“You never see her,” Theo continues, leaning closer until their foreheads nearly touch, “not the way she really is. You see the girl you’re terrified of losing.”
Sebastian’s breath stutters, one sharp exhale, half scoff, half surrender. His gaze drops to the ground between them as if bracing for impact.
Stone hums beneath my boots, mirroring the tight knot twisting through my chest. Watching them like this, locked in a confrontation that feels far too intimate to interrupt,sends heat crawling up my throat. Something in the air shifts, the kind of shift that suggests a fault line deep beneath the surface.
And for a suspended moment, none of us breathe.
Theo holds Sebastian there with only the barest touch, his voice sinking to a whisper meant for him alone.
“She isn’t something to cage,” he murmurs. “She’s someone to fight beside.”
Sebastian closes his eyes, just once, just long enough for it to mean something.
And the room, impossibly, feels smaller for it.
“You’re right,” slips out before I can rein it in. The admission feels like gravel caught between my teeth. Shoulders sag as I sink onto the nearest chair, hoping the gesture alone might diffuse the storm building across from me.
Sebastian only bristles further.
“You can bare your throat to him if you want, Liam. I’m not apologizing for protecting her.” His voice comes out rough, shredded by fear masquerading poorly as anger. “You two can play noble all you want, but she’s the one who bleeds for your mistakes.”
Theo stiffens. His words, normally velvet, sharpen into something far more lethal.
“She’s not your property, Sebastian. She wasn’t signed over to you like a storefront in Anavris-”
The rest never makes it out.
Sebastian’s fist curls into Theo’s robe, dragging him forward with a force that jars the room into stillness. His other hand lifts, jabbing a finger toward Theo’s chest, eyes burning with that feral wildness he hides from everyone but us.
Before the moment can snap in half, instinct kicks in.
My hand closes around his wrist, twisting sharply, a movedrilled into my bones long before either of them trusted me. His breath catches as I pivot him away from Theo and into the wall. Marble absorbs the hit with a dull thud. He doesn’t fight, though his muscles strain beneath my grip.
“Enough.” The word comes out low, edged with something I don’t often let slip. “Touch him like that again, and I will put you on the floor. Don’t take your fury out on Theo because you can’t take it out on Ares. Don’t forget who’s standing beside you.”
His chest heaves. Anger flares, then flickers, then slowly, painfully, begins to ease. My hand stays firm on his forearm until the tension drains enough to feel his pulse steady beneath my fingers.
Theo takes a small step forward, hand half-extended as if he wants to touch my shoulder but thinks better of it.
“Liam… it’s all right,” he murmurs, though the tremor in his voice betrays how rattled he truly is.
Only when Sebastian’s breathing evens do I let up, though I don’t step far. He sinks to a crouch, elbows braced on his knees, hands trembling in the aftermath of his own collapse.
“If something happens to her,” he says, voice cracked and raw at the edges, “and we could’ve stopped it… how do we live with that?”
The question carves into the quiet. Each word lodges deeper than the last.
“We don’t,” I answer, dropping into a half-crouch beside him. “Which is why we need to find her. Do you have anything, anything at all, that belongs to her? Clothes, parchment, jewelry… I can use it to track her.”
His eyes lift, weary and desperate, laced with the first hint of hope.
“I’m not above breaking into her room,” he mutters, defeated and somehow fiercely determined all at once
A humorless breath escapes me, half laugh, half exhale of dread.
Something in the pit of my stomach twists, an instinct whispering that this night is not going to end cleanly.
Whatever waits for us in that forest…it feels like it’s already tasted blood.
