It’s claws splitting skin.
It’s my own screams echoing back at me.
I choke on the memory, on the feeling of hands forcing me down. The air thickens. Panic claws through my chest like something alive, something desperate.
Ares’s voice breaks through the haze, distant at first.
“Harper.”
I can’t hear him.
I can’t breathe.
“Harper. Look at me.”
Something grips my jaw, firm, but nothing like my father’s cruelty. A thumb pins beneath my chin, lifting my gaze.
His face fills my vision.
Blood-streaked.
Breath sharp.
“Look,” he says, voice low and steady, tethering me inch by inch back into my body. “You’re here. Not with him.”
The forest flickers back into focus around him. Poppy’s wand lowers. The pain steadies into something manageable, distant, no longer swallowing the world whole.
Ares releases my wrists one at a time, palms skimming my forearms as if checking for tremors before shifting his hold. He slides an arm behind my shoulders, guiding me up with deliberate slowness.
The moment I’m upright, the dizziness hits. The trees tilt. The ground rolls beneath my feet. My breath stutters.
He moves with me before I even sway.
His arm tightens around my ribs, drawing me against him. My forehead slips forward, resting against the warm line of his collarbone. His scent, earth and iron, settles the spinning in my head more effectively than any spell.
His fingers curl into my waist, a steady anchor.
“You’re safe,” he says again, quieter this time. Not for reassurance. Almost like he’s convincing himself too.
My breath shakes out. My body leans, unbidden, into the support he offers.
And Ares holds me there.
But then-
Ares reacts before either of us fully registers the sound cutting through the clearing.
Poppy’s voice breaks into a near scream. “Ares-”
A blast of violent magic tears through the air, ripping past our heads with a heat sharp enough to sting my cheek. The beam slams into a tree behind us and splinters bark in every direction. The forest shudders under the force of it.
Ares doesn’t flinch.
His hand snaps forward, his voice already pouring out theguttural cadence of one of my father’s spells. The wizard who cast the attack jerks violently, his spine bending as if caught in an invisible vice. His wand drops from his hand. His body folds inward and collapses face-first into the dirt.
Clarity punches through the haze around me. The shock, the pain, the residual panic still ricocheting through my ribs, all of it steadies just enough for breath to return. I tear myself out of Ares’s grip, stumbling a step, trying to make sense of what direction the threat came from.
That’s when I hear it.
