A hush falls so absolute that even the air feels afraid to move.
The devil isreal.
And he has come to collect his belongings.
23
HARPER
Three Weeks Later
I never imagined life could feel like something worth fighting for. For so long, existence was something to survive, a threshold to cross each morning and endure until nightfall. I woke, I breathed, I obeyed, and I repeated the process until I forgot there was anything else to want. But now that my memories have been returned, now that I know fully, painfully, what I lost, each day feels like a stolen opportunity. Each sunrise is something fragile and precious. Each hour is a chance to reclaim a life that should have always been mine, to protect it, shape it, and keep it from slipping through my fingers again.
After my father’s letter arrived, there was nothing. No second message. No sighting. No confirmation that he was anywhere at all. The silence itself became a kind of torment. I’ve counted every day since, watching the numbers shrink toward the one-month mark as if I’m walking willingly into the mouth of a beast. I tell myself each night will be better than the last, but without fail, every time I close my eyes I’m dragged into dreams soaked in blood and fire, visions where everyone around me dies screaming because of him. I wake gasping, clawing at my sheets, my magic blistering hot beneath my skin.
Sebastian has stopped pretending he sleeps anymore. More nights than not, when I burst awake, shaking, he’salready sitting outside the girl's quarters with his coat wrapped around him, waiting for the exact moment my nightmares tear me out of whatever fragile rest I’ve managed to find. Sometimes he doesn’t say anything at all. He just takes my hand and sits with me until the trembling stops. Other nights, he talks under his breath, quiet memories resurfacing, small details returning to him piece by piece until the boy I loved and lost becomes clearer with every passing dawn. Every recovered memory softens him and sharpens him all at once, and I can’t decide whether it heals me or breaks me further.
After I threatened to give myself to my father, Locke and Liam spent days rummaging through the ruins of our old manor, searching the grounds for signs of how Andrew Shadeborne managed to survive the night of the fire. But their efforts only opened more questions, no tracks, no corpses, no blood, nothing but a hollow shell of walls that still remember the screams. Dead ends upon dead ends. The absence of answers terrifies me far more than any truth could.
Anne has been remembering things too. Our visit to Myrindale felt different now, less like stepping into someone else’s broken past, and more like returning to a story we were all forced to abandon. She clung to Sebastian, to me, to Liam, each realization brightening then dimming her smile. A small part of her looks at Liam with something bittersweet. I think she always hoped he’d held a fondness for her, something warm, something soft. But Liam gravitates toward Theo in a way he can’t hide anymore, and Anne sees it even if she pretends she doesn’t.
Sebastian’s uncle recognized more than he initially let on, too. Those sharp glances Sebastian gave me the first day suddenly made sense; he must have seen shades of my mother in my face, echoes of her cruelty or beauty, depending on whichmemory he still holds. It unsettles him. I can feel it every time his eyes flick toward me.
Sebastian keeps himself busy these days. Too busy. Training with Liam. Hunting for leads. Planning for contingencies. Pretending that exhaustion isn’t dragging at him like an anchor. Poppy helps where she can, usually by chattering endlessly about some creature in the bordering woods she is determined to rehabilitate or rescue. Her presence is a strange comfort, a reminder that this place still holds something pure.
Three weeks. Three weeks of something dangerously close to bliss. Three weeks of touching the life that should have always been ours, one filled with friends, love, and the freedom to simply exist without fear. But Liam watches me carefully now. He sees the darkness creeping back in, the way my magic simmers beneath my skin whenever someone speaks my father’s name. He sees the rage I barely contain, the sharpness in my breath, the cold in my eyes. He fears what I will do, what lines I am willing to cross, what sacrifices I will make for the people who have finally become my home.
And he is right to fear it. Because I know my father. Every move he makes is deliberate. Every silence is a strategy. Every breath of hesitation he gives us is a trap waiting to be sprung. Explosive, reckless, unrestrained, that is what he expects of me. That is the game he is playing, and I can feel the board shifting beneath our feet.
The month is almost over.
And I can feel him coming.
Broken from my train of thought, the sound of Sebastian's door opening pulls me away from my reverie.
The moment he sees me, Sebastian exhales like I’ve already done something wicked.
“What are you still doing in here?” he mutters under hisbreath, dragging his hand through his wet curls as he steps forward and quickly shuts the door behind me. The lock clicks into place with a flick of his fingers, precise and soundless, but it makes my pulse pound like we’ve committed a crime.
Outside, I can still hear the footsteps of other students in the corridor. One coughs. Another lets out a short laugh. Books shift under someone's arm. And here I am, standing in his dormitory in nothing but my nightgown, while he’s clad in only a towel that’s doing a poor job of pretending he’s unaffected.
Sebastian Harwood, flushed from the heat of his bath, droplets of water still clinging to his skin like the room itself is worshipping him.
I swallow hard, forcing my eyes away from the very obvious outline beneath the linen wrapped around his hips. But they find his chest instead, smooth, firm, and glistening in the flickering light of the enchanted sconce above his desk. Magic hums faintly in the air, like it knows what we’re thinking.
We’ve spent years walking this line, shared childhood, shared blood on our hands, shared secrets no one else knows.
We’vealwaysbeen close. Too close. Butthis, this is the edge of a blade.
I tug lightly at the hem of my nightgown, suddenly hyper-aware of the way it clings to my hips. “I thought,” I murmur, lifting my gaze to meet his, “perhaps it wouldn’t be so scandalous… to skip class today.”
My voice is steady. Barely. But it’s enough.
Sebastian’s gaze drops.
Not out of shyness. No, never that.
He looks at me like a man takingstock, of my parted lips, of my rising chest, of the faint outline of my thighs beneath the thin fabric. And lower, to the soft sway of the silk, and what it hides.
