A fist connecting with flesh.
Once.
Twice.
Then over and over, a rhythm of fury so fierce the cold night seems to vibrate.
I drop to my knees, breath sawing in and out of me,vision dimming around the edges. My heart slams against my ribs as the sound of struggling shifts into the groan of a man being beaten, not in self-defense, but with intent, with rage, with something far more primal.
Bootsteps approach, shaking the ground beneath them.
A pair of hands slide beneath my arms and haul me upright. I twist on instinct, half-ready to fight off another attacker.
But the grip tightens.
“Stop! Harper, stop. It’s me.”
The voice comes hard and breathless, threaded with something that is not quite fear but close enough to sting.
Sebastian.
My vision finally sharpens, allowing me to take him in fully. His curls are disheveled, falling across his forehead. His chest rises and falls in harsh, uneven breaths. His fists, still half-curled, are stained with fresh blood, split across the knuckles. Behind him, the man who grabbed me lies sprawled on the steps, unconscious or close to it.
Sebastian turns his attention back to me, scanning every inch of my face, then my side, then the trembling of my hands. His jaw tightens into a line so sharp it looks painful. The anger radiating off him is territorial in a way that makes something low in my stomach twist.
“If I get you out of here,” he says, voice low but laced with fire, “you’re going to tell me what the fuck just happened.”
The words hit harder than the cold, harder than the fear, harder than the memory of the man’s hands on me. Sebastian steps closer, close enough that the heat of his body pushes back the morning chill. His breath brushes my cheek, warm and uneven. His fingers slide up my forearms, not forcefully, but with a possessive urgency he doesn’t bother to hide.
I slip a hand beneath my shirt, fingers finding the tornskin along my side. Blood coats my fingertips, sticky and warm.
Sebastian sees it. His nostrils flare. His gaze darkens.
“Fucking hell,” he mutters, voice cracking into something raw and dangerous. “How bad did he hurt you?”
The question isn’t gentle. It’s violent with emotion. Violent with fear.
And it breaks something inside me, the part of me that fights, that hides, that lies, that masks everything with sharp words and sarcasm.
Before I can stop myself, I lean into him, gripping the front of his coat. Not out of weakness, but out of the sudden, overwhelming need not to be alone in the aftermath of what almost happened.
“Get me out of here,” I whisper into his chest, the words shaking loose.
He doesn’t hesitate.
Not for a single breath.
His arm slips around my waist, steadying me, claiming me, pulling me tight against him as though daring the shadows, or anyone in it, to come close again.
9
HARPER
Icannot say when Sebastian cast the dissipation spell that delivered us back to Vireldan. The moment itself feels fractured in my memory, split into loose fragments that refuse to piece themselves together cleanly. One second the chill air in Anvaris was compressing around us, the scent of blood clinging to Sebastian’s hands and the last echo of the old man’s groan hanging heavy in the street. The next, the world twisted, pulling tight like a thread being yanked through fabric, and everything blurred into streaks of color, deep reds, muted blacks, flashes of gold that might have come from lanterns or might have come from the memory of my own eyes shifting into something unfamiliar.
The disorientation should have faded by now, but it lingers, blearing the edges of what happened. The man’s hands on me. The panic clawing up my throat. The shift in my gaze, unnatural and wrong. And then Sebastian,
Sebastian appearing like he had been looking for me long before danger touched me.
