Chapter 21 Harper #2
We spent every stolen moment together in those days.
Liam with Anne, playing games I never had interest in.
Sebastian and I slipping through the manor’s cracks like light, running toward hidden gardens and forgotten corners where we could pretend we weren’t born into monsters’ homes.
We were just children, but the world felt impossibly large with him beside me.
He’d laugh, quietly at first, then louder when he felt safe, and he always let me drag him toward whatever new hiding spot I had discovered.
Sometimes we kissed, clumsy and innocent and breathless, tucked behind rose bushes or between stacks of old crates in the cellar.
He smelled like fresh parchment and summer grass.
I didn’t know what love was, but I knew I wanted him near me forever.
And then the manor shifted.
The memory sharpens, snapping into horrifying clarity.
The study door slams. My father’s voice ricochets off the walls. I press myself against the cold stone and inch closer, heart pounding so loudly I’m sure they’ll hear it.
“We won’t keep participating, Andrew.” Mrs. Harwood’s voice quivers, but she stands her ground.
It’s summer. Warm air pushes through the open windows. Sunset paints the floor in gold, but nothing feels bright.
“We made a deal,” my father growls. His fist crashes against the desk with such force the lanterns flicker.
“We won’t take part in the mass execution of Vireldan for your twisted spells. We have children-” Mr. Harwood tries, voice cracking.
“And I’m sure you’d like to keep them alive.” My father’s tone drops into something so cold it makes my skin prickle.
My breath stops.
“What’s going on?” Sebastian whispers beside me. I hadn’t heard him approach. His brown-green eyes search mine, confusion sharpening into fear.
“You need to go,” I breathe, reaching for his hand. “Take Anne. Find Locke. Now.”
But he catches my face in his hands, forcing me to focus on him. His thumbs stroke my cheeks, gentle, grounding. “Harper, are you all right? What’s happening?”
I can’t answer. Mrs. Harwood screams, a sound so raw it cuts me in half. Liam appears at the top of the stairs, dragging Anne into the hallway, both of them white-faced and terrified. He looks ready to run toward the chaos, but then a sickening thud hits the wall, and everything stops.
Together, the four of us inch toward the study. The door is open. Blood gleams on the floor.
Anne whimpers. Sebastian stiffens beside me, breath shaking. Liam positions himself in front of us, his body small but defiant.
My father steps out first, dragging something behind him.
No. Someone.
Mr. Harwood’s limp body leaves a crimson streak across the floorboards. His head lolls unnaturally. His eyes are already empty.
My mother appears behind him, expression serene, as though nothing has happened. She pushes Mrs. Harwood forward by the shoulder, straight toward the doorway, straight toward us.
Sebastian chokes on a sound I’ve never heard from him.
“You Harwoods just can’t listen,” my father sighs, shaking his head like he’s disappointed, not murderous.
“You killed them…” Sebastian’s voice is small, shaking. Anne covers her mouth, sobbing silently.
I step in front of them before I can think, shoulder brushing Liam’s. My hands tremble, but I plant my feet. If we run, they die. If we stay, we might die too.
“Run and I kill them,” my father says flatly, flicking his wand.
Agony detonates through my body. Liam hits the floor beside me, both of us screaming as the magic rips through our nerves until we can’t breathe. The world goes white.
My mother slips behind Sebastian and Anne, placing a hand atop each of their heads. They freeze instantly, breaths stilling.
“What to do… what to do…” my father hums, tapping his wand against his cheek as though considering dinner options, not murder.
“I could kill you both,” he muses, turning toward Liam and me. Another jolt of pain spikes down my spine. I collapse fully, chest heaving.
“Leave her alone!” Sebastian cries out, struggling, but my mother shoves him hard, sending him sprawling.
I try to scream. Try to crawl. Try to reach him.
But my father raises the wand.
Gold light blooms.
Anne goes still.
Sebastian’s eyes glaze, their warm brown fading into hollow glass.
Their bodies soften, all fight leaving like a candle snuffed by wind.
My father’s voice becomes the only sound in the room.
“Love is a dangerous thing… something vile. Something my daughter was poisoned by, by you.” He crouches in front of Sebastian, gripping his chin.
“So you will forget her. And her brother. And everything that happened to your parents. They died from a toxin in your cellar. That is all. And if you ever find her again, you will resent her. Hate her. Be utterly incapable of loving her.”
I scream until my throat tears. He ignores me.
“As for you, Anne…” He turns his wand on her limp form. “You will live your life never remembering these children at all. And hopefully die because of your poor decisions in that little shack you call home.”
They stare through us, empty, as the command seals. And then they walk. Step over their parents' corpses. Step past our shaking bodies. Step toward the door without a single glance back.
