Chapter 15 Harper
HARPER
Locke’s grip doesn’t loosen, not even as we turn the last corner.
His fingers are tight around my wrist, not painful, but urgent, too urgent, and the speed of his stride forces me to stumble to keep up.
My pulse has barely slowed since the library; the echo of that vision still claws at the back of my mind like something that refuses to be forgotten.
When he flings open the door to his study, the lanterns inside flicker from the sudden rush of air. The room smells of parchment, warm dust, and old magic. Normally it’s a place that makes me feel grounded. Tonight it feels like a chamber built for confessions I’m not prepared to give.
Liam is already there.
He shoots to his feet the moment he sees me, wide-eyed, breath caught halfway in his chest. His hair is mussed, as if he’s run his hands through it a hundred times in the span of minutes.
And the way he looks between Locke and me, the rapid flicker of confusion, fear, and disbelief, I know instantly he wasn’t warned about any of this.
“Harper?” Liam steps forward, voice tight. “What’s going on? Why did he-”
The door hasn’t even finished closing before Locke rounds on me, not with anger exactly, but with something sharp and frayed beneath the surface, something dangerously close to fear wearing the mask of authority.
His cloak shifts around him as he steps deeper into the room, and the lantern light carves lines into his face I’ve never noticed before.
“Unrestrained magic,” he says, each word clipped and heavy. “In front of your peers. Have you learned nothing?”
The rebuke lands like a blow, not because of its harshness, but because of how familiar it feels, because it echoes the very tone my father used when the world went sideways and I couldn’t hold the magic down.
My spine stiffens instinctively, breath catching somewhere high in my chest. For a moment all I can hear is my pulse, thudding fiercely in my ears, drowning out the quiet of the study.
Liam reacts instantly.
“Locke, enough, she didn’t do it on purpose-”
“This isn’t about intent,” Locke snaps, turning toward him before dragging his attention back to me. “Displaying uncontrolled magic in a classroom, in the presence of an entire cohort of students, puts both of you at risk. This is exactly what we were trying to avoid.”
My hands tremble before I can hide them. I curl them into fists in my lap, trying to anchor myself in something solid, something familiar. Nothing feels steady. Nothing feels like it belongs to me, not my breath, not my thoughts, not even the space I occupy in this room.
Liam takes a few steps forward, placing himself halfway between us as though trying to shield me from Locke’s rising frustration. “She didn’t mean for anything to happen," he says quietly, but his voice has an edge, one born of years where the slightest misstep meant pain. “You know she didn’t.”
Locke exhales through his nose, the sound weary rather than dismissive. He presses his palms flat to the surface of his desk, leaning heavily as though even speaking the next part costs him something.
“Intent doesn’t change the consequences,” he says, slower this time, the anger thinning into something that looks more like sorrow. “Harper, whatever is happening inside you is growing stronger. Less stable. And if you cannot control it, others will notice before we are ready for them to know.”
A chill creeps through me, pooling low in my stomach. I stare down at the floor, unable to meet either of their eyes. Control was supposed to be the one thing I could cling to here. The one part of myself I could shape into something acceptable. Something safe.
But lately… it slips.
Without warning.
Without reason.
And the more I try to trap it, the harder it fights to break free.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whisper, though it sounds pathetic even to my own ears. “I was just...there was too much happening, and the dummy wouldn’t stop, and I-”
“You reacted,” Locke finishes, but not unkindly. He straightens, folding his arms behind his back again, his version of restraint. “And that reaction was powerful enough to draw attention from students who should never be looking in your direction.”
Liam shifts again, posture rigid with worry. “Just tell us what to do,” he murmurs. “We can handle it.”
Locke’s eyes soften at that, but when they return to me, the softness hardens into something heavier, something weighted by truths he has not yet spoken aloud.
“You must understand,” he says, voice quieter now, “this is no small matter. What stirred in that classroom… it was not a simple surge. And it was not an accident.”
A pressure builds behind my temples again, faint at first, then insistent. I clench my jaw, willing it to fade, to be quiet, to let me breathe.
Liam notices instantly. “Harper?” he says, stepping toward me. “Hey-look at me-”
But I can’t.
Not when Locke is staring at me like he’s already piecing together a truth I don’t know how to face.
Not when I can still feel the echo of that vision lurking just at the edge of my awareness.
Locke’s expression tightens, not out of irritation now, but something far more severe. The lantern light catches on the sharp line of his jaw as he turns fully toward me, and when he speaks again, his tone lands with the weight of a truth he wishes he never had to say aloud.
“Your father...your bloodline, is tied to your magic,” Locke says, each word deliberate, controlled, but shaking with the knowledge behind it. “You know that. Slipups like that are exactly how he finds the both of you.”
The room grows unbearably still.
The syllables strike like thrown stones, cracking open the air around us. Something cold moves through me, a sharp pressure behind my ribs, as though my body remembers what my mind has tried so hard to forget. My father’s voice. His threats. The feeling of running from a shadow you know by heart.
Liam reacts instantly, shoulders snapping taut, breath catching in a way that collapses into anger more quickly than fear. His jaw clenches so hard I hear a faint grind, and he steps forward, putting himself directly between Locke and me as though instinct demands it.
“She didn’t know what would happen,” Liam bites out. “It’s not like she chose for any of that to happen.” His hands curl at his sides, trembling just slightly, not from weakness, but from the weight of every memory we share. “Don’t make it sound like she wanted this.”
Locke doesn’t rise to the anger. If anything, the frustration drains from him, replaced by something older and heavier, exhaustion edged with dread.
