Chapter 16 Liam #2
The room feels smaller suddenly, the walls drawing in, the air thick with the weight of the conversation I was never supposed to be part of.
The mention of his sister, Anne, still sits heavy in my mind.
I’d never heard Sebastian speak like that before.
No arrogance. No smug edge. Just fear. Real, bone-deep fear.
“I didn’t know he had a sister,” I say carefully.
Theo nods once, fingers brushing the edge of his desk so he can orient himself before moving to sit. “He doesn’t talk about her. Or his uncle. For good reason.”
My brows pull together. “And he’s leaving tonight? Alone?”
“If he hasn’t already left the grounds,” Theo says. “He’s stubborn enough to think he can weather anything on his own.”
There’s a beat of silence between us, stretching long enough that I feel compelled to fill it with something, anything. But before I can speak, Theo runs a hand through his blonde hair and gives a small, humorless laugh.
“And before you ask,” he says, more quietly, “Yes. He meant what he said.”
I stiffen.
The comment about him taking an interest in a Whitlock sibling.
Theo folds his hands in front of him, the gesture too controlled to be casual. His pale eyes, though unfocused, somehow still manage to pin me in place, like he’s reading something in the air around me.
“Sebastian isn’t wrong,” he says gently. “I do care. You just happened to walk into our conversation at the very worst moment.”
Heat creeps up my neck. I don’t know what to say, don’t know what I’m supposed to say, so I stay quiet. Theo doesn’t push. Instead, he sighs and leans back slightly, as though settling into a truth he’s already accepted.
“But this isn’t about me,” he adds. “Or even Sebastian. Not right now.” His voice softens even further. “You’re looking for her.”
I tense.
Harper.
Theo rises slowly from his chair, the movement steady but deliberate, as though he’s conserving energy for something heavier.
The dim lanterns cast a soft glow across his features, making every line of his face look more thoughtful, more perceptive.
His pale eyes tilt slightly toward me, searching the room by sound, by breath, by instinct.
“You’re worried,” he murmurs again, softer this time. “I can hear it in every breath you take.”
My jaw tightens reflexively, but I don’t bother denying it. The truth is too heavy in my shoulders to hide.
Theo steps closer, not enough to crowd me, but close enough that the warmth of him reaches across the narrow space between us. His hand lifts, hesitates for a moment in the air, fingers poised in a question he doesn’t quite voice.
“May I?” he asks quietly.
The room feels strangely smaller, the air thicker. I swallow once, instinctually nodding.
His fingertips touch my cheek first, featherlight, tracing along the angle of my jaw as though mapping the tension held there. His hand is warm, warmer than I expect, and when he brushes a strand of hair back to better feel my expression, something in my chest stumbles.
He exhales softly.
“You’re carrying too much,” he murmurs. “Your whole face feels… tight. Like you haven’t let yourself breathe since you came to Vireldan.”
I close my eyes for a moment, just long enough to steady myself. Theo’s thumb brushes the space beneath my eye, lingering a second longer than necessary. Not accidental. Not bold. Just… searching.
He draws his hand down to the corner of my mouth, barely grazing the skin there, and something electric crawls down my spine at the careful intimacy of it.
His touch isn’t invasive.
It isn’t claiming.
It’s simply… knowing.
“Liam,” he says, almost in a whisper, “you don’t have to hide your worry from me.”
My breath comes out uneven. His hand drifts lower, fingertips brushing the line of my throat, feeling the way it shifts with a swallow I fail to suppress. The gesture is meant to read my tension, but it does something far more unsettling.
I open my eyes, finding his unfocused ones turned toward me with a steadiness that feels almost startling.
“You care for her deeply,” he continues, his palm settling briefly against the base of my neck before sliding away. “It’s written everywhere on you. In your breath. In the way you hold yourself. In the way your heartbeat changed when you heard her name.”
Heat crawls up my spine.
Theo’s hands fall back to his sides, but he doesn’t step away. He remains close, close enough that our sleeves brush when I shift my stance, close enough that his presence feels like an anchor I didn’t realize I needed.
“I’m not trying to read you against your will,” he says gently. “But you are… loud, Liam. Not with words. But with everything else.”
My mouth parts, maybe to defend myself, maybe to argue, and then closes again because I can’t find a single lie convincing enough to offer.
Theo’s expression softens, though his eyes can’t fully land on mine. “It’s all right,” he says. “I’m not judging you.”
His fingers twitch at his side, like he’s resisting the urge to touch my face again.
Another breath passes between us, warm and charged.
“Harper isn’t the only one who needs someone,” Theo adds quietly. “And I think you know that.”
The admission hits deeper than I expect.
A deliberate clap breaks the fragile quiet between Theo and me, soft yet sharp enough to feel like a stone dropped in still water. We both turn toward the doorway. Harper stands there, framed by lamplight, leaning her weight into the doorframe with an air of casualness that doesn’t quite land.
“Wise words, Theo,” she murmurs, her tone thin and brittle around the edges. “Truly.”
The sight of her steals the air from the room.
Her cheeks are flushed far deeper than natural warmth would cause, and her eyes, usually alert and guarded, are glazed with a faint shimmer that catches the lantern glow in a way that sets every alarm inside me blaring.
The slight tremor in her stance, the too-bright gleam in her half-smile, the haze softening the violet of her irises…
Firelda root.
A tightening takes hold in my chest. Theo feels it too, his posture shifts immediately, the latent tension in his shoulders returning as he tilts his head more precisely in her direction. There’s a moment where he almost seems to brace himself.
“Harper…” I whisper gently, carefully, as though approaching a creature frayed by too many close calls. “How much did you take?”