The sound of Sebastian’s footsteps fading is the sound of my heart breaking.
“For you two…” my father says, seizing Liam by the collar. “Clean up this damn house.”
He leaves without another look. My mother glides after him.
Silence crushes everything.
I can’t move. My hands tremble violently as I clutch the floor. My insides feel scraped hollow.
Liam stands slowly, jaw clenched so tightly he trembles. He looks at me, not with pity, but with a fury born from helplessness.
When he raises his wand toward me, I don’t understand.
“Liam…” My voice cracks.
“I can’t let you die trying to make him remember.” His eyes glisten, the spell gathering in his palm. “There is nothing more painful in this world than loving something you will never be able to have. His love is the only way you’re getting these memories back.”
“No...no, please, Liam, I need to make sure he’s safe, please-”
“I’m sorry, Harper.”
The spell bursts from his wand.
Cold swallows everything.
Darkness consumes me whole.
The stone floor is cold beneath my cheek when consciousness drags its claws through me.
Every breath shudders like it has to claw its way out of my lungs.
My vision swims, first a blur of dark shapes, then the familiar silhouettes of desks, shelves, lanterns still flickering from the lesson I abandoned.
I’m still in the classroom.
The air is wrong. Like the moment before lightning forks the sky.
That awareness settles first, not sight, not sound, just the unmistakable feeling of being observed with a precision that strips me bare.
Those eyes.
Blue and bright as the strike of a spell, though the glow dims even as I stare back at him, as though he’s reeling it in, hiding it, disguising whatever he really is.
He’s crouched low beside where I’ve fallen, body balanced, impossible to read, as though he simply stepped out of the memory still clawing its way through my skull.
I try to push myself upright, and the room tilts violently, but I force myself onto trembling elbows. He doesn’t move to help, as though cataloguing every flinch.
A breath catches tight in my throat before I manage a whisper.
“Stay away from me.”
It isn’t a command. Not really. More the last scrap of self-defense scraping out of me before everything else collapses. He tilts his head as if he’s listening to the tremor in my voice, not the words themselves.
“You’re seeing what your mind wants you to see,” he murmurs.
His voice is quiet, smooth, slipping through the dim classroom like smoke. “Not necessarily what’s real.”
Heat crawls up my spine, fear or fury, I can’t tell. “I know what I saw.”
His gaze drags over my face, not slow, but deliberate, lingering just long enough to make me feel exposed. My heart thuds hard enough to make my ribs ache, and the edges of my vision pulse.
“You saw pieces.” He rises, unfolding to his full height with an unsettling calm. “Fragments stitched together by fear and magic.” He takes a single step closer, cloak whispering against the stone. “Not truth.”
A surge of anger rips through the fog. “Don’t pretend you understand any part of me.”
“I don’t have to pretend.” His voice lowers, steady and unhurried. “I was there.”
Something cold settles under my ribs. “In the classroom?”
His eyes flicker, just barely. “In more places than you think.”
The room feels smaller, tighter, like the walls are listening. I brace a hand against the nearest desk, forcing myself upright, though my knees wobble beneath me.
“What do you want from me?” My voice cracks on the question.
He steps close enough that the space between us seems to vibrate, the faint scent of steel and ash settling around me. The lantern light catches on the edge of his mask, turning him into something carved from shadow and threat.
“To wake you up,” he whispers.
Before I can recoil, his gloved hand hovers near my waist, not touching, not quite, but close enough that I flinch back.
The room seems to tilt.
“You’re remembering wrong,” he murmurs. “All of it.”
My pulse jumps violently. “Don’t lie to me.”
He doesn’t flinch. “Lies require intention. Your mind is doing the work for me.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
His gaze sharpens, the faintest vibration running off him like restrained power. “It means the truth isn’t as simple as you’ve been told. It means someone has been rewriting pieces of you.” A slight tilt of his head. “And it means you’re starting to notice.”
Something hot and nauseating coils in my throat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” he says softly. “And so do you.”
A sound, the scrape of a footstep in the hallway, cuts through the charged air.
My breath stutters.
Blue Eyes turns toward the door, shoulders tensing, every part of him sharpening.
Then I hear the voice.
“Harper?”
Sebastian.
His footsteps grow louder, fast, urgent, echoing against the stone corridor. The moment he rounds that corner he’ll see everything, my shaking hands, the overturned desk, the intruder standing too close.
I whip my gaze back toward Blue Eyes.
But the space in front of me is empty.
No shift of air.
No retreating footsteps.
No cloak disappearing through the doorway.
Just the faint impression of cold left behind and the lingering scent of rain and steel.
And Sebastian’s voice calling my name again, drawing closer with every heartbeat.