We step inside.
Theo leans closer, voice no more than a breath. “Feels like someone’s here.”
I nod once, motioning toward the green door. “Sebastian, check there. Theo and I will take the other room.”
He moves toward the green glow, wand raised, posture tense with worry and jealousy and something else simmering beneath it. I pull Theo with me toward the darker room across from it. The oak door creaks softly beneath my hand, and the faint fireplace glow spills out enough for me to see shapes...two shapes.
I step inside, breath hitching as my eyes adjust.
Harper sleeps in the bed, cocooned in white sheets that make her look impossibly small. Her chest rises slowly. Peacefully. Vulnerable in a way I haven’t seen since we were children. Relief slams into me so hard I almost buckle.
Then I see him.
Ares.
Slumped in a chair beside her bed, head tipped to the side, exhaustion carved into every line of his face. One hand, his hand, is entwined with hers, fingers interlaced as if he fell asleep clutching something he couldn’t bear to let go of.
My stomach flips. My heartbeat stutters. Theo squeezes my arm gently, but it barely registers.
Did they fall asleep like that?
Did she let him?
Did he need her hand to keep breathing?
Did she?
Everything in me tightens, but the shock is hollowed out by something deeper, something like dread rather than jealousy, something telling me this isn’t small. This isn’t meaningless. This is history I can’t see, chains I can’t unspool.
Theo leans closer, whispering, “What do you see?”
Words stick in my throat. I don’t know how to answer him without breaking something open.
“I-”
A crash detonates behind me, splintering the fragile quiet. I whirl around just in time to see Sebastian stumbling backward through the doorway, wand raised high as if he’s preparing to duel an army. A potion bottle shatters against the wall beside him, its shards raining to the floor. A wild-eyed redhead stands in the doorway he just barreled into, her hair a chaotic blaze around her face, sleepwear wrinkled like she was dragged from her bed. She shouts at him to get out, voice sharp enough to cut through the entire cottage. Her glare slices toward me next, but something in her expression softens the moment our eyes catch...recognition. Before she can utter another word, Sebastian lunges forward, grabbing her arm with far too much force and shoving her toward the wall, fury radiating off him in waves.
Movement brushes past my side, quick and deliberate. Ares is already upright, fully alert, fully dangerous, and in an instant he’s on Sebastian, hooking an arm around his neck and hauling him off the redhead with a fluid, lethal precision. Sebastian thrashes, snarling every insult he can breathe out, clawing at Ares’s forearm as he reaches desperately for his wand. The two of them collide against a table hard enough to rattle the glass vials on it.
“Who the hell is this man?!” the redhead shouts, rubbing her arm and glaring at Sebastian like she’s debating whether to throw another bottle at him.
“Sebastian-” Harper’s voice rings through the space, strained but unmistakably real. My sister steps into the threshold, her presence slicing through the chaos like a cold wind. Her voice pulls all of us taut. Sebastian freezes instantly, his rage evaporating as he whips his head toward her.
Ares loosens his hold and releases him, stepping away with a noticeable stiffness in his body, leftover pain, orleftover anger, I can’t tell. Scratches line Ares’s arms from where Sebastian desperately fought him off. Sebastian staggers upright, eyes darting frantically between Harper, Ares, the redhead, and me. Harper reaches out, resting her hand on my shoulder. For a heartbeat I forget how to breathe; she looks more alive than she did yesterday, still fragile but steadier, the shadows under her eyes a little lighter. Yet something trembles behind her gaze.
“What in Merlin’s name is happening?” Sebastian finally demands, voice cracking under the pressure of everything he sees but can’t process.
Harper tries to steady herself, though her hands tremble as she raises them. “Ares and I were attacked. He was poisoned. He needed my blood to counter it-” Her words hit the room like a thrown stone. Sebastian’s face drains of color.
He turns slowly toward Ares, his jaw tightening with murderous intent. “Why,” he asks, voice ice-cold, “were you both in the same room?”
Ares leans back against the wall as if he owns it. Arms crossed, shoulders relaxed, expression wickedly unbothered, everything about him radiates a kind of confidence Sebastian cannot understand and I don’t know if I trust. That small, taunting smirk appears, subtle but sharp enough to draw blood. “She didn’t want to be alone,” Ares answers. “I made sure she got what she asked for.”
The air thickens instantly. Sebastian’s fury is volcanic now, simmering so close to eruption that even the walls feel like they vibrate. I can practically feel the heat pulsating off him. Harper reacts first, stepping in front of Ares with her palms open, her breathing ragged. Her voice breaks on a frustrated, desperate cry. “Just let me think! Please...just let me think!” She squeezes her eyes shut and presses her fingersto her temples, as if she’s fighting something inside her skull, something stronger than any of us in the room.
Before any of us can speak, three long, deliberate scratches drag themselves across the outside wall of the cottage, slow and unmistakably predatory. Every head snaps up.
A chill crawls up my spine. “What was that?” The words barely escape me.
