🌸CHAPTER 6🌸
1774 Words
🖤 Sebastian's POV
He had been married once before.
No. That wasn't true. He had never been married before. He had simply, at thirty two years of age, attended enough weddings — business arrangements dressed in white, alliances sealed with champagne and vows that meant precisely as much as the contracts signed afterward — to know exactly what a wedding was and was not. It was not romance. It was not sentiment. It was a legal instrument. A binding of assets. A formalisation of terms already agreed upon in rooms that smelled of cigarettes and imported whiskey.
This was no different.
He told himself that while Roman adjusted his cufflinks in the small anteroom off the east chapel. He told himself that while Marco ran through the guest list — deliberately small, deliberately controlled, the bare minimum required to make the thing legal and witnessed. He told himself that while Father Benedict waited at the altar with the particular expression of a man who had made his peace with the things he participated in and preferred not to examine them too closely.
He told himself it was no different.
And then the door at the far end of the chapel opened.
They had given her a dress.
He hadn't asked about the dress. Hadn't thought about it, specifically — it was a detail that fell under the category of arrangements, and arrangements were handled by other people so that he didn't have to think about them. White or something close to it, he had assumed vaguely, if he had assumed anything at all.
What he hadn't assumed was this.
She stood in the doorway of the chapel in something simple and pale — not the architectural construction of a real bride's dress but something quieter than that, softer, with long sleeves and a skirt that fell simply to the floor. Her hair was down. Someone had done something to it — some small careful thing that made it look deliberate without making it look performed. She held no flowers. He noted that she was not holding flowers and for a reason he couldn't immediately name, he was glad.
She stood in the doorway and looked at the chapel — at the candles, the small gathered witnesses, Father Benedict at the altar — and then her eyes found him. All the way down the aisle. Standing at the altar waiting with his hands clasped in front of him and his face giving away exactly nothing.
He watched the breath go out of her.
He watched her hands, loose at her sides, begin to shake.
She walked toward him anyway.
That was the thing he noted. That was the thing he filed, carefully, in the part of his mind that collected things he didn't know what to do with — she walked toward him anyway. Every step was clearly costing her something. Her face was pale as the dress, her eyes were glassy in a way that said she was holding something back by sheer force of will, and she was shaking visibly enough that he could see it from ten feet away.
And she walked toward him anyway.
He didn't examine what that did to something behind his sternum.
She stopped beside him at the altar.
Up close the shaking was worse. He could see it in her hands, in the slight unsteadiness of her breathing, in the way she was staring straight ahead at Father Benedict with the fixed focus of someone who has decided that looking at the thing that frightens them most is not an option they can afford right now.
Father Benedict began.
Sebastian listened to the words with the detached attention he brought to all legal proceedings — tracking the structure of it, noting the binding language, the formal transfer of status from one condition to another. He had read the civil documentation already. This was the ceremonial component. Necessary for certain purposes, relevant to certain audiences, otherwise largely symbolic.
He told himself it was largely symbolic.
"Do you, Sebastian Drave," Father Benedict said, with the carefully neutral intonation of a man who had learned not to editorialize, "take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"
"I do," Sebastian said. Evenly. Without hesitation.
A small sound beside him. Almost nothing. The kind of sound that wasn't quite a breath and wasn't quite a word and was entirely involuntary.
He looked at her.
She was staring straight ahead. Her jaw was set. Her eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with happiness. One hand had found the fabric of her skirt and was holding it — not visibly, hidden in the folds — and he could see the white of her knuckles from where he stood.
"And do you, Sera Calloway," Father Benedict continued, "take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"
Silence.
One second. Two.
Sebastian watched her throat move. Watched her swallow once, hard, the way you swallow something that doesn't want to go down. Watched her fingers tighten in the fabric of her skirt until the knuckles were white as bone.
"I do," she said.
Her voice didn't shake. He didn't know how. It was barely above a whisper and it cost her everything he could see it cost her but it didn't shake and he—
He noted that. He filed it. He put it somewhere he wasn't going to look at tonight.
Roman produced the rings.
Sebastian had not thought about the rings either — another arrangement, another detail delegated and handled. He took the smaller one and turned to her and she turned to him and they faced each other for the first time since she had walked down the aisle. This close. This direct.
Her eyes came up to his slowly, like she had to build herself up to it.
They were wet. Not spilling — she was holding that back too, with the same fierce quiet will she had been deploying since she walked through the door. But wet. Bright and wet and looking at him with an expression that was trying very hard to be nothing and not entirely succeeding.
He took her hand.
She flinched. Barely — a small involuntary thing that moved through her fingers and up her wrist before she controlled it. He felt it. He held her hand anyway — not roughly, just with the same absolute certainty with which he did everything — and he slid the ring onto her finger.
Her hand was cold. He noted that too.
She took his ring from where Roman held it. Her fingers trembled as she placed it. He felt that too — the slight unsteadiness of her hands against his, the way she had to concentrate to do the simple mechanical thing of sliding a ring onto a finger because her hands wouldn't cooperate.
She managed it.
"I now pronounce you husband and wife," Father Benedict said. There was something in his voice that Sebastian chose not to examine. "You may—"
"No," Sebastian said.
Father Benedict stopped.
A small ripple moved through the gathered witnesses. Roman's face remained perfectly still. Marco looked at the ceiling. Sebastian looked at Sera — at her pale face, her wet eyes, her cold hands — and said it again, quietly, to no one in particular.
"No."
He did not kiss her.
He stepped back. Turned to the witnesses. Nodded once to Roman, who moved immediately to begin the process of directing people toward the reception room where the minimum required socialising would take place.
He did not look at Sera again.
He walked out of the chapel first, ahead of everyone, with his hands clasped behind his back and his face giving away exactly nothing.
In the corridor outside, he stopped. Just for a moment. Just long enough to look at the ring on his own finger — unfamiliar, strange, the physical weight of something he had not felt before.
He put his hands in his pockets.
He walked away.
Later — much later, when the guests were gone and the house was quiet — Roman found him in the study.
"She didn't eat at the reception," Roman said.
"I know."
"She went back to her room two hours ago. Lena says—"
"Roman." Sebastian didn't look up from his desk. "Go home."
A pause.
"She's your wife," Roman said quietly. Not an accusation. Not quite. Just — a fact, laid down carefully.
Sebastian said nothing.
Roman left.
Sebastian sat alone in his study in the silence of his very large, very cold, very quiet house and looked at the ring on his finger and did not think about wet eyes or cold hands or a voice that didn't shake when it had every right to.
He did not think about any of it.
He worked until three in the morning instead.
It helped.
Mostly. 🖤
🌸 END OF CHAPTER SIX 🌸
He said no. 🖤
He stood at that altar and when Father Benedict said you may kiss the bride — Sebastian Drave said no. And walked away first. And then stood alone in a corridor staring at his own ring.
I'm not okay. Are you okay? Because I'm not okay. 😭🌸
What did you think of Chapter Six? 👀
🌸 Sebastian refusing to kiss her — what does that mean to you?
🌸 Sera saying I do in a voice that didn't shake — did that break your heart?
🌸 He noticed everything. The cold hands. The wet eyes. The knuckles white in her skirt. He noticed ALL of it. 👀
🌸 Roman saying she's your wife — the way Sebastian said nothing back—
🌸 And the most important question...
He worked until three in the morning. What do you think he was really doing? 😏
💭 Tell me everything in the comments! 🌸
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Thank you for reading Bound to the Devil 🤍
See you in Chapter Seven...
Where Sera wakes up for the first time as Mrs Drave. And discovers that being his wife changes everything — and nothing — all at once. 🥀🖤
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