“Running won’t save you,” he murmurs, voice low enough that it vibrates faintly through the air between us. It isn’t raised, isn’t harsh, but the edge beneath it cuts cleanly through the quiet. “Neither will pretending nothing happened.” His breath brushes my cheek as he speaks, carrying the scent of cool rain and something darker beneath the surface, something restless and raw that mirrors the unsettled rhythm of my heartbeat.
The firmness of his grip in my hair softens just a fraction, as though he recognizes the tension in my spine and chooses not to push any harder. His thumb grazes a stray strand near my temple, a touch that shouldn’t make my pulse stutter but does regardless. The bruise on his cheekbone shadows his features and gives weight to the exhaustion carved into the lines around his mouth. Disheveled curls fall forward, framing eyes that refuse to look anywhere but directly at me. Whatever he endured before arriving here, whatever storm brewed behind that expression, still lingers heavily in the way he holds himself.
“That wasn’t nothing,” he continues, the words slower now, each one measured as if he’s choosing them with care he doesn’t want me to notice. “What you did to that dummy… and what I saw in your eyes outside that tavern… Harper, you know damn well none of that was nothing.” The tone shifts again, less accusation now, more insistent, built from equal parts frustration and worry. His hand remains tangled in my hair, steady rather than restraining, as though he’s holding me in place not to dominate the space but because he refuses to let me look away from the truth he’s trying to drag into the open.
Thoughts collide in my mind, fear, instinct, the echo of my father's voice, the memory of that glowing reflection staring back at me from the window. They churn so violently inside me that the floor feels a littleunsteady beneath my boots. Despite that imbalance, an undeniable awareness coils through every nerve as his closeness sharpens something I’ve tried hard to numb since arriving. Even without my wand, magic prickles along my skin in soft warning pulses. A reminder. A promise. A threat. It’s difficult to tell which.
Sebastian must sense the shift, because his eyes narrow just slightly, studying me with a kind of reluctant understanding. No movement comes next, but the pressure of his leg braced between mine anchors me in place, forcing me to confront the closeness rather than shy away from it. The warmth radiating from him creates its own gravity, pulling focus from every thought except the one I don’t want to name.
With a slow breath, my hand moves toward his waistband where my wand disappeared. The intention is simple: retrieve what’s mine. Yet the moment my fingertips brush warm skin instead of carved wood, something inside me jolts hard enough to steal a quiet gasp from my throat. Heat blooms across my cheeks, embarrassingly vivid. My lips part reflexively, teeth catching the edge of my lower lip as if trying to stop the involuntary reaction from spilling into the air between us. Eyes close a moment too long, not to savor the contact but to scold the traitorous way my body responds to it.
The betrayal is immediate and sharp.
The embarrassment even sharper.
Pinned between the stone wall and his relentless attention, the truth presses closer: wand or no wand, magic or no magic, restraint or no restraint, I could push him off me if I wanted to.
The real question is why some part of me doesn’t.
A cold breath leaks from between my lips, barely controlled, barely my own. The truth I’ve avoided for years sits heavy on my tongue, and the closeness between us twistsit tighter, makes it harder to hold back. His hand still lingers near my hair, fingers slowly loosening, not from mercy but from anticipation, waiting for me to give him something real. His knee remains between mine, his body angled in a way that denies me escape without ever touching me. The windows behind us rattle faintly from the storm outside, and the sound sinks into the charged silence thickening the narrow space where we stand.
A warning spills from me before I can stop it. “If I told you the truth,” I murmur, the words scraping raw on their way out, “you would never be this close to me again.”
The shift in his expression is slight, a furrowing of his brow, a drawing in of breath, but I feel it like a hand pressed to my sternum. He doesn’t retreat, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t scoff like so many others have at my attempts to hold them at a distance. That refusal to step back, that stubborn insistence on proximity, unsettles me more than anything the man outside the tavern ever did. Because Sebastian isn’t blinded, or drunk, or cruel. He’s deliberate. Focused. And some part of him intends to stay exactly where he is until he understands what I’ve just admitted.
“Everything I touch breaks,” I force out, the confession slipping into the air like something venomous. “Do yourself a favor-”
The sentence cracks apart as the pulse rises.
It isn’t dramatic, not the kind of spectacle I fear losing control of. Instead, it comes as a slow but unstoppable wave, an internal shudder that ripples outward, tugging at the air until the strands of magic woven into the library itself seem to stir. My breath catches. His grip loosens. A faint electric prickle arcs across my skin, and the burn behind my eyes blooms until I know, without seeing, what color they’ve taken on.
Sebastian exhales sharply, the sound rough and instinctive,and steps back, not because I push him, not because he chooses to give me room, but because the magic itself demands space. My hair slips through his fingers as if gravity suddenly remembered to reclaim it. He straightens, chest rising in a quick breath, eyes flicking over my face with something too conflicted to decipher.
The moment his posture breaks, the wand calls to me.
It feels natural, too natural, to reach for it. My hand finds the waistband of his trousers, fingertips brushing his skin again. This time, the contact shocks me with heat rather than surprise. My lips part instinctively, not in invitation but in betrayal of the confusion turning my stomach. Closing my eyes feels safer than meeting his gaze as I curl my fingers around the polished wood and pull it free, reclaiming what should have never been in his possession in the first place.
“And stop trying to figure me out,” I finish softly, the last words dropping into the space between us like the final note of a spell.
For a long, suspended moment, neither of us moves.
The storm outside shivers against the window.
The library holds its breath.
And we simply stand in the aftermath, both unsteady, both disheveled, both pretending we aren’t affected as deeply as we are.
Sebastian is the one who breaks the taut line first. Not with a retreating snarl or another sharp question, but with a slow release of breath that seems to drain something heavy from his chest. He drags a hand through his hair, pushing damp curls away from his forehead before turning toward the window alcove beside us. His movements lack their usual precision; there is no swagger, no calculated arrogance, just a quiet exhaustion as he drops onto the stone ledge.
Rain light bleeds across his face, drawing silver over the bruising on his cheek, softening the sharp lines of his jaw.His shoulders settle as he braces his elbows against his knees and stares through the glass, not speaking immediately. It’s as if the conversation, if it can even be called that, has taken something from him he hadn’t expected to give.
When he finally speaks, his voice is low, worn down by something deeper than alcohol or lack of sleep.
“You almost sounded convincing,” he says, still watching the rain rather than me. “Almost.”
Something within me cracks at his response.
Something that should have stayed buried.
