“Don’t make me hurt you,” Sebastian says, and this time the threat is not subtle. Not masked. It hangs between them like a drawn blade.
Trevor lifts his chin, eyes narrowing. “I’m counting on it. Because if you lay one finger on me, I get to show everyone exactly what you’ve been hiding.”
Sebastian freezes.
Not out of fear.
Out of recognition.
Trevor grins. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. Your secret is safe… for now. But the moment I decide-”
“What secret?” I ask, but Trevor doesn’t look at me.
“They’re up here!” he shouts gleefully, pointing toward the stairwell as footsteps thunder closer.
Both Sebastian and I go rigid.
Trevor doesn’t wait to see what happens next. With a sharp flick of his wand, he casts a dissipation charm and vanishes in a swirl of golden smoke, cowardly, leaving the aftermath in our hands.
The door bursts open moments later. Liam enters first, his expression shifting instantly from panic to bafflement. Theo follows, his posture rigid, his pale eyes flitting between us with practiced sensitivity.
“Since when do you two get along?” Liam asks, his voice far too observant.
Sebastian and I exchange a look, brief and sharp.
Theo’s mouth curves into a slow, knowing smile when he finally reaches the doorway.
“I guess you weren’t too busy for us after all, Sebastian,” Theo says, crossing his arms.
The entire room feels poised on the edge of something fragile, a truth, a secret, a shift neither of us is ready to name.
10
HARPER
Liam reaches us with a force that feels like a storm breaking against stone, his expression contorted with an anger far deeper than simple confusion. Trevor must have whispered something poisonous into his ear during the short time we’d been gone, because the fury simmering behind Liam’s eyes is nothing like the worried frustration he normally wears when chastising me.
I can practically feel the heat of it radiating off him as he approaches, shoulders tight, jaw locked, as if he has already sentenced me for a crime he hasn’t even heard the explanation for.
Theo stands at his side, equally thrown off, though his emotions splinter in a different direction, concern, disbelief, and a touch of panic mingling all at once as he tries to navigate where to place the blame.
“You didn’t think,” Liam says, glancing rapidly between me and Sebastian as though trying to decipher the truth from our faces, “that maybe you should tell your brother you were leaving him behind in Anvaris to go do God knows what with him?”
I open my mouth, but Liam scoffs loudly, a harsh sound that cuts off any attempt I might have made to calm the situation. His chest rises and falls in sharp, clipped breaths, his hands curled into fists at his sides.
Liam pushes, his voice strained. “Trevor said he went outside to look for you, after our conversation, to apologize,and found you gone. I didn’t believe him when he said Sebastian was forcing himself onto you until just now-”
Theo’s entire body tenses at the wordforcing, a flicker of horror passing through him. His brows knit tightly, his head tilting slightly like he can feel the discord twisting in the air long before anyone speaks again.
Sebastian reacts first, his voice cold enough to scrape bone. “I didn’t touch your sister like that,” he says, stepping closer, though not toward Liam, toward the accusation itself, as if trying to physically shield me from it. “Last time I checked, I was the one there when she needed help. Not you.”
The words strike something dangerous in Liam. He closes the distance between them in an instant and seizes Sebastian by the forearm, his fingers tightening with a threat he doesn’t voice but makes painfully clear. “You think I’m going to stand here and let you add her to your list of women you’ve vandalized?”
It hits Sebastian like a blade.
Not because it’s true, but because everyone here knows what Trevor’s lies will turn into if not stopped.
Theo steps in, his voice finally sharp with authority, cutting through the escalating chaos before it can boil over. “Both of you,” he says, no louder than before but somehow commanding the entire room, “silence yourselves for two seconds and let her talk.”
