He should have known the plea was useless.
My blade is already in my hand, the motion so smooth it barely feels like a choice. The slice is swift and punishing, pain splitting open my palm in a bright, blistering wave. Blood spills instantly, hot and vivid against the dull gloom of the forest.
I step forward, refusing to flinch at the gasps behind me. Ares reaches out without hesitation, his fingers curling around my wrist with a grip that is both grounding and consuming. My blood runs down his arm, tracing every line of muscle, every old scar, until it pools at the base of his palm.
With a careful, almost reverent movement, he guides my bleeding hand toward Liam’s mouth, letting the drops fall onto my brother’s still lips. He closes his eyes again, this time not to summon death, but whatever twisted inverse of it he’s about to wield, and begins the second incantation.
“An eye for an eye. One life for another. Let your first breath be freeing… and your last your prison.”
Magic snaps through the air like a live wire.
Liam’s chest jerks under Ares’s hands, once, twice, before settling into shallow tremors. Ares leans over him, shoulders straining, tendons standing out along his neck as he forces the spell through a barrier I cannot see but can feel. Everything around him vibrates with the violence of the magic he is commanding. The ground trembles. The air thickens. Even the trees seem to tilt inward, drawn to the gravitational pull of what is happening.
A heartbeat stirs under my palm.
Faint. Weak. Impossible.
Real.
Poppy collapses into a sob behind me, her hands over her mouth as though trying to keep her hope from spilling out. Theo bends over Liam, his trembling fingers searching for another breath. Sebastian staggers, one hand in his hair, the other pressed against a nearby tree as though bracing himself against the weight of the world.
Ares releases my wrist, blood dripping down both our arms. He keeps one hand against Liam’s sternum, steadying him as a slow inhale finally shudders into my chest. My own breath catches violently. Liam, my brother, my other half, breathes again.
Ares wipes his face with the back of his hand, smearing my blood across his mouth and cheek like a dark, accidental mark of devotion. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse.
“Stop her bleeding.”
Sebastian rushes toward me, ripping at his shirt until he tears off enough fabric to wrap my palm, but my eyes are fixed elsewhere.
Ares’s back.
The blood.
The new wound.
A lesion carves across his shoulder blade, splitting open beneath the fabric as though scorched into him by the spell’s cost. My breath falters. The magic didn’t just drain the poacher. It carved its toll from Ares himself.
Theo presses his ear to Liam’s chest, a sound of relief cracking out of him when he finds the faint rhythm he so desperately hoped for. Poppy clutches Liam’s wrist as though anchoring him to the world.
And for the first time since he died, Liam stirs, a breath brushing his lips.
The forest exhales with him.
Ares remains kneeling, chest rising hard, hands stillstained with the remnants of two different lives. And as he lifts his gaze to mine, something inside me shifts irrevocably.
He brought my brother back from the dead.
And he paid the price in his own blood.
Theo’s voice breaks first.
“His heart is beating.”
It comes out raw, trembling at the edges as though he’s afraid the words themselves might shatter. His hands cradle Liam’s face with a tenderness so fragile it barely survives the shaking in his fingertips. Beside him, Ares pushes himself upright, swaying a fraction before steadiness returns to his posture. His breathing is uneven, his shoulders shuddering with each inhale.
“I know.”
He tilts his head back, eyes closing, the tendons in his neck stark beneath skin gone pale. For a moment he simply stands there, letting the magic settle, letting the world stop spinning, letting the cost bleed out of him in silent waves.
