“You think I killed him?” His voice rises, sharp and incredulous. “Me?”
His eyes blaze, blue lit with a gold-flecked storm.
“The deal wasn’t enough, was it?” The words rip out of me before I can stop them. “You just had to fucking go and kill because you’re not better than him, you’re no better than Andrew-”
Ares moves.
Fast.
His fist catches the front of my robe and yanks me toward him so abruptly my breath breaks in my chest. The force of it sends my pulse flaring, my palms flattening against the solid heat of him as he drags me close enough that our mouths share the same unsettled air.
His other hand slides to the back of my head, not gentle, never gentle, his fingers threading through my hair, claimingleverage over me with terrifying precision.
“I did not,” he snarls, his voice low and rough enough to scrape against bone, “fucking touch that student.”
The raw fury in him is scorching, but not uncontrolled. He’s aware of me...too aware. His grip shifts the moment he sees the fear in my eyes, a fractional easing, like he’s restraining himself for my sake, not because he lacks the ability to crush me where I stand.
“I don’t hurt people the way you think I do,” he says, each word biting and shaped by something wounded. “I’m nothing like your father.”
He releases me.
The sudden loss of his hold throws me slightly off balance. He steps back, shoving his hands into his pockets as though burying the impulse to touch me again.
Something in what he said lingers beneath my ribs, heavy and complicated.
“How am I supposed to believe you?” I whisper.
He huffs out a bitter laugh, shaking his head as if I’ve just proven a point he already knew.
“You’ve had every opportunity to kill me,” he murmurs, eyes flicking down my body and up again slowly. “Every time we meet, you could’ve ended me. Even now.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. He takes a small step forward, not touching, but close enough that the heat of him reaches me again.
“So maybe,” he says softly, “some part of you already knows I’m telling the truth. Maybe that’s why you’re here alone instead of marching in with your little fan club.”
His observation hits like a shove. My breath stumbles.
“They said you did it,” I say, voice trembling, “and blamed me for your actions.”
His gaze sharpens, pinning me in place.
“And you?” Ares asks, voice dropping into somethingalmost dangerous in its softness. “You didn’t believe I did it… did you?”
The question lands between us like a spark in dry grass.
My throat tightens. My heart flickers painfully against its cage.
Because he’s right.
And he knows it.
Ares doesn’t move at first, and that stillness is somehow worse than his temper. The quiet stretches, taut and weighted, until it begins to pressure the air between us. Then he inches toward me, slowly, like he’s testing how close he can come before I crumble. It’s not predatory in the way my father moved; it’s something subtler, almost analytical, as if he’s cataloging every flicker of breath, every tremor beneath my skin.
I should step back, but the forest floor feels fused beneath my boots. The cold bark presses between my shoulder blades, a sharp contrast to the heat rolling off his body as he closes in. His eyes search my face, not for weakness, but for the truth I refuse to say aloud.
“You didn’t answer me,” he says, voice low enough to unravel between us. “Did you believe I killed him?”
The words scrape something raw inside me. I try to hold myself together, to press everything back down where it belongs. “It doesn’t matter now,” I say, though the sentence wavers despite my efforts. “Someone is killing Vireldan students. That’s what matters.”
