Chapter 34 Liam
LIAM
Sebastian’s pacing grinds into the stone floor, each footfall sharp enough to spark. His nails take the brunt of his nerves, what’s left of them, torn by restless teeth. Every pass of his fingers through his hair leaves it wilder, darker, the way it gets only when fear starts to masquerade as fury.
Not a single moment of stillness lives in him.
“Ares may be a bastard,” comes out of me before thought catches up, “but he’s not incompetent. Harper and Poppy are safer with him than they’d ever be on their own.”
Sebastian stops so abruptly the air seems to lurch with him. His eyes cut toward me with something jagged underneath.
“Where does this ‘vast knowledge’ of him come from?” His voice is low...dangerously so. Theo’s foot, which has been tapping a frantic rhythm, stills entirely.
Memories of the manor flicker, dark corners, cold marble floors, the sharp clatter of plates while two children sat at the far end of a table too large for any family.
A smaller, angry face glaring from the shadows.
Ares, half-starved, half-feral, forced into obedience and punished for any moment he wasn’t.
“He lived in our house,” the words finally manage to steady themselves as they leave me. “More servant than child. His father was everywhere ours wanted him, and Ares followed like a shadow. He watched everything. Listened to everything. Said nothing unless spoken to.”
Sebastian drags both hands down his face. For a heartbeat he looks young, too young to carry this kind of dread.
“Now he slips through the cracks like smoke,” he mutters, voice rough, “gets near her again and again. Makes deals with her. Blood oaths. Takes up space in her mind. In her choices.” His fist crashes into the wall, knuckles splitting, stone giving before his temper does.
“He’s a parasite and somehow still manages to get too close. ”
Theo rises then, the scrape of his chair startling against the charged quiet. Arms fold across his chest; shoulders square in that deceptively gentle way he has, like a warning dressed in silk. He steps toward Sebastian without hesitation, closer than most would dare.
“Perhaps the problem isn’t him,” Theo says, the softness gone from his voice.
“Perhaps the problem is how little trust you give her. Both of you.” His head flicks briefly toward me.
“Harper doesn’t need constant guarding. She isn’t fragile porcelain.
She’s fire. And you two keep trying to box her in. ”
The words land like a blade. Sebastian’s posture wavers, only a fraction, but enough. A crack forming under the weight of guilt he never allows himself to acknowledge.
Theo doesn’t let him retreat. Fingers catch the front of Sebastian’s shirt, not threatening, simply anchoring him in place. Their breaths mingle in the narrow space between them. Tension coils, heavy and electric.
“You never see her,” Theo continues, leaning closer until their foreheads nearly touch, “not the way she really is. You see the girl you’re terrified of losing.”
Sebastian’s breath stutters, one sharp exhale, half scoff, half surrender. His gaze drops to the ground between them as if bracing for impact.
Stone hums beneath my boots, mirroring the tight knot twisting through my chest. Watching them like this, locked in a confrontation that feels far too intimate to interrupt, sends heat crawling up my throat.
Something in the air shifts, the kind of shift that suggests a fault line deep beneath the surface.
And for a suspended moment, none of us breathe.
Theo holds Sebastian there with only the barest touch, his voice sinking to a whisper meant for him alone.
“She isn’t something to cage,” he murmurs. “She’s someone to fight beside.”
Sebastian closes his eyes, just once, just long enough for it to mean something.
And the room, impossibly, feels smaller for it.
“You’re right,” slips out before I can rein it in. The admission feels like gravel caught between my teeth. Shoulders sag as I sink onto the nearest chair, hoping the gesture alone might diffuse the storm building across from me.
Sebastian only bristles further.
“You can bare your throat to him if you want, Liam. I’m not apologizing for protecting her.” His voice comes out rough, shredded by fear masquerading poorly as anger. “You two can play noble all you want, but she’s the one who bleeds for your mistakes.”
Theo stiffens. His words, normally velvet, sharpen into something far more lethal.
“She’s not your property, Sebastian. She wasn’t signed over to you like a storefront in Anavris-”
The rest never makes it out.
Sebastian’s fist curls into Theo’s robe, dragging him forward with a force that jars the room into stillness. His other hand lifts, jabbing a finger toward Theo’s chest, eyes burning with that feral wildness he hides from everyone but us.
Before the moment can snap in half, instinct kicks in.
My hand closes around his wrist, twisting sharply, a move drilled into my bones long before either of them trusted me. His breath catches as I pivot him away from Theo and into the wall. Marble absorbs the hit with a dull thud. He doesn’t fight, though his muscles strain beneath my grip.
“Enough.” The word comes out low, edged with something I don’t often let slip. “Touch him like that again, and I will put you on the floor. Don’t take your fury out on Theo because you can’t take it out on Ares. Don’t forget who’s standing beside you.”
His chest heaves. Anger flares, then flickers, then slowly, painfully, begins to ease. My hand stays firm on his forearm until the tension drains enough to feel his pulse steady beneath my fingers.
Theo takes a small step forward, hand half-extended as if he wants to touch my shoulder but thinks better of it.
“Liam… it’s all right,” he murmurs, though the tremor in his voice betrays how rattled he truly is.
Only when Sebastian’s breathing evens do I let up, though I don’t step far. He sinks to a crouch, elbows braced on his knees, hands trembling in the aftermath of his own collapse.
“If something happens to her,” he says, voice cracked and raw at the edges, “and we could’ve stopped it… how do we live with that?”
The question carves into the quiet. Each word lodges deeper than the last.
“We don’t,” I answer, dropping into a half-crouch beside him. “Which is why we need to find her. Do you have anything, anything at all, that belongs to her? Clothes, parchment, jewelry… I can use it to track her.”
His eyes lift, weary and desperate, laced with the first hint of hope.
“I’m not above breaking into her room,” he mutters, defeated and somehow fiercely determined all at once
A humorless breath escapes me, half laugh, half exhale of dread.
Something in the pit of my stomach twists, an instinct whispering that this night is not going to end cleanly.
Whatever waits for us in that forest…it feels like it’s already tasted blood.