Something he’s hiding.
And whatever it is… didn’t come from clumsy strangers or stone walls.
42
HARPER
Liam lies sprawled beneath the autumn canopy, the shifting light painting his face in warm golds and fading ambers. I sit at his feet with my back against his ankles, letting the weight of the last few days settle into the grass beside me. He flips lazily through a book, the pages whispering with each slow turn, while the branches above us rattle in their own restless language.
“Seb went to visit Anne, right?” he asks, not looking up from the text.
“Yes.” I pull my knees closer, feeling an ache pulse through my ribs. “She’s been feeling worse. I offered to go with him after breakfast, but he said she wanted only him. I think he’s scared for me to see her like this.” I stare at the brittle leaves drifting toward the earth, each one spiraling down like a quiet warning. “It breaks my heart that she thinks she needs to hide anything from me.”
Liam shuts the book halfway, thumb holding his place. “That poor girl. Harper… I know Father touched her with his magic. I felt it when I saw her. It clings to skin for years. No one walks out of Shadeborne walls untouched.”
A tightness coils inside my chest, sharp and familiar. There’s nothing I can say that doesn’t feel useless, so I let the silence stretch until it thins.
Finally, I ask, “Where did Theo disappear to? You didn’t pack that bag for both of us, and I know you too well to believe that was premeditated generosity.”
He smirks faintly. “He has tests today. Apparentlywe still attend school.” The amusement in his voice lasts only a breath before fading.
Then something dark sways into my line of sight. Liam dangles Ares’s sketchbook by its spine, letting it sway like a pendulum before me. My stomach drops as if someone has cut out the ground beneath me. I lunge upright and snatch it from him, hugging the leather cover tight.
“When did you get that?” I gasp, my voice embarrassingly thin.
“After I got my things from the infirmary.” He casts me a sideways glance. “You tried to hide it from Sebastian. I’m shocked he didn’t notice.”
Heat prickles along my neck. My fingers trace the cover, the shallow grooves in the leather worn smooth from use. “I only took it because he hid it first,” I whisper. “I… I don’t know what I thought I’d find.”
“You know it’s Ares’s,” Liam says gently.
“Yes.” I swallow. “You told me last night… didn’t you?”
He snorts softly. "I thought I had dreamed it because of the morphine.” He steals the sketchbook from my hands again, flipping through it with slow, deliberate care. When he lands on the drawing of him and Theo, something softens behind his tired eyes.
I watch him, feeling the tension build in the air between us. Something is coming. Something old and heavy.
“What haven’t you told me?” I finally ask. “About him. About Ares.”
His fingers pause on the page. He exhales through his nose, closes the book, and gently places it in my lap. Then he picks up a fallen leaf and stands, as if the story requires movement or distance.
“When we were children,” he begins, “there was a servant boy in the manor. Young. Quiet. Starved half to death most of the time.” He crushes the leaf absentmindedly betweenhis fingers. “His father worked for ours. They treated him like a mutt you keep around only because it listens well enough.”
Old memories scratch at the back of my skull, blurred outlines, fragments without color.
“Whenever you noticed him,” Liam continues, “Father would slap you. Tell you that curiosity made you weak. Tell you that Shadeborne heirs don’t look at servants, let alone speak to them.”
My breath hitches. I don’t remember. Not fully. But something echoes, fear, maybe.
“One night,” he says, “Mother put you to bed early. I stayed up practicing spells. Too ambitiously. I tried something far beyond what I should have.” He laughs bitterly. “It rebounded. Hit me hard. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t get up. Just lay there on the floor, unable to breathe.”
The forest quiets as if holding its own breath.
“I remember a figure in the doorway,” Liam murmurs. “Barely a silhouette. And then… nothing. I must’ve passed out.”
The sketchbook grows heavier in my lap.
“When I woke,” he says, “Ares was kneeling beside me. Older than us. Maybe eight. His hands were shaking. He kept whispering that I would be alright. He must’ve found me, must’ve tried to help. But when Father and Ares’s father found us together…” He shakes his head slowly. “They beat him. Both of them. Thought he hurt me when he’d done the opposite.”
