Sebastian breaks the kiss only long enough to glance at Liam, breath shaking, eyes shining with something raw and human and heartbreakingly vulnerable. He reaches out one arm, an unspoken invitation. A bridge to the boy he never realized he had lost.
Liam’s face crumples. For a moment, he looks like the child he once was, the boy who carried every burden for me, who hid his own scars so mine wouldn’t feel alone. Theo steadies him with a gentle touch, guiding him forward until Liam’s hand meets Sebastian’s grasp.
The four of us fold into one another, Sebastian’s arms around me, my hand gripping Liam, Liam pressed into Theo for balance. A knot of grief, love, loss, and something fiercely, painfully alive. After everything our parents tookfrom us, after all the years erased and rewritten… this feels like the first piece they don’t get to touch.
“Y-You don’t blame me?” I manage, my voice splintering under the weight of it all.
Sebastian’s thumb brushes my cheek, wiping tears that keep falling faster than I can stop them. His expression darkens, not with anger toward me, but toward the man who tore our lives apart.
“We were children,” he says, voice trembling with conviction. “He hurt you. If I could go back, if I could rewrite any part of what happened-” His jaw clenches. “I would kill him myself.”
A sharp, pointed clearing of someone’s throat slices through the moment, snapping all of our heads toward the noise at once.
The world holds its breath.
“I was intending on telling only Liam,” Locke begins, voice strained as he stands in the center of the room, gaze flicking between each of us like he’s trying to take measure of our reactions before they happen. “But given that not one, but all of you now share knowledge of… certain circumstances, I believe it’s best I address this with every one of you present.”
There’s something unfamiliar in his face, worry bordering on fear. His fingers tremble as he reaches into his coat and retrieves a small slip of paper, the edges worn as though he’s handled it too many times in too few hours. Theo steps closer. Liam does too, arms crossed tight over his chest, posture protective, bracing for the worst.
Locke hesitates only a second before handing the paper to Liam. The silence that follows is thick enough to choke on.
“Where...where did you get this?” Liam’s voice fractures, and before Locke can even form an answer, Liam snatchesthe letter fully, his eyes scanning the text so quickly the world feels like it tilts beneath us.
“It… it was on my desk this morning,” Locke says, voice quieting into something hollow. “It wasn’t there when I retired last night. It simply… appeared.”
My curiosity spikes, dread curling behind my ribs, and without waiting for permission, I step forward and tug the letter from Liam’s hand. The moment the handwriting meets my eyes, the slanted, cruel script I once watched drag across parchment as he crafted threats like artwork, my breath halts.
Eleazar Locke,
Clearly, killing your wife was not enough of a message for you to stay out of my affairs. My children are mine. I will see to it the Shadeborne stop at nothing to take back what belongs to me.
You stole them. You left me for dead. Did you truly think there would be no consequence?
Do you believe you can hide them?
Return them to me within one month. Otherwise, I will begin picking off Vireldan students one by one.
Consider this letter my final kindness.
—Andrew Shadeborne
I feel the room vanish around me. My pulse roars in my ears. The ink sways on the page as nausea coils up my throat.
“What is it?” Theo asks quietly, unable to see the letter but hearing the way air has been sucked from the room.
My gaze slowly lifts, finding Sebastian across from me. His eyes search my face, reading fear, recognition, devastation, every emotion he never should have had to see again. My hand trembles as I lower the letter.
“My father is alive,” I say, the words tasting like poison on my tongue.
Sebastian’s expression splinters. Liam goes utterly still. Locke’s jaw tenses, bracing for my next breath, my next thought, my next terrible truth.
“And I’m going to let him have me.”
Shock ripples through the room, Theo’s sharp inhale, Liam’s horrified stare, Sebastian’s eyes widening with something feral, possessive, devastated.
But I keep talking, because someone has to.
“He will not stop,” I say quietly, a truth etched into every painful memory I’ve ever lived. “And I won’t let Vireldan bleed because of me. If he wants what he believes is his, then I will give him myself.”
