Sebastian~
The ash of Jacob's illusion still clung to the air.
It danced lazily in the shafts of little sunlight breaking through the tall, cold windows of the trial chamber. The same chamber that had nearly become my tomb an hour ago.
The same chamber where I had just slaughtered a man wearing the face of the woman I love.
My hands trembled, slick with drying blood. A strange pressure pulsed in my chest, like a memory trying to claw its way back to life.
And yet, they cheered.
"Our leader!"
"Sebastian the Just!"
"He gave us vengeance!"
It was deafening. The applause, the shouting, the praises—I couldn't breathe under the weight of it all. I'd just committed a brutal murder, and they handed me a crown for it.
I stood there, in the silence between their roars, drowning.
That was when I saw them through the crowd—two young blonde women, wide-eyed and trembling, and a tall, grizzled vampire whose presence once commanded attention.
I remembered them.
