Poppy whispers my name again.
Ares doesn’t look away.
And he doesn’t leave.
He stays.
Waiting.
Watching.
Poppy hovers at the tree line, shoulders bunched, fingers twisting the hem of her sleeve as if trying to make herself smaller. She keeps flicking glances between me and Ares, wide-eyed, unsure, sensing the charged air in a way that makes her swallow hard before she attempts speech.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she blurts at last, voice catching on the edges of panic. “I’m sorry I was late. Sebastian and Liam were demanding to know where you were. I didn’t think I should tell them. Not after what you said…”
Her gaze tilts nervously towardAres.
Heat blooms beneath my ribs. My attention snaps to him before I can stop myself.
“What did you say to her?” The bitterness under my words shocks even me. It carries too much fear, too much something. And it makes Ares’s eyes cool in that infuriating, unreadable way that gives nothing but takes everything.
He doesn’t rush to answer. He doesn’t bother with excuses or placating tones. He simply crosses his arms and studies me with a patience that feels like a blade.
“I told her,” he finally says, voice low and unhurried, “that if your entourage came sniffing around for you, she should keep her mouth shut. Or at least give them something vague. Enough room for you to breathe without a leash tugging you back.”
Poppy flinches, but Ares doesn’t spare her a glance. Instead, he reaches out and plucks the folded map straight from her hand. She startles, blinking rapidly, while he turns the paper between two fingers with a laziness that borders on taunting. Then he throws her a wink, a calculated tilt of charm that knocks her balance just enough for her knees to tremble.
He sees it.
He registers it.
And his expression barely shifts, but something faint, almost amused, passes behind his eyes before he turns fully back to me.
“They don’t control what I do,” I snap. It comes out sharp, sharper still because I don’t know if I’m saying it for him or for myself.
The first real emotion I’ve seen on his face tonight crosses him in the form of a quiet, derisive exhale. Not loud enough to be mocking. Not soft enough to be gentle. Just a small, sharp thing that lands right between my ribs.
“Now who’s lying to themselves?”
There’s no cruelty behind it.
No gleeful twist.
Just certainty. .
He watches me carefully, the way someone watches a fuse burn too close to the powder. His gaze drags down my jaw, over my shoulder, lingering on the tightness of my grip around my own wand. He’s picking apart every emotion I try to hold steady. Every flicker in my eyes. Every tremor I wish he hadn’t noticed.
And then, because he always seems to feel the moment right before I do, he steps closer.
Not enough to crowd me.
Not enough to touch.
Just enough that I feel the warmth of him roll across my skin, subtle as breath, deliberate as a threat he doesn’t need to voice.
“Tell yourself whatever lets you sleep,” he murmurs, tone dipping low, not seductive, not cruel, but dangerously honest. “But don’t insult both of us by pretending they don’t pull the strings you pretend not to see.”
The words slide under my skin like heat.
