35
HARPER
We crouch behind the boulder, its cold surface biting through my clothes as if it resents being turned into cover. Poppy hunches over beside me, her curls brushing the stone each time she leans forward to steal another glance at the clearing. Her breath trembles against my shoulder. Ares waits on my other side, unnervingly still, like the forest carved him from its trunk and hadn’t yet decided whether he belonged to us or them.
Poppy peeks again, then snaps back, pulse hammering hard enough that I feel it through the rock.
“There's at least fifteen,” she whispers, voice tight. “Fourteen poachers… and-” Her face drains. “A Wendigo.”
The word hits harder than any spell. My head falls back against the stone, eyes lifting to the sky as if begging it for a reprieve. The memory of that creature’s claws dragging across our carriage flashes beneath my ribs like a knife. The Wendigo’s shriek still lives in the back of my skull.
Ares leans in, his breath brushing the curve of my ear. It shouldn’t make my pulse trip, not in a moment like this, but my body hasn’t yet learned to ignore him.
“How many are wearing your father’s mark?” His voice is quiet, sharpened to something deadly.
“All of the poachers,” Poppy whispers. “Armbands with a serpent. Just like the one on your arm.”
Ares’s jaw tightens. Even without looking at him fully, I can feel the shift, his magic thrumming low beneath his skin, waiting, tasting the air for blood. My own senses heighten intandem, my magic prickling hot beneath the surface of my palms.
Poppy makes the mistake of leaning out again, gesturing wildly as she tries to count the movement below. The brush of her hand catches too much light. A few scattered groans ripple through the clearing. Dirt shifts beneath heavy boots.
“Poppy-” I start, but Ares’s hand shoots out, gripping her forearm and yanking her back with a precision born from near-death routines.
A blast of magic slams into the boulder, shaving off a chunk of rock exactly where her head had been. Shards rain down over us, stinging my cheek. The air fills with the metallic tang of awakened spells. The ground quivers with approaching footsteps.
My wand is in my hand before I register the motion. Instinct blinds reason, my body pushing forward, ready to meet whoever is coming.
Ares’s fingers close around my arm, stopping me just long enough for his eyes to meet mine. They’re almost luminescent in the darkness, threaded with adrenaline and something unnervingly close to exhilaration.
“Don’t hold me back-” I snap, hearing the crunch of approaching boots.
“I’m not,” he murmurs, his grip loosening as he draws his own wand from beneath his coat. The smirk that pulls at his mouth is hungry. “I want to shed first blood.”
Before I can demand an explanation, he moves.
One whispered incantation ripples from his tongue, spoken the way only someone raised in my father’s shadow would know how to shape it. The force of his magic whips through the clearing, an invisible cyclone of pressure and malice. The nearest five men lift from the ground as if snatched by the wind, their limbs bending at grotesque angles.
Bones snap like brittle twigs underfoot. Ares doesn’t even flinch.
Their cries split the forest, abruptly choked off as blood begins streaming from their eyes and mouths, pulled free by a spell that demands too much from the body it touches. I recognize the magic instantly. Shadeborne magic, not the kind taught, but the kind inherited through suffering.
My father would be proud of such mastery.
Ares wields it without hesitation.
The Wendigo hisses across the clearing, drawn by the violence, its long limbs twitching with anticipation. Leaves rattle against its hide as it prowls forward, skeletal jaws unhinging with hunger.
And still, Ares stands steady, shoulders squared, expression carved from cold stone. Magic coils around him like smoke, alive and eager, waiting for him to direct the next strike.
Poppy is still pale, her face slack with disbelief as she tries to process what Ares did to the first cluster of men. Her hands tremble so violently she has to brace herself against the rock beside her. The forest feels tighter now, like the trees themselves have gone rigid, waiting for the next rupture of violence.
Across the clearing, the Wendigo shifts its weight. Foam spills from its jagged mouth in thick ropes, eyes sunken and wild as it locks onto the only threat that matters to it...Ares. The creature lowers itself into a disturbing crouch, claws carving trenches into the mud as it prepares to launch straight for him. Around it, the surviving poachers hover in uneasy arcs, no longer reckless. They’ve seen too much. They’ve watched Ares fold their comrades into grotesque shapes. Fear sharpens their movements. Makes them cautious.
Good. They should be terrified.
“Follow behind us,” I whisper to Poppy, gripping her arm when she doesn’t immediately react. Her breath hitches. “Stay low. Any cages you see...unlock them. Free whatever you can.”
The instruction jolts her back into her body. She nods quickly, wiping sweat from her brow as she hunches lower and prepares to move.
