Chapter 21 Harper
HARPER
The castle feels wrong the moment I step into this wing, too quiet, too still, as if the stones themselves pause to listen.
I tell myself it’s nothing, that I’m imagining the cold blossoming along my spine, but the deeper I walk, the thicker the air becomes.
Shadeborne magic lingers here, unmistakable in its icy pull. Not distant or faded.
Alive.
It draws me before I can turn away. The open classroom door glows faintly with the last light of dusk, and something in my chest tightens at the invitation.
I hover in the doorway, breath caught somewhere between my lungs and throat, and the room unfolds into shadowed rows of desks.
Chalk dust hangs suspended, still and undisturbed.
He stands near the far window.
Tall, broad, so unnervingly composed that the dim light seems to bend around him.
A Shadeborne scout, but unlike the ones in Myrindale, who moved with brutal efficiency, this one is utterly still.
Patient. As if he knew I would come down this corridor and is merely waiting for me to catch up to that fact.
His head turns first, slow and controlled.
Then his whole body follows.
And those eyes, blue and impossibly self-assured, lock onto mine.
The jolt of recognition nearly roots me to the floor. The same eyes that tracked me in that burning village. The same eyes that held when the others ran. The same eyes that flickered with something disturbingly human when my magic flared.
He remembers me.
He knows exactly who I am.
But this time, there is no hesitation in him. No confusion. No fear.
Only interest.
A faint tilt of his head carries an unmistakable air of amusement, as if he has been waiting for me to realize he’s not just watching, he’s studying. Taunting me with his ability to stand in the darkened classroom of Vireldan Academy without so much as lifting a wand.
My pulse stumbles, traitorous and loud enough that I swear it echoes between us. He hears it, he must, because the edge of his gaze sharpens, the smallest narrowing of his eyes betraying his satisfaction.
He steps forward.
Not urgently or aggressively.
No, it’s worse, confidently.
Deliberately.
A man who knows his presence alone is enough to rattle me.
The mask hides half his face, but I see the curve of something like a smirk beneath the shadows. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. Every shift of his posture is a provocation, a question he already knows I don’t want to answer.
My fingers tighten around the doorframe. He notes the movement instantly, gaze flicking down before dragging slowly back up to my face with shameless expectation. The room feels too warm despite the chill radiating off him.
I force myself to swallow. “Why are you here?”
He doesn’t flinch at the question. In fact, he leans just slightly into the light from the window, the gesture silent but undeniably mocking, come closer if you want answers. His confidence is a physical thing, settling over the room like a thick cloak, daring me to step inside.
I hate the way my breath catches in my throat.
He loves it. I see it in the faint brightening of his eyes.
His gloved hand shifts lazily at his side, brushing the hilt of a blade as if to remind me he’s armed without actually drawing it.
He studies me without shame, eyes dragging over every tremor of my breath, every twitch of my fingers, every waver in my stance.
I take one slow step backward.
He follows with a step forward.
Not in pursuit, more like he wants me to know he chooses to close the space, not that he needs to. A predator humoring its prey.
A whisper of heat coils in my spine. My tattoo prickles beneath my skin. The torches outside the room dim as though responding to the tension curling between us.
Finally, he tilts his head again, this time in a gesture unmistakably taunting. As if he’s saying, without words:
Is this where you run, little witch? Or is this where you come closer?
My heart hammers.
My palms warm.
My inhale trembles.
His eyes flick to my throat when it moves.
The shift is so small, so precise, it sends a shiver through me.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I murmur, but my voice is softer than I intend.
The remark doesn’t deter him. If anything, it amuses him. His shoulders relax just a fraction, and the mockery gleams bright in those impossibly blue eyes. He takes another step into the classroom’s thin spill of light, daring me to hold his stare.
He knows I can’t look away.
He knows I freeze when he does this.
He knows.
And he likes it.
As the last bit of sunlight fades behind him, his gaze drags over me with a deliberate slowness that feels like a hand trailing down my spine.
