“You’re remembering wrong,” he murmurs. “All of it.”
My pulse jumps violently. “Don’t lie to me.”
He doesn’t flinch. “Lies require intention. Your mind is doing the work for me.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
His gaze sharpens, the faintest vibration running off him like restrained power. “It means the truth isn’t as simple as you’ve been told. It means someone has been rewritingpieces of you.” A slight tilt of his head. “And it means you’re starting to notice.”
Something hot and nauseating coils in my throat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” he says softly. “And so do you.”
A sound, the scrape of a footstep in the hallway, cuts through the charged air.
My breath stutters.
Blue Eyes turns toward the door, shoulders tensing, every part of him sharpening.
Then I hear the voice.
“Harper?”
Sebastian.
His footsteps grow louder, fast, urgent, echoing against the stone corridor. The moment he rounds that corner he’ll see everything, my shaking hands, the overturned desk, the intruder standing too close.
I whip my gaze back toward Blue Eyes.
But the space in front of me is empty.
No shift of air.
No retreating footsteps.
No cloak disappearing through the doorway.
Just the faint impression of cold left behind and the lingering scent of rain and steel.
And Sebastian’s voice calling my name again, drawing closer with every heartbeat.
22
LIAM
Sebastian has been pacing for so long I’m surprised the floorboards haven’t splintered beneath his boots. He won’t look at me, not fully. His glare flicks to the walls, the windows, the furniture, anywhere he can anchor himself that isn’t my face. His breath is uneven, slipping between sharp exhales and ragged silences, and every few strides his hand rakes through his hair until it stands on end.
The room feels too small for the amount of anger in it.
“Sebastian,” I try, keeping my voice level even though my own heart is pounding. “Let me explain, just calm down for a moment.”
His head snaps toward me, eyes blazing, and the force of it nearly knocks the words back down my throat.
“Calm down?” he spits, stepping forward with so much fury that the air seems to move with him. “I left her. I left her, Liam. And you-” His voice cracks into something raw and jagged. “Your parents...your parents murdered my mother and father right in front of us!”
Before I can brace myself, he grabs the front of my shirt and slams me against the nearest pillar. His face is inches from mine, breath hot with grief and rage. His fingers tremble where they grip my collar, not from fear, he isn’t afraid of me, but from the kind of emotional fracture that comes from remembering too much too fast.
“And your sister, Harper, those scars?” His voice breaks entirely. “Your father did that to her? He kept hurting her?”
