Theo stops walking, turning slightly toward me. His eyes, though unfocused, find the space just left of my face, as if sensing something unraveling inside me. He speaks gently, but with a conviction that lands like a hand closing around mine.
“You’re not him, Harper.”
I swallow hard, staring at the dirt path ahead. “You don’t know that.”
“I know what fear feels like,” he murmurs, “and I know the difference between someone born from it and someone shaped by it.”
The silence that follows is thick, heavier than anything I know what to do with.
We keep walking toward whatever waits for us at the top of the hill, toward Sebastian, toward danger, but for the first time since we stepped through the portal, I don’t feel entirely alone.
The shouting reaches us before the cottage does, rising over the wind like the warning crack before a storm breaks. Liam freezes first, hand instinctively drifting toward his wand. Theo tilts his head, listening with unnerving precision, already pinpointing where the voices come from.
We round a bend in the path, and the trees part just enough to reveal a sagging cottage leaning under its own weight. Shingles hang like broken teeth, and smoke curls from a crooked chimney. But it’s the two figures in front of the cabin who command every shred of my attention.
Sebastian stands rigid, shoulders coiled with fury, his jaw clenched so tightly I’m shocked it hasn’t cracked. Opposite him, a broad, red-faced man with patchy graying hair jabs a finger into Sebastian’s chest. His clothes are threadbare, stained with ale and soot, and even from here I can feel the sour bite of his temper.
“…last thing I need is you coming here, boy!” the man snarls, lunging as though he might strike him.
Without hesitation, Sebastian grabs him by the front of his shirt and shoves him hard into the cottage wall. The wood groans from the force, dust shaking loose from the frame. His uncle’s head snaps back, and for a split secondSebastian looks feral, breathing hard, eyes gone storm-dark, hands trembling with the effort not to go further.
Then his gaze flicks toward us.
The transformation is instant.
His posture snaps rigid, his expression sealing over in a mask of cold disbelief. His eyes lock on mine first, startled, then shuttered. Then he takes in Liam beside me. Theo at my back. All three of us standing there like we’ve walked in on his rib cage cracked open.
His uncle follows his line of sight and turns.
A bark of laughter bursts out of him, mocking and utterly humorless.
“You brought your little friends too?” he scoffs, shoving Sebastian’s arm away as he straightens himself. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, looking the three of us up and down like we’ve offended him simply by existing. “What is this now? Some schoolhouse field trip? Or did you need an audience for your tantrum, boy?”
Sebastian’s eyes close for half a second, just long enough for a pulse of something painful to pass through him, before he inhales sharply, steadying himself.
He doesn’t look at his uncle again.
He looks at me.
And whatever argument he was in the middle of, whatever fury he was holding back-
it all shifts.
Not softer.
Not safer.
Just… different.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Sebastian says, voice low, rough at the edges. Not angry. Not yet. But on the threshold of something.
Liam steps forward before I can speak. “We need to talk to you.”
Sebastian’s uncle snorts. “Of course you do.”
Theo moves subtly closer to Liam, tension vibrating off him despite his calm exterior.
The man pushes past Sebastian, stomping toward the cottage door. “Clean up your mess,” he throws over his shoulder. “And then get out of my sight.”