“That’s precisely why it is so dangerous,” he says quietly.
“She doesn’t understand it yet. She can’t predict it.
And that lack of understanding is something your father has always counted on.
” His attention returns to me, studying the shadows beneath my eyes, the tenseness in my shoulders, the way I keep swallowing against a throat gone tight.
“Which means you must learn to control it before he senses even a whisper of it waking.”
My stomach twists.
My breath thins.
A tremor crawls up the back of my neck.
This is the part he didn’t want to say.
This is the part Liam wasn’t ready to hear.
Locke moves closer to the desk, resting one hand against its edge, and the shift in posture brings something new into the room, caution, yes, but also accusation.
“And Sebastian Harwood?” Locke turns his gaze on me fully, one brow lifting in pointed disbelief. “What part of stay out of trouble was that?”
The mention of Sebastian hits harder than it should. The memory of him, too close, too warm, too steady, flares beneath my skin, unwanted and impossible to ignore. My chest tightens as if something in me recoils and reaches for him all at once.
Liam’s head snaps toward me, confusion written plainly across his features.
“What is he talking about?” Liam asks, brow furrowing, voice pitched with something between anger and dread. “Harper...what happened with Sebastian?”
And just like that, the room feels even smaller.
I can barely answer before Locke presses on, his voice rising, frustration boiling past the calm facade. “Do you simply not care about the consequences of your actions? Is putting your life, and your brother’s life, at risk worth it for a moment of indulgence? For the chance to-”
He doesn’t finish before saying something that shatters the last piece of composure I have left.
“-to spend a few moments whoring yourself out-”
“YOU ARE NOT MY FATHER!”
The words rip from me so violently it feels as though something inside snaps clean in half.
Every lantern erupts into darkness at once, sucked dry by the surge of magic that floods outward from my chest. The room plunges into a suffocating shadow, thick and pulsing, as though the air itself recoils from the force of my voice.
A ringing fills my ears.
The temperature drops.
Something electric skitters over my skin.
Liam inhales sharply, stumbling back a step, not out of fear of me, but of the memory this moment mirrors too closely. Locke freezes where he stands, breath caught in his throat, eyes adjusting to the dark as though he expected this, dreaded this, and still wasn’t prepared.
“You have no idea what is happening to me,” I say, the tremor in my voice rising, my emotions biting into each syllable. “You lecture and you guide, but then you disappear and return only to accuse me of failing some test you never even explained.”
The shadows pulse again, responding to my heartbeat.
Responding to me.
“What you saw in that room was the first breath I’ve taken since I arrived in this place,” I continue, the tightness in my chest threatening to crack me open.
“A moment where I wasn’t surviving or hiding or waiting for something terrible to happen.
A moment where I felt…” My voice falters, shame and longing twisting painfully together. “Alive.”
Locke opens his mouth, but I cut across him, the words pouring out faster than I can anchor them.
“Next time you feel like dragging me in here, have the courage to tell me what you really think. That I am just like him. That no matter what I do, all you see when you look at me is his blood.”
The last lantern, the faintest spark in its wick, dies completely.
Darkness closes over us, quiet and alive.
Locke exhales sharply, too sharply, as his composure fractures for the first time since he dragged me in here. His frustration spills into the dim room with a heat that borders on anger, and when he speaks, his voice cuts with the precision of a blade.
“Do you really think you’re the first woman to catch Sebastian Harwood’s eye?” he snaps, each word flung like an accusation rather than a truth.
A humorless sound escapes me, a laugh that isn’t amusement, but disbelief wrapped in something bitter. My footsteps are deliberate as I close the distance between us, my every movement designed to provoke him, to test how far he’s willing to push.
“No,” I say quietly, lifting my chin. “I’m not delusional enough to think that.”
Liam shifts uneasily, sensing the dangerous current rising in my voice.
“But I do fear,” I continue, voice lowering into a whisper meant to wound, “that it won’t be the last time I let him close enough to try.”
The room goes so still Liam actually stops breathing.
Even Locke stiffens.
“My father always believed in indulging desire,” I say, tone turning poisonous with every syllable. “And maybe I’m not as different from him as you keep pretending. Maybe-”
The crack of skin hitting skin echoes like a curse.
Locke’s hand connects with my cheek before the last word leaves my mouth.
The force of it snaps my head sideways, a white-hot bloom of heat spreading beneath my skin. My breath catches, not from pain, but from the shock of it. A silence descends so absolute it rings in my ears. I lift my hand slowly to my cheek, fingers brushing the tender sting blooming there.
Liam is motionless, eyes wide, mouth parted, his expression torn between outrage and disbelief.
Locke looks horrified by his own action before his hand has even fully lowered.
His face pales, grief and regret collapsing into his features so quickly I might have pitied him if I wasn’t already crumbling inside.
But I don’t give him the satisfaction of flinching.
I stand perfectly still.
Perfectly quiet.
Perfectly in control of the moment he meant to take from me.
When I finally speak, my voice is soft, far too soft for the damage it inflicts.
“You’re afraid of me,” I whisper, dropping my hand from my cheek. “Just like everyone else.”
Locke’s breath shudders. Liam’s eyes dart between us, horrified.
I tilt my head, and with the faintest pulse of magic, uncontrolled, unrefined, but utterly mine, the lanterns around the study flare back to life all at once, bathing Locke in harsh light he can’t hide from.
Then I turn on my heel.
And without waiting for either of them to speak, I walk out of the study, leaving the door open behind me, letting the echo of my footsteps answer every question they didn’t dare ask.