TWENTY-EIGHT
Sebastian wasn’t sure if it was the noise or the light that woke him. He couldn’t focus on either as he clawed himself out of a drugged sleep. The near window was the first thing to come into focus. There, a curtain was billowing in a mid-afternoon breeze, the bright sun landing on the foot of his bed, trailing over the lumps he assumed were his legs. One lump was much larger than the other.
The noise was the second thing he focused on. He turned his head the other direction to look at his room, in which four chairs were assembled. The noise was coming from Russell, who was snoring in one of them. The other chairs held Victoria and Evans. In the closest chair, Aspen slept, her head lying on her arms which were crossed on the covers of his bed. Sebastian stopped moving because it hurt. Instead he watched Aspen while she slept. His fingers touched a tendril of hair that snaked over the comforter. Her face was shadowed and tense, even in sleep. Sebastian marveled at the fact that they were all there. He watched Aspen sleep, thinking of how certain he’d been that he’d lost her, especially those final minutes in the cave.
His hand reached forward to touch her cheek, making her jump as she whipped her head up to see Sebastian studying her. Their eyes spoke a greeting, a promise, and a vow all in a moment. Aspen’s words halted just short of her lips, and she found the only thing she was capable of producing was tears. They spilled over her cheeks as she stood, reaching for Sebastian. Words were completely unnecessary as they touched, hand to hand, hand to face. Aspen’s hands ran over his bare chest, which was uncovered by the sheet that ran from his waist to the foot of the bed. She shifted until she was sitting by his side, the top half of her body lying across his chest. Her kisses covered his face, neck, chest, and anything else she could reach. He shushed her quietly as he ran his thumbs over the soft half moons that were her lips. Aspen sighed and slipped her hands around the back of his neck and lowered her lips to his before she leaned close to his ear to whisper, “I love you.”
Sebastian exhaled softly, wrapping his hands in her hair so he could pull her ear to his mouth and whisper his love. Their lips met as they tried to give everything at once, kiss everywhere, stare into each other’s eyes enough to make up for lost moments.
Russell cleared his throat and had Aspen jumping and blushing before guilty shifting back. Sebastian looked over to see everyone was awake and watching them. Russell chuckled. “Oh, I think he’s feeling better, guys. I don’t want to see what happens next, do you?”
Sebastian groaned. “Nothing that involves moving the lower half of my body, I assure you.”
Russell laughed. “Good to see your sense of humor is back.”
Evans stood to smooth her skirt. “How do you feel?”
Sebastian lifted himself off of the bed on his elbows, carefully. “Sore, miserable, alive.” He paused before he looked up. “What does my leg look like?”
Victoria stood and walked over, lifted the sheet. She revealed a cast which ran from hip to toe. “It’s actually going to be okay. If you had been mortal, you would have lost it and died from the internal bleeding, plain and simple. As it was, we were able to graft the skin back together and put in pins while you regenerated from the blood Aspen gave you.”
Sebastian lifted Aspen’s hand to kiss it. She smiled. “Your healing was a long process. You’ve been out for two days. I was starting to get worried.”
“Wow, really?” He looked around. “What else happened?”
Evans turned suddenly, facing the window. Russell’s voice cracked when he attempted to speak, so he stopped. Victoria sighed. “The Guardians took the cave back apart, with help from Auster. This kind of thing would normally take weeks, but Auster used the wind to lift up huge pieces of wreckage. The demons were all crushed in the cave, with the exception of maybe a hundred the Guardians exterminated.”
Here she paused. Sebastian glanced from face to face, afraid to ask. “Venus?”
Victoria shook her head. “There was no sign of her. She escaped.”
Sebastian exhaled heavily, lying back on the bed to ease the pain in his limbs. “She got away.”
“They are still looking. She was in the middle of a mountain range, for Jupiter’s sake. She’ll turn up eventually.”
The room was eerily silent while Sebastian wondered whether he should even ask. “And the others…?”
Victoria shook her head, her resolve breaking as she turned her head. Aspen took Sebastian’s hand. “No sign of Alex or Glen. They were buried in the rubble, though we’re still working on retrieving their bodies.”
The room was silent for a while as Sebastian swallowed this difficult news. Sebastian thought about losing the mortals, who had become like family to him in the previous weeks. He watched Evans sniff from the window. After a few moments, Russell walked to the bed. “Glad to see you’re on the mend. I’ll leave you to continue your rehabilitation exercises.”
Sebastian chuckled as Victoria and Evans kissed him goodbye. He held onto Evans for a few seconds, wishing he could remove her grief. Evans was already fragile emotionally. Getting attached to a mortal would be really hard on her. Sebastian looked over her head to Russell. He knew Russell was going through the same thing because of his attachment to Alex. Sebastian didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. Russell quickly turned to go before the tears in his eyes could fall. Evans pulled back and made her way out of the room with the others, closing the door behind her. That left Sebastian alone with Aspen, who sat at the side of his bed. She sighed. “I thought I had lost you again.”
“I’m like a bad penny,” he grinned, but it was a sobering kind of smile as the two of them remembered the lives that had been lost.
“What now?” Aspen asked.
“Now you marry me.”
Aspen’s heart stopped in her chest. “What?”
“Unless you’ve had a better offer.” Sebastian grinned. “I’m crazy for you, you know.”
Aspen’s smile spread over her face like the dawn spreading over the horizon. “You’d have to be to come get me out of that cave.”
Sebastian lifted her left hand, bringing it to his lips, and kissed her bare ring finger. “That will have to do until I can get up and get you something better. Will that work?”
Aspen leaned down to brush her lips over his. “It’s perfect.”
When she leaned back, she realized Sebastian had unbuttoned the first three buttons of her blouse. “Well!”
“I heard there was going to be rehabilitation involved.”
Aspen chuckled, shaking her head. “I thought you couldn’t move your lower body.”
Sebastian grinned wickedly, exposing her bra while pushing back her blouse. “No, but you can, right?”
Aspen laughed, throatily. “I suppose I could make a sacrifice if it means helping you heal.”
Sebastian ran his hand over her rib cage. “Oh, love, you’ve already healed me.” He pulled her hand to his chest, where he placed it over his heart. Sebastian kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m never leaving you again, for all eternity. There’s just one more thing I need.”
Aspen snuggled into his hair, sighing contentedly before she lifted her head to kiss him gently on the lips. “Anything.”
He flicked his eyes at the door. “Lock that, will you?”