Blue eyes sighs loudly, head tipping back, as if bored with the entire conversation. “Maybe if she were as agreeable as you, I could’ve simply discussed my offer over a pint like a normal man.”
Sebastian snaps so fast I barely have time to suck in a breath. He shoves me behind him, shielding me with his body, wand aimed with lethal accuracy at blue eye’s throat. Rage rolls off him like waves breaking against stone.
That’s when Liam speaks.
“Ares?”
The name hits the air like a blade. Ares’s attention shifts, not to Sebastian, but to Liam. Slowly, deliberately, he folds his arms, a chuckle rasping in his chest as he steps closer. Close enough that I see the scar slashing across his cheek, the bruises shadowing the cut of his jaw, the faint shimmer of golden flecks in his irises.
The world seems to tilt toward him.
“What’s it been, Whitlock?” Ares asks softly. “Years?”
Liam goes still.
Not the kind of stillness born from fear. Something deeper. Older. A grave being unearthed.
His head shakes once, like denial, dread, and recognition all collided inside him.
Ares smiles.
And the air in the alleyway turns poisonous.
“Who is that, Liam?”
My voice comes out lower than intended, tight with suspicion, and Sebastian’s hand only tightens around my waist the longer Ares’s eyes linger on us. The stare isn’t hostile, not exactly, but it feels invasive, like he’s flipping through pages in a book he has no business reading.
Liam doesn’t answer at first. He swallows hard, jaw flexing, wand still raised. “He’s the son of our father’s right-hand man,” he finally says, each word clipped and bitter. “And nothing more than a good-for-nothing asshole.”
Ares’s smile drops instantly, wiped clean as if Liam slapped it off his face. Something sharp flickers in his golden-rimmed eyes, irritation layered with something colder… older.
“So that’s what you’re going with?” Ares murmurs, voice soft but thrilled with danger. “Funny. Considering what I know about your father. Aboutyou.”
Sebastian shifts in front of me, blocking my view, and Ares casually angles his head as though cataloging all of Sebastian’s weaknesses in a single glance. “I could’ve killed her,” he says simply. “My father told me to. Ordered me to.” His fingers flex, as if recalling the knife still hidden beneath his coat. “But instead, I’m here. Making a deal, one that could save you all.”
A cold weight forms in my stomach.
“What do youneed back?” I ask.
Ares finally looks at me,reallylooks, and the smirk returns, slow and knowing, as though my question humors him. “That, Harper,” he says, voice purring with amusement, “is a story for another time.”
In one smooth motion, he tosses my wand to Sebastian without breaking eye contact. Sebastian catches it with a grunt, immediately shifting me further behind him.
Ares raises his own wand lazily, rolling his shoulders like this entire encounter has bored him. “We’ll keep in touch,” he says. “I’ll come back in a few days for your answer, whether you’ll help me or not.” He pauses, gaze sliding to Sebastian with a grin sharp enough to cut. “Hopefully when grumpy’s not around.”
And before any of us can react, he flicks his wrist.
The alley fills with the soft crack of air splitting, his dissipation spell swallowing him whole.
Silence replaces him.
My gaze swings immediately to Liam, narrowing, heat rising beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. “Care to explain?” I hiss, my voice trembling with fury I don’t bother hiding.
Because something in Ares’s tone, something in Liam’s reaction, tells me this encounter was not chance.
And nothing about this man…
this connection…
