Chapter 26 Harper #2
“If you can’t control this,” he says softly, “your father will.”
The knife presses closer again, not to threaten, but to test.
“And if you can…” His eyes glitter. “You might just kill him.”
Heat rolls through me, anger, fear, magic tangled so tightly I can’t separate one from the other. My chest tightens; the air feels too thin. He watches every flicker of struggle.
“Show me,” he whispers, voice nearer to reverent than cruel. “Show me what you are without that wand.”
My breath stutters. My fingers curl uselessly at my sides. My vision edges violet again, humming with the dangerous, rising thrum of power.
Ares’s smile deepens, not wide, not taunting.
Something darker.
Something like he’s witnessing the answer to a question he’s spent years asking.
“Wake up, Harper.”
His breath grazes my ear.
“Before he does.”
My magic surges hard enough to rattle the shelves, a violent hum crawling over my skin.
Ares reacts instantly, faster than I expect, closing the distance and pinning me to the rack with the full weight of his body.
His hands lock around my wrists, slamming them above my head to stop the burst threatening to tear loose.
I twist, trying to wrench free from him, but he holds me easily, as though restraining raw, unstable magic is something he’s done a hundred times.
“Stop.”
The command scrapes low in his throat.
I refuse. The pressure beneath my skin only builds, vibrating upward, threatening to blow the entire room apart. Ares braces harder, one knee between my legs to keep me still, one arm tightening around my shoulders when I try to use my body to break free instead of my hands.
“Harper.”
There’s no gentleness in the way he says my name.
It’s a warning.
His chest presses flush to mine with every shudder of power pulsing through me. He grips my jaw, forcing my eyes to stay on his instead of tipping back with the surge.
“Breathe,” he mutters, though it sounds more like an order than a comfort.
“I said...let me go.”
“You’ll level the entire floor if I do,” he snaps back, breath hot against my cheek. “You’re not in control. And until you are-”
I jolt hard enough that it nearly dislodges him. Ares’s grip slips for a fraction of a second, but he recovers, pinning me even tighter. My vision tints violet, the energy crawling outward like cracks spidering across a glass surface.
He feels it, how the magic buckles beneath my skin, how close it is to breaking through. He grits his teeth, shoulders braced, arms shaking now as he tries to hold me still.
“You’re going to blow us both to hell-” he growls.
And then, as my magic peaks, he leans in so close the knife drags lightly against my throat again, reminding me with each heartbeat how breakable flesh is.
“Is this the part where we bond over your father’s obsession with beating fear into everyone he touches?” he whispers, mocking and cold. “Is this where you try to see some humanity in me?”
The words startle me enough that my magic falters, just a hair, and he feels the shift. His hold on my wrists loosens, not by much, but enough that the pressure between us changes. He lowers the knife just a fraction, breath steadying.
“I was sent here for one reason,” he continues, voice low and venom-smooth. “To deliver you to your father. I couldn’t care less if he strings you up by your neck outside his manor.”
The cruelty of it strips the magic from my lungs faster than any spell could. My breath hitches, not from fear but rage.
Ares notices.
He always notices.
“But,” he says, the word sharp as steel, “he took something of mine. And the only way I’m getting it back is by killing him. Which I can’t do alone.”
He shoves off me abruptly, the absence of his body leaving me unsteady. He puts distance between us, running a hand over his jaw as though irritated that he had to get that close at all.
“You’re clearly trustworthy,” I mutter, rubbing my sore neck as he tosses his knife up and catches it with his other hand. The motion is casual, dangerously casual.
“I haven’t hurt you,” he says.
My eyes trace the red marks on my wrists, the heat still lingering on my throat. “Not yet.”
I squat to gather the fallen bottles, hands shaking more from frustration than fear. The classroom feels too small.
Ares watches me in silence, then steps closer, his shadow spilling over the chalk-marked floor.
“We both know you want him dead,” he says. “And he has no idea I know where you are. Which means you still have the advantage.”
I stiffen.
