Chapter 16 Liam
LIAM
Locke’s study feels too small the moment Harper walks out of it, the walls pressing in around us like the air has been sucked out.
Her back disappears through the doorway before I can move, before I can even process the sting blooming across her cheek, Locke’s handprint marking her skin like something sacred has been violated.
My voice doesn’t rise, but the words that spill out of me are sharper than anything I’ve ever said to the man who saved our lives.
“How dare you.”
I don’t wait for his answer. I don’t want to hear his apology or his excuses.
Harper is gone, alone, wounded, furious, and that is all that matters.
I step out into the corridor, shutting the study door behind me without bothering to look back.
My stride is long, tight, driven by a fear I refuse to name.
I can still see her trembling when she shouted, You are not my father.
Still see the lanterns die. Still see the look on Locke’s face when darkness swallowed the room whole.
The corridors blur as I walk. I weave through the castle’s twists and arches on instinct alone. I know Harper, when she’s hurt, she seeks silence, not comfort. She hides where she thinks no one will bother to look. And she moves quickly when she spirals. Terrifyingly quickly.
The Vespera wing is quieter than usual. Torchlight flickers along the stone walls, throwing soft gold arches across the floor.
Harper isn’t in the common area, and that immediately puts my pulse on edge.
I keep going, following the hall that leads toward the boys’ dormitories.
It isn’t logical that she’d go this way, she avoids being anywhere near groups of boys she doesn’t trust, and most Vespera boys fall squarely in that category.
But something in my gut keeps pushing me forward, whispering that this is where I’ll find a piece of her, or a piece of whatever she’s running from.
Halfway down the hall, voices slip through a partially cracked door.
Theo’s voice.
I freeze mid-step, the sound stopping me cold.
He never sounds so strained unless something is truly wrong.
I edge closer, flattening myself against the wall beside his door.
It feels wrong to listen, but instinct roots me in place.
Harper crossed paths with Sebastian tonight.
Sebastian saw something he shouldn’t have.
And if Theo is in his room, if they’re talking now, then the conversation is almost certainly about her.
“Sebastian, you can’t keep doing this-”
Theo’s voice is soft but tense, stretched thin as a wire.
Sebastian answers immediately, but his tone isn’t arrogant. It isn’t lazy. It isn’t mocking. It’s rough, frayed at the edges, like he’s barely holding himself together.
“I’m aware,” he mutters, pacing by the sound of his footsteps. “But what do you expect me to do? Pretend I didn’t see her like that? Pretend it didn’t- ”
He snaps himself off mid-sentence. I hear the faint thud of his fist against something, a desk or the wall. Theo steps closer; his voice drops even lower.
“You’re unraveling,” Theo murmurs. “And we both know why.”
A heavy silence settles over the corridor. My chest tightens as I lean closer, careful not to shift my boots on the stone floor. This isn’t normal for Sebastian, not even remotely, and the unease clawing up my spine only deepens.
Sebastian’s footsteps resume, slower this time, dragging with each turn.
“She looked terrified, Theo,” he says quietly. “More than before. And every time I get near her, something-” Another sharp exhale. “It doesn’t matter. I should stay away.”
My heart stumbles.
Theo lets out a small, exasperated sigh. “Then why don’t you?”
Another silence swells, thicker than the last. I can feel it pressing against my ribs, the weight of something I don’t understand filling my lungs until it’s almost painful.
Sebastian finally speaks again, and the sound of his voice shocks me, it’s soft. Uncertain. Something I’ve never heard from him.
“She didn’t look at me today,” he whispers. “Not once.”
Theo huffs a tired, breathy laugh. “Yes, well… that tends to happen when you pin someone against a wall, Sebastian.”
My jaw locks so tight it aches. Harper didn’t imagine it. She didn’t exaggerate. And the fact that he sounds so… affected… does something strange to my chest. Something I don’t want to acknowledge.
Sebastian inhales sharply. “I’m worried about her,” he murmurs with a rawness I’ve never heard from him, not once since arriving at Vireldan. “You should be too.”
The words knock the breath right out of me.
Sebastian Harwood cares.
And I have no idea whether that makes things safer for Harper, or infinitely more dangerous.
