little redheaded attack dog. She hadn't tried to kill me yet, and I noticed that when she thought I wasn't looking, she would stare at me with this forlorn look on her face that spoke of pity.

What I had spent my time doing was training and reading all of my father's documents. Most of them were just rants about the Clave and Downworlders in general, with the odd bit of pining over Jocelyn, but I'd found out a lot about myself as well. The most frightening thing I'd learned was that towards the end of the human part of my life, I'd lose myself for short bursts like falling unconscious until one day I didn't come back to my human state and would remain a demon. Strangely, that didn't bother me. It just made me want to bring the world to its knees even more for what it had done to me.

But when it was actually happening, revenge was the least of my worries.

All I could feel was terror that I was about to die

My breathing came in short bursts and my vision was blurring and zooming in and out like some kind of camera effect in a mundane horror movie. The part of my brain that always wanted blood crept out of its isolated little corner and started to spread through my whole mind, giving me a head ache so fierce it was like a bolt of lightning had struck me right on the head.

I stumbled away from the book case, the weapons on the floor cutting my feet as I staggered towards the en suite bathroom and swung open the door. Once inside, I braced my hands on either side of the sink and stared at my reflection in the mirror.

What I saw scared me more than any demon ever had.

I was paler than I had ever been before, and there were small black veins creeping up the right side of my face. My eyes were like tunnels, the pupil and the iris expanding so that they were even starting to take up the white of the eye.

And there was pain everywhere, like I'd been set on fire and was gradually being consumed by the flames. I knew that when I was in this much pain, my binding rune must be glowing, and sure enough, it was: a cherry red just like the fire I could swear I was feeling.