“You know killing him is the only way you’ll protect your friends,” Ares continues. His eyes flick to my back, where the scars live. “Take it from someone who felt his wrath just as you have. Scars are only the surface of what he’s willing to do.”
My breath shakes at the mention of my friends. At the way he says your friends.
“And if I… accept the deal?” My voice is barely above a breath.
“Then you learn to harness your magic,” he says simply. “I’ll help you. They can learn too, if they stop trying to kill me. I don’t take kindly to people trying to kill me.”
“And how do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t.”
He lifts the knife again, not toward me, but toward his own palm.
The blade slices through his skin with practiced ease, crimson rushing to the surface. He doesn’t flinch. Not even a twitch.
“But you’re going to have to if this is going to work.”
He extends his bleeding hand toward me, the knife glinting between our palms. His expression is carved from stone.
“Agree by blood,” he says quietly, “and I’ll help you do whatever it takes to kill your father and keep your friends safe.”
The room feels impossibly still.
His blood darkens the steel.
My heartbeat thunders.
I think of Sebastian’s soft freckles, the way he reaches for me in the night when nightmares choke the air out of my lungs.
Liam’s laugh, warm and bright.
Theo’s gentle hands.
Their loyalty. Their faith. Their lives.
My palm trembles as I take the knife.
I drag the blade across my skin.
It burns.
Stings.
Grounds me.
Our blood mingles when I clasp his hand.
“It’s a deal,” I say, voice cold as iron.
Ares’s fingers tighten once around mine, firm, sealing the vow, before he lets go.
The pact between us settles like a curse.
Ares watches me with that infuriatingly calm expression, as though he’s the only one in the room allowed to breathe easily. The moment slows under the pull of his attention, thick as smoke.
And then he moves.
Not with violence this time, but with the same unsettling decisiveness he’s shown since the moment he appeared. His hand closes around my wrist again, but not to restrain, more like he’s tethering me in place so I can’t back away from what I’ve agreed to.
The cut on my palm stings sharply, blood gathering at the edges before slipping along the curve of my thumb. Ares’s eyes track it with almost clinical interest, his jaw ticking once as though something inside him tightens.
He steps closer.
Closer than before.
Close enough that I feel the warmth of his breath against my cheek, grounding and dangerous all at once.
“Let me see it,” he murmurs, not quite a request, not quite an order.
His fingers close around my hand, turning it gently, even reverently, palm up.
It’s the first careful touch he has ever offered me, and somehow that makes it worse.
More unsettling. Something in me reacts, not with fear, not with anger, but with a quiet awareness that this man is not like Sebastian or Liam or Theo.
Nothing about him softens. Even kindness, when he gives it, is carved from something primal.
The blood pools, a dark bead in the center of my palm, before another joins it. Ares watches both form, unreadable, then raises his eyes to mine.
“Blood seals everything,” he says softly. “Oaths. Betrayals. Truths.”
His thumb brushes the edge of the cut, slow enough to test my reaction. I refuse to flinch under his touch, though the burn travels all the way to my elbow.
He seems satisfied.
His attention returns to the blood. He lifts my hand higher, the gesture deliberate, almost ceremonial. For a heartbeat I assume he’ll press his thumb into the cut to mix our blood further.
He does nothing so harmless.
Ares brings my hand to his mouth.
Warm breath ghosts over the wound, then his tongue drags slowly across the blood pooling there, collecting the copper-dark line as though tasting something he has long expected to savor.
The motion is smooth, unhurried, obscene in how intimate it feels.
My breath stutters, not from pain but from the shock of the act, its quiet brutality, its strange gentleness.
Ares’s eyes remain on mine the entire time.
When he finishes, he straightens, holding my hand for a moment longer before releasing it. The air between us feels altered.
He wipes the remaining blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist. His voice drops, nearly a whisper, but it slides through me like a blade dipped in honey.
“And you just signed the dotted line.”
The oath settles between us like a storm cloud waiting to break.
Ares doesn’t look away.
And neither do I.