The order lands heavily.
Liam releases Sebastian with a reluctant tension, his hand falling away but not relaxing. Sebastian’s jaw flexes once, twice, the muscle beneath his skin working hard to keep something in check. They both step back, slightly, enough to acknowledge that the next words spoken must come from me.
I inhale slowly, the breath feeling like sand scraping my throat. “Some drunk tried touching me outside the pub,” Ibegin, my voice steady only because it has to be. “He hurt me. I didn’t want to lose control and do something foolish, but he almost made me.” My chest tightens at the half-truth twisting inside the full truth. “Sebastian came by after reading Theo’s raven. He pulled the man off me. We both got hurt in the process. That’s why he brought me back.”
The room grows unbearably quiet as I look Liam directly in the eyes.
“Nothing is happening between us.”
Theo seems to soften.
Liam simply stares.
“And Sebastian only saw that man?” he asks, voice quieter now, but laced with a suspicion so sharp it slices through me.
My pulse thunders. The memory of my glowing reflection inside that man’s terror-struck eyes ripples through my stomach. If Sebastian saw even the faintest glimmer of it-
Lie.
I have to lie.
“Just the man,” I say, forcing the words through clenched teeth, praying they land convincingly enough to bury the truth.
Sebastian scoffs softly, not at me, but at Liam, before shoving him backward with a controlled burst of anger that sends Liam stumbling. “I told you,” he snaps, his voice cracking with something closer to frustration than fury, “there’s nothing going on between her and me.”
Then he turns, abruptly, almost violently, toward me. His eyes are darker than before, not cold but guarded, as though he’s pulling every feeling he allowed to slip through the cracks earlier back behind an iron wall.
“Consider this an IOU, Whitlock,” he says, each word sharp enough to bruise. “Don’t come crying to me next time you need something.”
The sentence lodges deep in my chest, a weight that sinkswith a sting I didn’t prepare for. He’s punishing himself just as much as he’s punishing me, I can see it now in the flicker of emotion he hides too quickly, but that doesn’t soften the blow.
Without waiting for a response, he turns on his heel and storms past Theo, muttering something under his breath that sounds like a curse against Trevor, against himself, I can’t tell. Theo offers me a small, pained expression of apology before following him, his shoulders tensed, his steps hesitant.
Suddenly, the room feels far too large with just Liam and me inside it.
He looks at me with a disappointment so sharp it feels almost personal, as if I chose to betray him by being hurt, as if I sought out the chaos that dragged us all into this mess. His silence is heavier than his accusations.
“In case you were wondering,” I finally say, letting the bitterness that’s been clawing at me seep into my voice, “I’m fine. But I suppose it’s difficult to have sympathy when you’re too busy standing on a pedestal all the time.”
The words land between us like a shattering glass pane.
I don’t stay long enough to see how deeply they cut.
I push past him, the cold corridor swallowing me as I go, the weight of everything tightening in my chest until breathing feels like a task I’ve forgotten how to do. The shadows of the hospital wing stretch long against the walls, dark and quiet and filled with echoes of things I don’t understand.
For the first time since arriving at Vireldan, I don’t look back, not at Liam, not at the doorway, not at the place where Sebastian stood.
I simply walk away.
11
HARPER
Five days pass, though the memory of the infirmary feels far more distant than that, as if the moment Sebastian carried me through the dissipating light belongs to someone else, some girl I scarcely recognize.
I’ve buried myself in the routine of Vireldan because it’s the only thing that feels remotely stable. The academy has a way of swallowing distractions whole; between the sprawling coursework and the endless corridors, there are hours when I manage to forget the tavern, forget Trevor’s poison, forget the way my eyes had glowed bright enough to terrify a grown man. Almost.
Goblin and Fae Lore was my first real taste of Vireldan academics, dense, meticulous lessons delivered in the melodic cadence of Professor Thalen, a half-Fae scholar with enough arrogance to fill the entire tiered lecture hall. Yet I found comfort in the structure of it, in the feel of parchment beneath my fingers, in the way the older students muttered their notes with the frantic determination of those hoping to survive the year. It was in that class, tucked into the Sylara section with their burnt-orange robes dotting the rows like autumn leaves, that I met Poppy.