I step back from the door, pulse thundering in my ears, and force myself to breathe as I turn away. Whatever Harper has become tangled in… it runs deeper than I realized. And whatever Sebastian feels, whatever he’s wrestling with, it isn’t simple.
Not even close.
Theo’s voice comes again, low and taut. “You should have let her be. You should have never allowed your curiosity to get the best of you.”
A sharp breath leaves Sebastian, barely audible but heavy enough that it punches straight into my ribs.
He’s pacing again, I can hear the drag of his boots on stone, the way he avoids stepping on the creaky board by Theo’s wardrobe.
He’s restless, coiled so tight I imagine even breathing feels like a fight.
“You’re one to speak,” he whispers back, and there’s an edge buried under his tone. “I’m not the only one who’s taken a sudden interest in a Whitlock sibling.”
My pulse stutters.
Theo?
Theo, who has been kind to me, who always offers a gentle word, who seems incapable of cruelty, has been… interested? And enough for Sebastian to notice?
Theo goes utterly still. The air between them shifts, heavy with something unspoken.
“That’s different,” he mutters, voice firmer now. “You’re confusing concern with-”
“I’m not confused,” Sebastian cuts in. “Not about that.”
A weight settles in my stomach. Whatever they’re talking about, however tangled their assumptions may be… Harper is in the center of it. I can feel it. Her, and possibly me. The world suddenly feels too small, the hallway too close.
Sebastian stops pacing. The silence that follows grates against my nerves.
“I need to see my sister Anne,” he finally says, voice cracking just slightly, barely noticeable unless you’re really listening. And I am. “She’s worse. My uncle isn’t… he’s not doing what she needs. I can’t sit here while he pretends she’s fine.”
Gone is the arrogance. Gone is the superiority. What’s left is something human, frighteningly so.
Theo takes a careful step toward where Sebastian stands, his hand brushing the edge of his desk so he can orient himself. “Then we go. Together.”
“No.” The word is immediate. Final. “Absolutely not.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Theo argues, his tone sharpened with real concern now. “If she’s as sick as you say-”
“I said no.” Sebastian’s voice drops low, a dark rasp. “Anne is my responsibility, not yours. I’ve already dragged too many people into my family’s issues. I won’t add you to that list.”
Theo exhales, defeated but not surprised. “Sebastian-”
“This isn’t up for debate.”
There’s movement, a hand grabbing a coat, the brush of fabric against his arm. Then Sebastian murmurs something in old Vireldanian, and the air twists sharply. A dissipation spell. The kind Locke uses when he’s too exhausted for the stairs.
And just like that, Sebastian is gone.
The silence he leaves behind is suffocating.
Theo stands there for a long moment after Sebastian disappears, the dissipated magic still humming faintly in the air like a ghost refusing to leave the room.
His shoulders are drawn tight, chest rising and falling in uneven breaths, fingers twitching at his sides as though unsure whether to reach for the door or steady himself against the table behind him.
For a man who moves so quietly through the world, listening, sensing, reading everything without ever letting on, this is the first time I’ve seen him look genuinely shaken.
Slowly, almost cautiously, he turns his head toward the sound of the hallway.
His pale eyes tremble in their sockets, unfocused but searching.
It’s an action I’ve seen a handful of times now, a tell he gives away only when he knows someone is nearby.
And in this moment, it’s as if the entire Vespera wing has gone silent so he can find the single person hiding just beyond his threshold.
“You can come inside now, Liam,” he says.
Not harsh. Not accusing. Just… tired. And sure.
The words land heavily on my chest. There’s no point pretending I wasn’t listening, not when Sebastian’s voice had echoed through the hall, not when their discussion had shifted so abruptly from Harper to me to family secrets and failing health.
Something about it all felt too sharp to walk away from, too important to ignore.
I step into the room, closing the door softly behind me. Theo doesn’t move. He stands there with the rigid posture of someone bracing themselves for impact, fingers curling against his palms as if preparing for a blow that isn’t coming.
I swallow and force myself to speak, though my voice comes out lower than intended. “I didn’t mean to overhear everything.”
Theo lets out a breath, one long exhale that seems to take the tension in his shoulders with it. His expression softens, but only slightly, as though part of him is still wound tight around the things Sebastian said.
“Perhaps not,” he replies, calming again into that quiet steadiness he always wields. “But you did. And that means you’ve heard enough to understand why he’s acting the way he is.”