I tilt my head up, resting it against the base of his throat. My voice barely makes it out. “Can you hold me?”
Sebastian doesn’t answer at first. He just brushes his lips against the side of my forehead, reaching for the pile of clothes he laid out before I even knew I’d need them. They smell like him, worn soft from time and comfort.
“Of course I can,” he murmurs, and begins helping me dress.
There’s something reverent in the way his fingers move, pulling the sleeves up my arms, smoothing the fabric over my ribs like he’s rebuilding me piece by piece. Once I’m clothed, he tugs on his own shirt, not bothering to dry his hair. His hands are already back on my waist, guiding me toward the bed like he’s afraid I’ll collapse without him.
I don’t resist.
I let him lower us into the sheets, let him wrap his arms around me and pull me close until I’m tucked beneath his chin, my cheek pressed to the solid warmth of his chest. His heartbeat is steady. Familiar. And I match my breathing to his, slowly, until the noise in my head dulls enough to feel like silence.
His hand glides gently through my hair, the pads of his fingers slow and rhythmic. His lips press featherlight kisses to my forehead, to my temple, a soft litany of comfort without words. I feel myself drifting, exhaustion curling through me in waves. His hand brushes my jaw, then slides to my lips, thumb stroking across them with a tenderness that makes my eyes sting.
When he speaks again, it’s barely audible.
“Never leave me, Harper.”
The words fall like a plea, quiet and raw and so unlike him that my heart stumbles. But I’m too tired to understand why he said it. Too tired to question what it means.
All I know is that his arms are around me.
And for tonight, that has to be enough.
40
ARES
Andrew studies me with the kind of loathing that rots a man from the inside out. He devours the room with his stare before settling it back on me, as if the mere sight of me slouched in one of his pretentious, gilded chairs is enough to sour his blood. The irony is almost pleasant. For all his grandeur, his estate reeks of desperation, layers upon layers of spells woven into the walls, charms stacked so densely the air itself vibrates with them. He hides himself in a tomb made of magic, terrified of ghosts of his own making.
Up close, I can see Harper in his eyes. Not in the warmth, he possesses none of that, but in the shape, the sharpness, the intent to dissect whoever stands in front of him. The resemblance dies there. Harper’s gaze holds storms she tries to cage. Andrew’s gaze is simply cruel.
“How,” he begins, voice low enough to masquerade as calm, “do you lose my daughter again, boy?” Each word sharpens as he advances. “I send you to retrieve her and that foolish brother of hers, and instead I hear you used my blood magic to kill one of our own and drag my son back from the dead. You have no idea how much that drained me.”
He points at me with shaking fury. I roll my eyes just to watch the vein in his temple twitch.
“One of your idiots killed her brother,” I say lazily. “Nearly killed her. You wanted me to earn their trust. If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be standing here in one piece.”
His eyes thin to razors, sifting through the half-truth. Hesenses the lie at the heart of it, that any trust I’ve earned from Harper and Liam wasn’t his to orchestrate. It happened in spite of him. Because I wanted it. Because I chose it. Because somewhere along the way, I stopped caring what he wanted at all.
“You’re cocky, Ares,” he says, stepping closer. “Arrogant. You’re as pathetic as that boy she can’t seem to stop sleeping with-”
The words hit like a fist to the gut, not from jealousy, no, just the sudden, visceral urge to carve the smugness off his face. My jaw tightens. He notices. Of course he does.
At my sides, the two men who escorted me into this charade shift their weight. Loyal dogs waiting for a command.
“Your daughter’s personal life is her own,” I say, rising slowly from the chair. Power coils beneath my skin, not enough to be reckless, but enough that both men beside me take a discreet half-step away.
Andrew grins. It’s an ugly thing, thin and satisfied. “I’d think you’d be more invested, given what you know about the Harwoods. Your task is simple, bring my daughter to me alive. Not corrupted. Not manipulated. Not learning to trust the wrong men.”
I tilt my head, letting the words settle. He’s hiding something. Harper’s fear of him runs deeper than scars. Whatever he wants of her, whatever he believes she’ll become, is something he’s refused to say aloud. I can taste it in the air between us.
“Are we going to stand here all night while you gossip about your children like some deranged housewife,” I say, voice dropping to a quiet hiss, “or are you planning to put on a show for these two idiots who dragged me in here?”
A laugh rumbles out of him, low and monstrous. The kind of laugh that precedes violence.
And I stand there, hands in my pockets, shoulders loose, staring back at the devil who thinks he still owns me.
Because the truth is simple.
