Chapter 32 Harper
HARPER
Kicking gravel until my toes ache, I pretend each stone is Liam’s sanctimonious expression.
If I focus on the crunch beneath my boots hard enough, maybe I won’t replay the way they all stared at me, as if I were a problem they suddenly didn’t know how to solve.
As if everything Ares did, everything my father orchestrated, somehow had my fingerprints on it.
The forest swallows me whole. The canopy above knots the sunlight into tight, suffocating braids that barely brush the forest floor.
I clutch Poppy’s map, tracing the heart-shaped stump she marked for our meeting.
The same stump I now sit on, elbows braced against my knees.
My robe shields me from the cool air, but not from the creeping sense that shadows are learning me by heart.
If I close my eyes, I can still see Sebastian’s face when I passed him in the hall, confused, guilty, reaching for words I refused to allow him.
I walked faster. I didn’t even give him a chance to try.
I’m allowed to be angry. I never once doubted him.
I never questioned his motives. And yet all of them looked at me like I was a walking disaster, and he…
He looked at me like I was breaking something between us.
I drop my face into my hands. My breath trembles against my palms. Ten more minutes.
Ten more minutes and Poppy will be here, and I can pretend none of this hurts as badly as it does.
I almost laugh thinking about how Liam would be quivering if he were here, jumping at every rustle, swearing the trees were whispering his name.
A twig snaps behind me.
“Why are you crying?”
Ares’ voice unfurls through the clearing like smoke, lazy and infuriatingly amused. My entire body jerks upright. My stomach drops. My hand shoots for my wand, but his fingers close around my wrist with an unhurried certainty, as though he expected the move, as though he’s been waiting for it.
He’s too close.
Too steady.
Too focused on my face.
And the moment he sees my tear-streaked cheeks, something volatile shifts in his expression, confusion, then something far more dangerous: curiosity.
I swing with my free hand, aiming for the smugness etched onto his features, but he catches that too, my fist swallowed in his palm. He traps both my hands effortlessly, his grip hot, unyielding. His body heat presses into the space between us, and it infuriates me how aware of it I am.
“So,” he drawls, tightening just enough to make my pulse spike, “would you like to explain why you decided now, of all possible moments, was the ideal time to try and break my nose?”
My voice splinters before it leaves my throat. “You broke our deal! You’re a liar.”
His hands clamp down, never enough to bruise, but enough to make my breath hitch, enough to remind me he can control the space between us with a single movement.
“I am many things, Whitlock,” he murmurs, leaning closer, “but a liar is not one of them. So unless you want me to actually start tightening”-his thumb brushes the inside of my wrist, a warning and a tease- “you’d better explain.”
He releases me suddenly. My hands snap back to my chest, trembling. I grab my wand like a lifeline. Ares watches the motion with a faint, entertained tilt of his head, not threatened in the least.
“The body of a Vespera was found mutilated in the school,” I say. “I could barely recognize him.”
Ares’ attention sharpens, the playful veneer slipping just enough to reveal something colder beneath.
“And you think that has to do with me?”
He reaches for my arm when I move, but I’m faster this time. I latch onto his forearm and shove his sleeve up, exposing the branding etched into his skin, his connection to my father burned there like a curse.
“This symbol,” I snap, “was seared into the student’s chest.”
For the first time since I’ve met him, Ares actually recoils, not far, not fearfully, but with a flash of genuine offense, as if I’d spat on him.
“You think I killed him?” His voice rises, sharp and incredulous. “Me?”
His eyes blaze, blue lit with a gold-flecked storm.
“The deal wasn’t enough, was it?” The words rip out of me before I can stop them. “You just had to fucking go and kill because you’re not better than him, you’re no better than Andrew-”
Ares moves.
Fast.
His fist catches the front of my robe and yanks me toward him so abruptly my breath breaks in my chest. The force of it sends my pulse flaring, my palms flattening against the solid heat of him as he drags me close enough that our mouths share the same unsettled air.
His other hand slides to the back of my head, not gentle, never gentle, his fingers threading through my hair, claiming leverage over me with terrifying precision.
“I did not,” he snarls, his voice low and rough enough to scrape against bone, “fucking touch that student.”
