Ares considers the offer for a long beat, then quietly folds the blankets in his arms and steps past me toward the bedroom. His presence at my back is a steady hum, the air shifting subtly with each breath he takes. I hold the door open long enough for him to enter, watching as he drops the blankets onto the floor in a messy pile.
“You’re not seriously sleeping on that,” I say with disdain.
He sits heavily in the chair beside the bed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palms, exhaustion carved deep in the set of his shoulders. “After those dreams, I’m not going back to sleep.”
“Then why come in here?”
He lifts his gaze just enough to meet mine. “Because you didn’t want to be alone.” His eyes flick pointedly to the red marks climbing my arm, scratches from restlessness and fear. “You do that when you’re fighting sleep. You hate sleeping alone.”
A chill drags down my spine. “How well did we know each other?” I whisper.
His fingers drift to the chain at his throat, the gesture defensive, full of things he will not say. “Get some sleep,” he murmurs instead, leaning back, eyes half-lidded but very much awake.
I settle beneath the sheets, turning so I can watch him as he watches me. Neither of us speaks for a long moment, the candlelight catching on the sharp planes of his face.
“Do you know any stories?” I ask quietly, staring up at the ceiling covered in hand-painted stars. The childishnessof the request embarrasses me instantly. “They help me sleep.”
Ares huffs a quiet laugh, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth as he shifts in the chair. “You’re asking me to tell you a bedtime story?”
Heat creeps into my face, but I nod anyway.
He sighs, soft, almost fond, and lets his head rest back against the chair.
Ares lets the silence stretch until it becomes something fragile between us, something trembling and close to shattering. His eyes are half-closed, head tipped back against the chair, but his voice slips out steady enough to paint the darkness around us.
“There once was a raven,” he begins, and the simple weight of those words pulls me upright. “He lived in a nest he loved more than anything. He loved the other ravens inside it too, even when they didn’t deserve him. They lived quietly, the way ravens do, until the gardener arrived.” A pause. A breath. “The gardener clipped their wings, broke them, healed them, broke them again. He needed a bigger nest, so he used the ravens to build it for him.”
My brows knit, but I don’t interrupt.
“With time,” he continues, voice thinning around the edges, “some of the ravens grew close. Too close. Bonds the gardener didn’t approve of. Bonds that made them brave enough to think beyond the nest. He hated that. Hated them for it.” His throat moves in a hard swallow. “So one night, he tore the ravens apart. Ripped their worlds into pieces. Rewrote their memories, twisted the way they saw each other. Some remembered what he did. Some… remembered nothing except the lies he carved into their minds.”
The ceiling holds his stare, unmoving. I grip the blanket tighter.
“The ravens begged him to undo it. Promised to behave,to be quiet, to obey him if he’d just give their friends back.” His voice cracks. “So he stole their voices too. Buried the key. Made them watch, year after year, as the ones they loved forgot them over and over again.”
My chest tightens until breathing feels like trying to inhale broken glass.
“Every time one of the ravens finds the friend he lost,” Ares says, softer now, “he sings to her. Calls for her. But no sound leaves him. She looks right through him. Sometimes she hates him without knowing why.”
He finally looks at me. His blue eyes shine raw in the candlelight, and the story stops feeling like a story at all.
“Now the raven fights every day to undo the gardener’s work,” he whispers. “But it’s a labyrinth. One he’s never been able to escape.”
The room is unbearably quiet. I taste salt before I realize tears are spilling down my cheeks.
“What am I to you, Ares?” The question comes out cracked, aching, trembling with a fear I can’t disguise.
His jaw trembles. “She was everything to the raven.”
The air leaves my lungs in a soundless sob. “Why haven’t you ever told me this story before?”
“I have.” His voice shatters. “You don’t remember it for more than a few hours.”
A tear slips down his cheek, and something inside me keels over. I move before I think, reaching for his face, wiping the tear with my thumb. He leans into my touch like he’s starving for it, a laugh escaping him, strangled and breaking.
“Every time I tell this story,” he murmurs, “you do that.”
My heart stutters painfully. “How many times have we been here?”
