Her plea is soaked in panic, as if even being perceived in this moment could shatter her. It freezes me in place. A strangled sob escapes her, muffled, as though she’s burying her face into someone’s chest to keep from falling apart.
Sebastian’s breathing shifts, rage taking root inside it. “What the hell did you do?”
The low, irritated scoff that answers him is unmistakable.
Ares.
“Harwood, shut your fucking mouth before I walk over there and make you wish you’d stayed behind at the castle,” he snarls, voice strained, as though he’s wrestling with something, or someone, just out of my reach.
Harper’s next sob splinters the air. “Sebastian...please.”
My heart claws at my ribs. Her fear isn’t directed at Ares. It’s directed at the idea of us seeing whatever state she’s in.
“Where’s Liam?” The words rip out of me, the tip of my wand rising instinctively as if it can shield me from the answer.
A sharp inhale. Harper’s voice, thin and shaking, lashes through me.
“Theo… please… stay away.”
My knees threaten to give. The forest closes in, thick and suffocating, her trembling plea wrapping around my throat like a noose.
Something is horribly, horribly wrong.
Ares’s voice cuts through the chaos like a blade, urgent and fraying at the edges. “I’m losing him, Harwood, get over here-”
No part of my mind registers the command logically. My body simply breaks forward, moving before Sebastian can react, before breath can fully form in my lungs. Branches scrape against my face as I stumble toward the sound of Ares’s panic. My foot hits uneven earth. Then softer earth. Then something slick beneath my fingertips, Harper’s hands catching my shoulders, trying to steady me. They are trembling. And wet. A metallic stench coils through the air, spreading over my senses with unmistakable familiarity.
Blood.
“Liam… whose blood is that?” The words split apart on my tongue. Every syllable is betrayal, a crack in my voice, a sob strangled halfway into sound.
Harper tries to answer, but her voice fails her. A broken inhale is all she can manage. “Theo… he-”
But I already know.
My foot bumps a body, a subtle recoil of flesh, a faint involuntary twitch. My pulse spikes. I tear myself out of Harper’s grip, fingers slipping from her arms as I crawlforward on my knees, hands sweeping over the ground until they collide with thick, tangled hair.
Liam’s hair.
No. It can't be.
My fingers push deeper, brushing across splattered dirt and cold skin and-
A chest. Too still.
Hands press against that chest in frantic rhythm. Ares. His breath is ragged, uneven, as though he’s forcing life back into the body beneath him with nothing but will.
“L-Liam?” My hand fumbles, searching for a face I know better than my own. My fingers graze the edge of Ares’s arm as he continues compressions, as if repetition alone can summon breath back into dead lungs.
My palm finds Liam’s cheek.
Cold.
I choke on air. My hand slides to the corner of his mouth, hoping to find warmth there, or movement, or anything, but only tears slick under my fingers, his or someone else’s, fresh enough to sting.
Ares keeps working, voice cracking as he counts under his breath. But I shove him back with a force I didn’t know I had, collapsing forward until my ear is pressed hard to Liam’s chest. Something warm spreads across my temple, the steady seeping of blood pooling beneath his ribs, soaking into my skin. I wait. Listening. Hoping for even the faintest thrum of life. A flutter. A whisper. A miracle.
Silence.