The raw fury in him is scorching, but not uncontrolled. He’s aware of me...too aware. His grip shifts the moment he sees the fear in my eyes, a fractional easing, like he’s restraining himself for my sake, not because he lacks the ability to crush me where I stand.
“I don’t hurt people the way you think I do,” he says, each word biting and shaped by something wounded. “I’m nothing like your father.”
He releases me.
The sudden loss of his hold throws me slightly off balance. He steps back, shoving his hands into his pockets as though burying the impulse to touch me again.
Something in what he said lingers beneath my ribs, heavy and complicated.
“How am I supposed to believe you?” I whisper.
He huffs out a bitter laugh, shaking his head as if I’ve just proven a point he already knew.
“You’ve had every opportunity to kill me,” he murmurs, eyes flicking down my body and up again slowly. “Every time we meet, you could’ve ended me. Even now.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. He takes a small step forward, not touching, but close enough that the heat of him reaches me again.
“So maybe,” he says softly, “some part of you already knows I’m telling the truth. Maybe that’s why you’re here alone instead of marching in with your little fan club.”
His observation hits like a shove. My breath stumbles.
“They said you did it,” I say, voice trembling, “and blamed me for your actions.”
His gaze sharpens, pinning me in place.
“And you?” Ares asks, voice dropping into something almost dangerous in its softness. “You didn’t believe I did it… did you?”
The question lands between us like a spark in dry grass.
My throat tightens. My heart flickers painfully against its cage.
Because he’s right.
And he knows it.
Ares doesn’t move at first, and that stillness is somehow worse than his temper.
The quiet stretches, taut and weighted, until it begins to pressure the air between us.
Then he inches toward me, slowly, like he’s testing how close he can come before I crumble.
It’s not predatory in the way my father moved; it’s something subtler, almost analytical, as if he’s cataloging every flicker of breath, every tremor beneath my skin.
I should step back, but the forest floor feels fused beneath my boots. The cold bark presses between my shoulder blades, a sharp contrast to the heat rolling off his body as he closes in. His eyes search my face, not for weakness, but for the truth I refuse to say aloud.
“You didn’t answer me,” he says, voice low enough to unravel between us. “Did you believe I killed him?”
The words scrape something raw inside me. I try to hold myself together, to press everything back down where it belongs. “It doesn’t matter now,” I say, though the sentence wavers despite my efforts. “Someone is killing Vireldan students. That’s what matters.”
He drags a hand through his hair. The gesture isn’t graceful, it’s restless, agitated, threaded with the kind of stress he’d never admit to feeling. I recognize it instantly. It’s the movement of someone trying not to break something with his fists.
“It matters, Harper,” he says, stepping closer still, and this time the shift is softer, but somehow even more unnerving. “Because if you think I’m capable of that, then you’re building this deal on a lie.”
He crowds the space between us, not touching, but close enough that my breath catches and stumbles. The forest feels smaller, the shadows tighter around the edges, as if even the trees lean in to listen.
“Harper,” he murmurs, my name slipping from his mouth like a coaxed truth, “you didn’t believe it. I could see it the moment you said it. So say it.”
The pressure builds beneath my ribs, hot and unsteady. His presence is too much, warm breath brushing mine, the faint trace of pine and steel clinging to him. My pulse hammers against the inside of my throat, begging for a release I don’t dare give.
“I don’t owe you a confession,” I whisper, hating how fragile the words sound.
A quiet laugh slips out of him, low and rough, nothing like amusement. “You owe yourself one.”
His gaze stays fixed on mine, steady and unblinking, as if he’s peeling back every shield I’ve ever built. It sparks anger in me, anger at him, at myself, at the entire spiral of this day.
“Stop trying to pick apart my mind,” I snap, breath shaking. “You don’t know me.”
He tilts his head, and for a moment something almost like curiosity softens the lines of his face.
“I’m not picking,” he says. “I’m watching.
And what I saw today? You weren’t afraid of me.
” He leans in slightly, the movement so subtle I feel it before I recognize it.
“You were afraid of being wrong about me.”
My breath comes uneven. I can’t look away from him, no matter how desperately I want to.
His eyes drop, not to my mouth, but to the makeshift wrap around my palm, still stained with red. His jaw tightens at the sight. Something quiet but fierce flickers through him before he drags his attention back to me.
“And you’re scared,” he continues softly, “because if I didn’t do it… you know someone else with my branding did.”