The Vespera wing is quieter than usual. Torchlight flickers along the stone walls, throwing soft gold arches across the floor. Harper isn’t in the common area, and that immediately puts my pulse on edge. I keep going, followingthe hall that leads toward the boys’ dormitories. It isn’t logical that she’d go this way, she avoids being anywhere near groups of boys she doesn’t trust, and most Vespera boys fall squarely in that category. But something in my gut keeps pushing me forward, whispering that this is where I’ll find a piece of her, or a piece of whatever she’s running from.
Halfway down the hall, voices slip through a partially cracked door.
Theo’s voice.
I freeze mid-step, the sound stopping me cold. He never sounds so strained unless something is truly wrong. I edge closer, flattening myself against the wall beside his door. It feels wrong to listen, but instinct roots me in place. Harper crossed paths with Sebastian tonight. Sebastian saw something he shouldn’t have. And if Theo is in his room, if they’re talking now, then the conversation is almost certainly about her.
“Sebastian, you can’t keep doing this-”
Theo’s voice is soft but tense, stretched thin as a wire.
Sebastian answers immediately, but his tone isn’t arrogant. It isn’t lazy. It isn’t mocking. It’s rough, frayed at the edges, like he’s barely holding himself together.
“I’m aware,” he mutters, pacing by the sound of his footsteps. “But what do you expect me to do? Pretend I didn’t see her like that? Pretend it didn’t- ”
He snaps himself off mid-sentence. I hear the faint thud of his fist against something, a desk or the wall. Theo steps closer; his voice drops even lower.
“You’re unraveling,” Theo murmurs. “And we both know why.”
A heavy silence settles over the corridor. My chest tightens as I lean closer, careful not to shift my boots on the stone floor. This isn’t normal for Sebastian, not even remotely, and the unease clawing up my spine only deepens.
Sebastian’s footsteps resume, slower this time, dragging with each turn.
“She looked terrified, Theo,” he says quietly. “More than before. And every time I get near her, something-” Another sharp exhale. “It doesn’t matter. I should stay away.”
My heart stumbles.
Theo lets out a small, exasperated sigh. “Then why don’t you?”
Another silence swells, thicker than the last. I can feel it pressing against my ribs, the weight of something I don’t understand filling my lungs until it’s almost painful.
Sebastian finally speaks again, and the sound of his voice shocks me, it’s soft. Uncertain. Something I’ve never heard from him.
“She didn’t look at me today,” he whispers. “Not once.”
Theo huffs a tired, breathy laugh. “Yes, well… that tends to happen when you pin someone against a wall, Sebastian.”
My jaw locks so tight it aches. Harper didn’t imagine it. She didn’t exaggerate. And the fact that he sounds so… affected… does something strange to my chest. Something I don’t want to acknowledge.
Sebastian inhales sharply. “I’m worried about her,” he murmurs with a rawness I’ve never heard from him, not once since arriving at Vireldan. “You should be too.”
The words knock the breath right out of me.
Sebastian Harwood cares.
And I have no idea whether that makes things safer for Harper, or infinitely more dangerous.
I step back from the door, pulse thundering in my ears, and force myself to breathe as I turn away. Whatever Harper has become tangled in… it runs deeper than I realized. And whatever Sebastian feels, whatever he’s wrestling with, it isn’t simple.
Not even close.
Theo’s voice comes again, low and taut. “You should have let her be. You should have never allowed your curiosity to get the best of you.”
A sharp breath leaves Sebastian, barely audible but heavy enough that it punches straight into my ribs. He’s pacing again, I can hear the drag of his boots on stone, the way he avoids stepping on the creaky board by Theo’s wardrobe. He’s restless, coiled so tight I imagine even breathing feels like a fight.
“You’re one to speak,” he whispers back, and there’s an edge buried under his tone. “I’m not the only one who’s taken a sudden interest in a Whitlock sibling.”
My pulse stutters.
