Frustration explodes in my chest. Liam runs a trembling hand down his face, his anger replaced with something sickening, regret edged with fear.
“Plus…” Liam swallows hard, eyes shifting toward the corridor where our classmate’s body still lies surrounded by horrified whispers and the sharp smell of blood. “We have more important matters to focus on.”
The words settle like a weight on all of us. Heavy. Inescapable.
And Harper is walking straight toward danger with nothing but a fractured heart and her father's blood surging through her veins.
32
HARPER
Kicking gravel until my toes ache, I pretend each stone is Liam’s sanctimonious expression. If I focus on the crunch beneath my boots hard enough, maybe I won’t replay the way they all stared at me, as if I were a problem they suddenly didn’t know how to solve. As if everything Ares did, everything my father orchestrated, somehow had my fingerprints on it.
The forest swallows me whole. The canopy above knots the sunlight into tight, suffocating braids that barely brush the forest floor. I clutch Poppy’s map, tracing the heart-shaped stump she marked for our meeting. The same stump I now sit on, elbows braced against my knees. My robe shields me from the cool air, but not from the creeping sense that shadows are learning me by heart.
If I close my eyes, I can still see Sebastian’s face when I passed him in the hall, confused, guilty, reaching for words I refused to allow him. I walked faster. I didn’t even give him a chance to try. I’m allowed to be angry. I never once doubted him. I never questioned his motives. And yet all of them looked at me like I was a walking disaster, and he…
He looked at me like I was breaking something between us.
I drop my face into my hands. My breath trembles against my palms. Ten more minutes. Ten more minutes and Poppy will be here, and I can pretend none of this hurts as badly as it does. I almost laugh thinking about how Liam would bequivering if he were here, jumping at every rustle, swearing the trees were whispering his name.
A twig snaps behind me.
“Why are you crying?”
Ares’ voice unfurls through the clearing like smoke, lazy and infuriatingly amused. My entire body jerks upright. My stomach drops. My hand shoots for my wand, but his fingers close around my wrist with an unhurried certainty, as though he expected the move, as though he’s been waiting for it.
He’s too close.
Too steady.
Too focused on my face.
And the moment he sees my tear-streaked cheeks, something volatile shifts in his expression, confusion, then something far more dangerous: curiosity.
I swing with my free hand, aiming for the smugness etched onto his features, but he catches that too, my fist swallowed in his palm. He traps both my hands effortlessly, his grip hot, unyielding. His body heat presses into the space between us, and it infuriates me how aware of it I am.
“So,” he drawls, tightening just enough to make my pulse spike, “would you like to explain why you decidednow, of all possible moments, was the ideal time to try and break my nose?”
My voice splinters before it leaves my throat. “You broke our deal! You’re a liar.”
His hands clamp down, never enough to bruise, but enough to make my breath hitch, enough to remind me he can control the space between us with a single movement.
“I am many things, Whitlock,” he murmurs, leaning closer, “but a liar is not one of them. So unless you want me to actually start tightening”-his thumb brushes the inside of my wrist, a warning and a tease- “you’d better explain.”
He releases me suddenly. My hands snap back to my chest, trembling. I grab my wand like a lifeline. Ares watches the motion with a faint, entertained tilt of his head, not threatened in the least.
“The body of a Vespera was found mutilated in the school,” I say. “I could barely recognize him.”
Ares’ attention sharpens, the playful veneer slipping just enough to reveal something colder beneath.
“And you think that has to do with me?”
He reaches for my arm when I move, but I’m faster this time. I latch onto his forearm and shove his sleeve up, exposing the branding etched into his skin, his connection to my father burned there like a curse.
“This symbol,” I snap, “was seared into the student’s chest.”
For the first time since I’ve met him, Ares actually recoils, not far, not fearfully, but with a flash of genuine offense, as if I’d spat on him.
