He doesn’t look at me. His eyes lift toward the ceiling like he’s searching for patience there, exhaustion cutting hard angles into his face.
“More associates of your father,” he mutters. “I haven’t updated them in a few days about where I’ve been. No surprise your father doesn’t fully trust me.”
He drags both hands through his hair, pulling it back from his forehead as frustration ripples through him. For the first time since this started, he looks… worn. Not weak, never that, but tired in a way I recognize too well.
“If you go back,” I ask quietly, “will my father punish you?”
Ares stills mid-breath. Something sharp and agonized flashes in his eyes, gone almost instantly, shuttered behind indifference.
“Probably,” he says, shrugging one shoulder as if talking about a headache instead of torture. “But it’s nothing he hasn’t done before.”
He turns away, boots thudding against the stone as he crosses the room. At the window behind the professor’s desk, he unlatches the iron hook with a swift flick, letting the cold night air rush in. The breeze catches his coat, sending it billowing around him like a shadow unfastened from its host.
He swings one leg over the frame, balancing with ease onthe narrow stone ledge. The moonlight catches the scar across his cheek and the gleam of the knife still sheathed at his back. He holds his wand loosely, like he expects another attack or intends to make one.
“So how does this deal work?” I demand, taking a step toward him. “You just show up whenever it suits you?”
Before he answers, someone clears their throat.
A quiet sound.
But it detonates in the room.
Ares’s head snaps toward the door.
Mine follows.
Sebastian stands in the doorway, the light from the hall spilling around him like a halo warped into something fierce. His brows are drawn tight, fury etched into every line of his face. In one hand he holds a wrapped dinner, now tossed onto a desk with a violent clatter.
His gaze spears into Ares first.
Then, slowly, into me.
“I’d like to know the answer to that too,” Sebastian says, voice low, fraying at the edges.
Ares smiles.
“Should I tell him our arrangement, Whitlock,” he drawls, leaning back on one hand against the windowsill, “or will you give me the honor?”
Sebastian steps farther into the room, jaw clenched so hard I can hear the grind of his teeth. His fists flex like he’s restraining himself from doing something reckless, violent, and wholly understandable.
The air thickens between the three of us, Ares perched like a dark omen on the window’s edge, Sebastian bristling with betrayed fury, and me standing in the eye of a storm neither man intends to yield.
Ares’s smile widens, slow and taunting.
“Oh,” he murmurs, “this should be fun.”
28
SEBASTIAN
Istand frozen for a moment, trying to make sense of the scene in front of me. Harper’s shirt is streaked with blood, the rag wrapped around her palm already saturated through, and her eyes, normally sharp, stubborn, painfully alive, look unfocused, as if someone has pulled her too close to a flame and she hasn’t realized she’s burning yet. Ares lounges against the windowsill like he owns the room, the night wind at his back, watching me approach her with a look that twists my stomach into knots of hatred.
I move to her in three long strides. The second I reach her, her hand lifts toward mine, instinctual, like she needs the contact as badly as I need the reassurance that she’s still breathing. Her fingers curl around my wrist, warm despite the blood drying on her skin. I let the touch anchor me, even as my eyes lock onto Ares’s gaze with a fury I haven’t felt in years, feral, black around the edges, consuming.
“Seb, let me explain-” she murmurs, brushing her palm against the side of my face as if she knows exactly where to touch to keep me from unraveling.
But when she moves, the light catches something that punches air out of my lungs, blood on Ares’s forearm. Her blood. A smeared trail across his skin, shaped like the curve of her fingertips. My chest tightens, rage coiling inside me like a beast clawing for release. He touched her. He held her. He restrained her.
