Theo tries to remain unimpressed but fails miserably. “He did say he was hungry. Guess all that dainty eating in front of me didn’t stick.”
“Not when he hasn’t eaten since yesterday,” Sebastiansays, scooting over to make space for us. “He nearly took my hand off trying to steal a roll.”
I ease down beside him, letting my shoulder touch his lightly. The warmth radiating from his body settles my shaking nerves for the first time today. Liam, meanwhile, is searching the table for more food like a starved wolf.
“Hungry?” Theo asks Liam, careful to keep a respectful distance.
“No one tells you dying makes you feel like you haven’t eaten in weeks,” Liam mutters, cheeks going red.
Theo laughs under his breath, and for a moment the world feels almost normal.
Sebastian slides a muffin in front of me like it’s sacred. “I grabbed this before Liam inhaled it.”
Before I can thank him, his sleeve shifts, revealing a flash of red, an ugly lesion tearing up the back of his arm. He moves too fast to cover it, but not fast enough for me to miss it. My hand catches his wrist gently but firmly, pushing the fabric up so I can see the full wound.
It’s long. Deep. And absolutely not “nothing.”
“What happened?” My voice is quiet, but the weight behind it isn’t.
He tries to brush it off, avoiding my eyes. “It’s nothing. Eat. You need to.”
He tears a piece off the muffin and lifts it to my lips, and even though frustration coils hot and tight in my chest, I let him feed it to me. His smile is soft, but his eyes flicker with something he’s trying hard to hide.
“Seb, seriously… what happened?” I press again, my voice lower this time as I swallow another warm bite of muffin. The taste is heavenly, but my mouth floods with saliva from hunger I didn’t even realize I’d been denying myself.
He keeps his gaze pinned on literally everything except me. “Some man didn’t see where he was going and ran intome. I scraped my arm on one of the stone walls outside. I took some herbs from Poppy...helps with the sting. It’s nothing.”
He says it so flatly it almost sounds rehearsed.
I reach for his chin before he can look away again, fingers curling along the sharp line of his jaw. His skin is warm under my touch, tense at first, then slowly relaxing as he lets his gaze drift toward mine. His eyes dart, like he’s searching for a safe answer before finally settling on my face fully.
“You promise me?” The words fall quieter than I intend, a fragile thread laid between us.
His expression softens into that familiar crooked smile, the one that always tries so hard to reassure me. He leans in and brushes a gentle kiss over my lips, then deepens it just enough to make my pulse skip.
“I promise, Harper,” he murmurs against my mouth.
Before I can respond, Liam’s voice slices through the moment. “Are you going to finish that, or should I put you out of your misery?”
Theo groans dramatically, slapping a hand over his own face. “Liam, she’s eating. Let her be.”
“Yes, she is finishing it,” Sebastian answers for me with a pointed laugh, pressing the muffin back into my hands like he’s defending precious treasure.
Liam cackles, Theo tries to quiet him, and the tension in the space loosens just enough for us all to breathe again. Sebastian shifts beside me, laughing along with them, and in the motion his sleeve inches farther down his wrist, hiding the wound completely.
He talks animatedly with Liam, shoulder nudging his, grin easy and natural. It should put me at ease.
It doesn’t.
The sight of that lesion, deep and raw, still throbs in the back of my mind, far too deliberate of an injury to be theresult of someone “running into him.” His smile is genuine, but something in the set of his shoulders, the way he avoids my eyes when the subject veers too close, tells a different story.
He’s lying.
Not to hurt me, but to protect me from something he doesn’t want me to see.
And for the first time since the forest, a cold, slithering worry coils low in my stomach.
Something happened to him.