She dismisses the question with a languid wave of her hand, the gesture loose and unfocused, nearly missing its mark. “Enough to get through the night,” she says lightly, though the wobble in her voice betrays the fragile state beneath. “Or morning. I can’t say I’m keeping track at this point.”
Her gaze flicks between us, not quite landing until a heartbeat too late. She is stretched thin, angry, raw, trembling with a barely contained magic simmering under her skin. Still, she presses onward as if none of this instability matters.
“So,” she continues, pushing herself away from the doorway with more force than coordination, “where has Sebastian run off to?”
Theo and I share a look that lasts only a fraction of a second, but Harper notices it instantly. Her mouth curves, not quite into a smile, but into something sharp, something that warns us she’s prepared to dig her way through any wall we put in front of her.
“Either you tell me,” she says softly, taking a few unsteady steps into the room, “or I find out another way.”
The sweetness is forced. The control in her voice is brittle. Beneath it all is an edge that makes the lantern flames feel suddenly too hot.
Theo shifts forward an inch, carefully choosing each word. “Sebastian said-”
She cuts him off with a sudden sharp laugh that makes my stomach twist. “Now, now. I’ve had a horrid night.
” Her eyes grow heavier, pupils drifting wider as she steadies herself on the nearest shelf.
“And I would absolutely love to step beyond Vireldan’s walls for a while.
Breathe somewhere that doesn’t reek of rules and stares. ”
Her smile stretches, soft and unfocused, a haze settling over her features that is far too familiar from the days before Locke rescued us. She’s not euphoric, she’s untethered. Reckless. Barely holding on.
“Harper,” I say carefully, stepping toward her without thinking. “You shouldn’t be out here like this. You shouldn’t be-”
She flinches at my tone, then scoffs under her breath and shakes her head, hair falling wild around her shoulders. “Please, Liam. Spare me. I’ve endured enough lectures for one lifetime.”
Theo listens more than he speaks, his breath subtly catching when the air around Harper crackles faintly, her magic brushing the surface, unstable and restless. He straightens, every line of him alert.
“You’re burning through your magic,” he says with quiet urgency. “I can feel it. You aren’t steady, Harper.”
She turns her head toward him, strands of hair sticking to her cheek in unruly waves. “Then that’s all the more reason to go somewhere it won’t explode inside four stone walls, isn’t it?”
The words are playful, but behind them lies an undercurrent of desperation, of someone trying to outrun something clawing at her insides.
I take another step toward her, slow and measured. “Harper, stop. Look at yourself. You’re shaking.”
She ignores me entirely. Instead, she runs a hand over her temple as if wiping away heat, then levels her eyes, those drifting violet embers, back on Theo.
“So,” she repeats, quieter now, voice thickening with that Firelda-root fog. “Where did he run off to?”
The dangerous softness of the question lingers in the air.
Theo’s fingers sift across the surface of the desk behind him as he steadies himself to answer. His pale eyes shift, searching the room’s vibrations, and he draws in a breath.
Myrindale,” he says quietly. “He went to see his sister.”
The reaction is immediate and sharp.
Harper freezes mid-step, the haze in her eyes clearing as if the very name punches through any trace of Firelda root clouding her mind.
It’s as though someone has reached inside her chest and pulled taut every nerve.
Her shoulders stiffen first, then her jaw.
She doesn’t speak, but something shifts in her, something fierce and instinctive and frighteningly focused.
I feel the change in myself only a moment later. My stomach drops, tightening into a knot so familiar it almost makes me nauseous. Myrindale. The very sound of it stirs old memories, ones I have spent years burying under the noise of survival. The kind that do not fade even when you try to forget.
Our father’s scouts used to haunt the woods outside that village like hunting dogs.
They dragged their shadows through the outskirts, searching for anyone tied to Vireldan, anyone whose bloodline offended the man we were forced to call father.
His hatred seeped into the soil there. Into the trees. Into us.
So when Harper speaks again, there is no hesitation in her voice.
“We’re going.”
Her tone slices through the room, focused and clear. She moves toward the hallway with a steadiness she lacked moments ago, as if fear has burned off every trace of imbalance in her step.
“Harper-” I try, but she doesn’t turn. Doesn’t slow.
“Now,” she says, disappearing down the corridor with all the certainty of someone walking toward a burning building because they refuse to let someone inside die alone.
I move after her without thinking. Instinct, worry, memory, all of it pushes me forward. But I barely make it two steps before a hand clamps around my arm.
Theo.
His grip surprises me with its strength; he halts my momentum in a single, deliberate motion.
His brows draw together slightly, his head angling toward me as if listening to something just beneath my skin.
His grip isn’t harsh, but it’s firm enough to tell me he won’t let me walk away without an answer.
“Liam,” he says, voice low but urgent. “What is going on? Why does that place matter?”
I swallow hard. The words sit heavy on my tongue, weighted with years of fear neither Harper nor I ever managed to outrun. Theo’s pale eyes search for my reaction, unfocused, yet somehow landing close enough to make me feel exposed.
Harper is already gone down the corridor, and every second I stand here feels like another second she slips out of reach… yet I know I have to explain something, anything, before he follows us blindly into danger he has no context for.
“Our parents’ scouts linger near Myrindale,” I finally say, my voice low but steady.
Theo’s grip tightens just slightly, surprise, fear, and understanding flickering across his face in rapid succession.
“Scouts?” he echoes, almost under his breath.
I nod once, the motion heavy with things I can’t say aloud. “To kill Vireldan,” I whisper.
The truth hangs between us like a blade, and somewhere down that hallway, Harper is already walking straight into the shadows we spent our childhood trying to escape.