Page 4 of The Gods Forbid

Even though it was unlikely that he’d die by the end of the last week, especially when he still consumed at least a little water each day, I was over it.

“Wake up,” I snapped from his bedside, having opened the gate to his cell without him ever stirring. And he made me even more angry that I was forced to use a hard tone with him. Speaking that roughly hurt my throat.

Sebastian took a second to rouse, his eyes blinking slowly open. The wash of color in his eyes had dimmed considerably. What was once a vibrant mass of color was now graying and dull.

“Good morning, Persephone,” he said, his voice hoarse from lack of use.

I didn’t understand how he still managed a level of charming nonchalance despite the fact that he was wasting away into a shell of himself. That seemed tiring. “Sit up. Please.”

His dark brows pinched together in mock confusion. And he made no move to listen to me. “I thought you were nicer than this.”

“I said please,” I returned, crossing my arms over my chest. Sebastian’s eyes tracked the movement, dropping all the way down to where my thighs touched the edge of the bed then back up again. “Sit. Up.”

Sebastian pushed himself into a seated position, his body clearly straining under the weight of his body. His once strong, toned muscles already looked considerably leaner under his white, long-sleeved undershirt. “What can I do you for?” he asked, his mouth pulling into a crooked grin.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. I nodded to the tray of food I’d rested at the foot of his bed. “None of that charming nonsense until you finish this entire plate of food.”

Sebastian leaned forward and lifted it onto his lap, looking at it with a barely concealed sneer on his face. “This is a portion for a child.”

I breathed in, trying to steady my voice. I didn’t like to feel riled up, and yet Sebastian was doing a spectacular number on my nervous system. “Yes, because you’ve done such a brilliant job of destroying your metabolism over the past few weeks that any more would make you sick and destroy the hard work of my chefs and the point of you eating the fucking food in the first place.”

“Such harsh words, love,” Sebastian chastised lightly. Like he just knew I didn’t curse often, like he could tell that the word was clunky and foreign on my tongue. “So unlike you.”

“You don’t know me well enough to decide what is and is not normal for me,” I snapped, feeling an odd desire to distract from the fact that he was right. “Eat. I’ll be waiting here.”

I turned away from his intense gaze, feeling the back of my neck prickle. I headed for the stool in the corner, dropping down and crossing my legs.

“Attempting to mother me?” Sebastian asked once I was seated. “Watching me eat like a toddler that needs to be monitored?”

“Yes,” I said plainly. “You clearly need to be. Eat.”

Sebastian held my gaze for another moment, his eyes growing more intense with each passing second. It seemed like he expected me to be the one to drop eye contact first. I’d never really been intimidated by eye contact, or rather I never understood why one might be.

Where else was I supposed to look when speaking to him? The curve of his mouth? The hollow between his collarbones? The strong line of his neck?

No, no. His eyes seemed more appropriate.

When it became clear I wasn’t going to surrender, Sebastian grumbled something under his breath then looked down to examine the plate in front of him.

I watched him, looking out for any sign of disgust. Disrespect, especially for Kostas’s cooking, would not be tolerated.

Sebastian hesitated—something that clearly was foreign for him. His eyes snapped back up to mine, his jaw pulsing once. “You are really going to sit there while I eat?”

Wordlessly, I pulled a bar made of oats that Kostas had made me from the pocket of my skirt, unwrapping the napkin it was covered in. I took a bite of it, answering his question.

No, I wasn’t going to just watch him eat. I’d have a snack while he did it.

I wouldn’t verbalize it to him, knowing he’d freeze up if he knew I was internally gauging his reactions, but this was part of the process here.

I’d learned, both through my own experience when I was younger and through the early days of my work, that people tended to freeze up when they felt like they were being watched. You would get nowhere if you felt like your every move was observed, your little reactions, your mistakes, cataloged.

So, I’d sit here and eat my food while Sebastian ate his—hoping it would make him more inclined to feed himself.

He watched my mouth as I chewed for a second, like the way my jaw worked interested him. I’d never considered that jaws could be of interest to anyone, so I cocked my head to the side in confusion.

That seemed to shake whatever trance he was in. Sebastian stabbed his fork rather aggressively into the chicken plated for him, lifting it to his mouth without ever dropping eye contact.

He bit off the food, chewing it slowly. It made his jaw pop, drawing my attention to it.