When his eyes lift back to mine, the taunt is blatant.
He is not afraid of me.
He is not warning me.
He is not leaving.
He is waiting for me to break first.
I don’t know when I step backward, only that he notices instantly. His gaze sharpens, tracking even the smallest movement. He shifts forward a fraction, not enough to bridge the distance but enough to mark it as his choice, a subtle demonstration of control that makes my heartbeat stumble.
I open my mouth to speak, but words catch in my throat. The air thickens, charged with something volatile, something that hums against the edges of my magic.
His voice breaks the silence before I can find mine.
“You need to wake up.”
The quietness of the words does nothing to soften their blow.
They seem to settle into the walls, seep into the floor, press into the space behind my ribs.
I barely register the shift in his posture before something in his eyes begins to change.
The blue dissolves. Not fades, burns, swirling inward before igniting outward in a molten, unnatural gold.
The same gold from my vision.
The same gold that watched me through fire and screaming.
Pain erupts behind my eyes so violently I crumble to my knees, hands flying to my skull as though I could hold it together by force alone. The corridor tilts, the doorway blurs, the torchlight gutters in and out as though reacting to the storm inside my mind.
I try to breathe. I can’t.
A flash of movement cuts through the haze. His arm shifts, pulling back slightly as though restraining himself, or bracing. His sleeve pulls just enough to expose a piece of skin along his forearm, and in that sliver of space I see it:
Ink.
Black.
Serpentine.
A snake coils around his arm, its pattern too familiar, too close to the one etched along my spine. Recognition jolts through me, sharp enough to split the pain with fear. His eyes flare brighter, reacting, or resonating, with whatever just passed between us.
The agony in my skull tears open further, and a new voice slams into the chaos. Liam’s. Not beside me. Not from the hall.
Inside.
I have to make her forget.
His voice spirals through another wave of pain, cracking with panic, echoing with something I cannot fully remember or fully understand.
My palms grind harder against my temples as the world splinters into fragments of gold and shadow.
My stomach tilts. My vision tunnels. The floor beneath me feels thin, unstable, as though I might fall straight through it.
I squeeze my eyes shut and see the Shadeborne’s glowing stare behind my lids.
I open them and he’s still there, unmoving, watching, not with cruelty, but with an expression far more unsettling, almost as if something inside him strains against what he has just triggered.
A faint tremor twitches along his gloved hand.
His fingers curl tightly over the snake inked into his skin, the gesture too raw, too human for the creature he’s supposed to be.
Liam’s voice fractures and returns again, frayed, desperate:
"She’ll break, Harper-stop, just forget, please-"
The floor rises and falls beneath me. My breath comes in broken, shallow gasps. My body curls inward, fighting the pain, fighting the noise, fighting the memory that is no longer just a memory.
His golden eyes dim, then flare, then dim again, pulsing with something that feels horribly synchronized with the throbbing inside my skull.
I try to push myself up.
My arms give out.
The world folds.
And everything collapses into darkness.
The memory does not drift into me, it tears into me, flooding every corner of my mind with a force so violent I can’t tell where the present ends and the past begins.
The world around me dissolves, and suddenly I’m small again, barefoot on polished marble floors, standing beneath the vaulted ceilings of our manor.
The air smells the same, smoke, candle wax, and a sweetness that used to make my stomach twist. The walls glow amber from lantern light.
Shadows slide along them like they remember everything.
Faces from another lifetime step into focus.
The Harwoods. Their presence fills the corridor just beyond the study, their voices trembling with fear I was too young to understand at the time.
Mrs. Harwood clutches her husband’s arm so tightly her knuckles are white, her eyes red with unshed tears.
They were frequent guests, gentle, warm, the only adults who ever looked at Liam and me as though we were children rather than experiments waiting to be proven useful.
Their children… gods, I can see them too. Two small figures lingering near the staircase behind me. Anne holding the hem of her dress nervously. Sebastian leaning against the wall with that crooked, downward smile, the one that always tilted as though he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to be happy.