“Come home, sweetheart.“
Ares inhales sharply, wand raised, body braced for whatever comes next.
And I finally understand:
My father didn’t send a threat.
He sent a warning.
Without thinking, without any logic or self-preservation left in me, I hurl myself forward. My body moves before my mind catches up, driven by a raw instinct I don’t understand, a magnetism toward the sketchbook half-buried in the dirt. The creature’s grin widens as if it’s been waiting for that single act of stupidity from me all along. Its arm rises, bones cracking audibly as it prepares to drive its claws straight into my skull the moment my hand closes around the leather cover.
And I do grasp it, my fingers scraping over the engraved initials as my breath catches in my throat.
Ares reaches me in the same heartbeat the creature swings.
He slams into my side, ripping me backward so violently the air tears out of my lungs. The creature’s claws carve through the pavement where my head had been, stone shrieking under the impact. A frustrated, guttural groan pours out of its throat, wet and sharp like an animal choking on its own decay.
I don’t look back.
Ares is already pulling me, shoving me ahead of him, both of us sprinting down the alley with a fear so physical it stings the inside of my ribs. The world blurs into torchlight and startled faces as we tear past people who don’t react, don’t flinch, don’t dive for cover. To them we’re nothing more than two students running from shadows.
To us, the shadow is real, hunting.
“Why...why aren’t they stopping it?” I gasp between ragged breaths, Ares’s grip a painful tether around my hand.
“They can’t see it,” he grits out, stumbling for a second before righting his pace. “Magic doesn’t reveal Fetches to anyone who does not have Shadeborne blood magic.”
Red splashes the cobblestones behind us, a scattered trail that doesn’t belong to me. I don’t feel pain, just adrenaline, so the realization hits like a block of ice:
He’s bleeding.
Our boots slam through the town gate and into the forest’s underbrush, branches clawing at our arms as Ares drags us deeper and deeper, guided by nothing but instinct and terror. Behind us the creature hisses, its breath rattling through the trees.
“Our magic won’t work on it?” I whisper, my lungs burning.
Ares yanks me down behind a collapsed stone wall, his hand pressed over his mouth as he forces himself silent.
“It works,” he says. “Just not enough. Fetches… mutate.”
The decay in the wind grows stronger. Metallic. Sour. Wrong.
Then he inhales sharply, a deep, involuntary gasp that snaps my attention to his side.
Three long gashes rip across his ribs, skin peeled away in raw slashes. Poison-black veins spider out from the wounds beneath the tattered cloth of his ruined shirt. He braces himself on the rubble, forehead pressed against the stone as he fights the tremor moving through him.
“He got you when I grabbed the sketchbook?” I choke out, pressing my hands against him without thinking.
He doesn’t nod, doesn’t speak, just winces, his jaw locked in a clenched snarl.
“It’s poison,” he whispers finally. “Fetch claws carry it.”
The creature’s scent creeps closer, thick with rot.Footsteps drag lazily through the brush, close enough I feel the vibration in the ground.
My heart stutters.
“Ares,” I breathe, leaning into him. “Tell me what to do. Tell me where to take us. Please.”
His fingers fist in the front of his coat, knuckles white.
