Slowly, his thumb caressed the edges of the splintered wood that made up the key in his hand. The ivory plate on top had cracked, showing more and more of the wood beneath that veneer. How many hours Sebastian had spent at that piano - a majority of which with Dorian at his side. From that affinity he'd discovered to those paintings Dorian had crafted at the very edge of that piano bench. That proposal song written on those very ivory keys...keys that were now all but decimated. How deeply that despondency had gripped the vampire, the man simply overwhelmed with the level of loss that had accompanied the evening. Any one, on its own, would have been nothing short of a travesty and yet, with so many events compacted into such a singular moment, Sebastian had simply failed to process any other of those emotions beyond that utter dejection that so threatened to swallow him entirely. The muffled sound of footsteps seemed to reverberate down the hallway to his overly sensitive ears, though the Englishman hardly stirred from his position upon the floor. The navy of his gaze entirely focused upon the piano even with the simple knowledge of his husband's presence. He could smell the fae, just as he too could hear the fluttering of Dorian's heartbeat, the ring on his finger still vibrating with a greater intensity than usual.

The soft press of Dorian's hand upon his shoulder prompted but the barest of movement from the vampire, his head shifting ever just so in the direction of his husband. He was aware of the warmth of the fae's fingers, that gentle touch surely meant to be soothing though with all that had occurred tonight, it failed to brush even the surface of the comfort the vampire required. He said little of it, however, as Dorian lowered himself onto his knees beside the vampire. It was the sound of his name upon his lover's lips that finally drew the weight of those darkened irises, those words so quickly puttering off into marked silence. His husband reached forward, the King's fingers brushing against his own, prompting Sebastian to open his palm and display that very key he'd been thoughtlessly tracing. The Englishman allowed that key to be taken from him, his gaze slowly turning back towards the piano itself as his hand reached out to brush against the cracked wood. The gentle sigh of the Monarch beside him was one the vampire was more then content to echo, and yet that promise to fix it was met with a small shake of his head. "You can't fix this one." He whispered back, that wood far too broken to be repaired by even the best piano maker. Strings could be fixed...a leg could be repaired...but this? This was impossible to make any better, the piano quite the representation of their evening as a whole, as far as Sebastian was concerned.

His fingers gingerly roved down the fall board of that faithful piano in the silence that existed between them, that caress near akin to an almost silent goodbye before he leaned back to survey the rest of his once beautiful home. It was that sudden comment of his wife, however, that prompted the vampire to that sudden stillness, his physique hardly even moving to breath as he listened astutely to the fae King's insistence that tonight had left within the Italian questions that he needed answers. Answers that Sebastian anticipated he most certainly did not want to provide. That once certain lit to his lover's voice once again trailed off, those thoughts clearly weighing upon the usually eloquent King. That silence that settled between them slowly prompted the depthless hue of Sebastian's gaze to turn towards Dorian. He watched as Dorian seemed to intently stare away from him, the fae gathering his thoughts before those silver irises turned upwards to meet the navy of his own gaze.

How he had known that question was coming and yet, for several moments, the vampire merely stared at his husband as if he had failed to comprehend the beseeching tone entirely. Eventually, however, the vampire swallowed down those very emotions that so afflicted him, that memory hardly one he wished to dredge up and yet it played across the forefront of his mind over and over again regardless of his lover's query. God, how he could use the entire bottle of one of those whiskey's they had been gifted from some such event. His lips parted, his tongue flicking almost nervously across his bottom lip. He was silent still for several moments longer before he uttered softly. "She became ill...." He offered though the start of the tale hardly any different then anything he had offered his lover before on the topic. "She died from it....and..." His voice trailed off, the Englishman hardly wishing to delve into the topic any deeper. After all, that admission alone had been enough, once, to placate his lover. It was somehow easier to allow his husband to think that she had fallen prey to some plague or the multitude of other diseases that had swept through England. Poleo, cholera, smallpox, any of them were preferable to the truth. A soft, almost shuddered breath left Sebastian's lips, those final words uttered so softly that they could hardly be heard at all. "....and it was my fault."

Sebastian Ellington-Aragona

His Royal Highness, Prince of Italy