“I am not who you think,” he began. As he spoke, he looked ahead, a thousand-yard stare trained on the carriage wall.
“Excuse me?” Helena turned to him.
“When you look at me, you see where I came from,” he continued in a whisper as if he hoped she would not hear it. “The perfect pedigree. Raised to be everything my father could ever want,” he scoffed. “He did not want a son, truth be told. He wanted a tool he could use, one to further his reputation and political goals. Of which there were many.”
“Sebastian, what are you…”
“And that’s what I became. And I was good at it. I learned how to use my tongue like a sword, how to craft lies to make them sound like truths. I was given the best education, admired by all, seen as the future of my family’s line.” His lips curled into a sneer. “But despite everything I did, how I yearned to impress my father, I was only that same tool. Used as he wished when he wished it. I had no friends. No one I could trust. To me, people were pieces on a chessboard, and my father was always careful that I saw them as little else.”
He said nothing for a moment, expecting Helena to ask what he was doing. But she stayed silent, watching him closely, seeming to sense where this story was going and why he was telling it.
She wanted to hear it, he could tell. Through pretending that she wanted nothing to do with him, she was starting to accept what he knew—that this marriage could be so much more if they allowed it.
“I wasn’t happy,” he admitted solemnly. “In truth, I don’t think I knew what happiness was. A trick. Or…” He turned his gaze to her and smiled sardonically. “A trap. What good was happiness? It brought you nothing. It gained you nothing. All I cared about was my future, as seen through my father’s eyes.”
“What changed?” she asked softly.
“Who said anything did?”
She smiled and squeezed his hand. “The man you just described would not have spent an entire night by the bed of a sick child who is not related to him. So…” She squeezed his hand again and made sure to be looking right at him. “What changed?”
Sebastian allowed himself a smile, liking the effect it had on her.
“My only respite from my father’s dominion was found in random trips I would make to London. I was forced to sneak out. I would wear common clothes so I would not be recognized. And when I reached the city, I would…” He shrugged. “I would just walk. Nowhere to go. No one to see. All it was was a chance to be free.”
She laughed. “I know the feeling.”
“I started doing it when I was fifteen, but it wasn’t until I was seventeen that I met…” He felt a lump form in his throat, one he could not swallow. “That I met Thomas.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the memories washed over him.
He could still remember that first day, how random the meeting was, how unexpected. How unsure he had been, then how wonderful he had felt. And the way Thomas had changed his perspective on life, giving him what was in every sense a new lease on a life he despised, such that he was happy for perhaps the first time in memory.
“He was a street urchin,” Sebastian continued. “Only ten years old, living in allies, eating the little food he could get his hands on, with no future, no past, nothing to live for at all. And yet…” He smiled, and he felt tears of happiness well up in his eyes. “He was happy. Despite everything, he loved his life, unlike anything I was able to imagine.”
“Sounds like quite the character.”
“He was,” he agreed, still smiling. “When we met…” He laughed again. “He thought he was rescuing me. I was dressed as a commoner, but I had forgotten the fact and was getting into an argument with a shop owner who was a little too close to kicking my backside for daring to walk into his store. Thomas grabbed me, dragged me away, and helped me to hide. He thought I was just like him, and he did not judge me. More than that, he saw me as a person. Not a tool, not a lord, but an equal and a friend. And why? Just because he was that sort of person.”
He felt a pain in the back of his throat as the good memories turned ugly. He swallowed the pain, still staring ahead, forcing himself to continue.
“He called me Bastian. And over the next year, every time I escaped into the city, we would meet. We would never do anything particularly exciting. But that was the point. It was just enough to have someone in my life who wanted to be my friend and did not ask for anything in return. I had no idea how much I needed that.”
He let the silence fall between them, because for this next part of the story, he needed a moment to compose himself. He was still looking ahead, shaking slightly, taking deep breaths as he waited for the question.
“What…” Helena hesitated. “What happened to him? To Thomas?”
“It was winter, and I was eighteen. It had been several months since I’d made it into the city—my father was starting to pressure me more than usual, as I was a man and his expectations of me had grown. But I managed to sneak in, excited to see him… and worried, as that winter was a particularly harsh one and I knew that Thomas had nowhere permanent to sleep. I went to our usual meeting place…” He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “He wasn’t there. I spent the whole day looking for him, until I became desperate and approached that same shopkeeper who Thomas had saved me from all those years ago.”
“Oh no…”
“He died,” Sebastian said flatly. “Taken ill from the cold, the shopkeeper was the one who found his body. If not for him, it might have been weeks until someone did. He was just… He had no one. Alone. In the cold. Knowing he was going to die and that nobody would save him.”
“Sebastian…” Helena shuffled closer to him.
“I often wonder if he thought about me. If he wondered where I was and why I wasn’t there. But mostly, I ask myself why I didn’t do something sooner.”
“There was nothing you could have?—”
