Chapter 35 Harper #2
Poppy stands several yards away, trembling but still casting finishing spells at the last stragglers. When the clearing finally settles into silence, she gives Ares a fearful nod. Then her gaze shifts to me and her face crumples.
Ares is already turning.
He drops into a crouch at my side, movements abrupt with adrenaline.
His hand slips beneath my shirt before I can protest, fingers brushing the torn flesh.
Fresh blood wells up instantly, bright against his skin.
His jaw tightens, a muscle feathering hard and sharp beneath the smear of red across his cheek.
His gaze darts over the battlefield, fallen bodies, broken traps, trampled dirt, but finds no solutions.
His frustration builds.
The pressure of his hand on my side spikes the pain again. I try to push him away, but my palm only meets the strength of his wrist.
“It’s fine,” I rasp, though the sting of the lie hits even me. Poppy inches closer, hands pressed over her mouth.
Ares ignores the protest entirely.
He catches my wrist, not roughly but with a finality that leaves no room to pull free. He pins it to the ground beside me, then does the same with the other before I even realize he’s moved. His weight brackets my hips, his arms forming a cage above me, not trapping, but anchoring.
His eyes find mine. The battle-frenzy is fading, but intensity lingers beneath the surface.
“We’re cauterizing it,” he says, voice low, steady, completely resolved. He glances toward Poppy and flicks his chin toward her wand. “Heat spell. Right on the wound.”
The world tilts. My pulse thrums painfully against my ribs.
“I can handle it,” I grit out, more pride than truth. The tremor in my voice betrays me.
Ares leans in, close enough that I feel the heat of him through the blood drying on his skin. His breath fans across my cheek; the scent of pine, steel, and violence clings to him, grounding and dizzying at once.
“I know you can,” he murmurs, voice edged with something fierce. “But you’ll thrash. And if you tear it open again, you won’t make it back to Vireldan.”
There’s no pity in his tone, just unwavering certainty.
Poppy steadies her wand, though her hand is trembling.
“Now,” Ares says softly.
The spell hits.
A scream tears out of me before I can swallow it down. The heat sears into the open wound like a brand, stabbing deep into muscle. My back arches violently against the dirt, but Ares is already pressing me flat, his full weight settling across my thighs and ribs to stop me from jerking upright.
The pain tunnels the world. My ears ring. My breath flees my lungs entirely.
It’s too much.
Too much pain.
Too familiar.
Suddenly the forest is gone.
It’s not Poppy’s wand.
It’s my father’s.
It’s not a wound being sealed.
It’s a punishment repeated.
It’s nights of being dragged from bed.
It’s claws splitting skin.
It’s my own screams echoing back at me.
I choke on the memory, on the feeling of hands forcing me down. The air thickens. Panic claws through my chest like something alive, something desperate.
Ares’s voice breaks through the haze, distant at first.
“Harper.”
I can’t hear him.
I can’t breathe.
“Harper. Look at me.”
Something grips my jaw, firm, but nothing like my father’s cruelty. A thumb pins beneath my chin, lifting my gaze.
His face fills my vision.
Blood-streaked.
Breath sharp.
“Look,” he says, voice low and steady, tethering me inch by inch back into my body. “You’re here. Not with him.”
The forest flickers back into focus around him. Poppy’s wand lowers. The pain steadies into something manageable, distant, no longer swallowing the world whole.
Ares releases my wrists one at a time, palms skimming my forearms as if checking for tremors before shifting his hold. He slides an arm behind my shoulders, guiding me up with deliberate slowness.
The moment I’m upright, the dizziness hits. The trees tilt. The ground rolls beneath my feet. My breath stutters.
He moves with me before I even sway.
His arm tightens around my ribs, drawing me against him. My forehead slips forward, resting against the warm line of his collarbone. His scent, earth and iron, settles the spinning in my head more effectively than any spell.
His fingers curl into my waist, a steady anchor.
“You’re safe,” he says again, quieter this time. Not for reassurance. Almost like he’s convincing himself too.
My breath shakes out. My body leans, unbidden, into the support he offers.
And Ares holds me there.
But then-
Ares reacts before either of us fully registers the sound cutting through the clearing.
Poppy’s voice breaks into a near scream. “Ares-”
A blast of violent magic tears through the air, ripping past our heads with a heat sharp enough to sting my cheek. The beam slams into a tree behind us and splinters bark in every direction. The forest shudders under the force of it.
Ares doesn’t flinch.
His hand snaps forward, his voice already pouring out the guttural cadence of one of my father’s spells. The wizard who cast the attack jerks violently, his spine bending as if caught in an invisible vice. His wand drops from his hand. His body folds inward and collapses face-first into the dirt.
Clarity punches through the haze around me. The shock, the pain, the residual panic still ricocheting through my ribs, all of it steadies just enough for breath to return. I tear myself out of Ares’s grip, stumbling a step, trying to make sense of what direction the threat came from.
That’s when I hear it.
“Harper?”
My brother’s voice...thin and hoarse, cracking on a single syllable.
I turn too fast, vision tunneling around the edges, and my heart plummets straight through the forest floor.
Liam stands several yards behind us, or what’s left of him standing.
Smoke rises in pale wisps from his clothes, the remnants of a spell burning at the seams of his robe.
His entire front is soaked red, the blood shining wetly across torn fabric.
One hand is clamped over his stomach, fingers digging in as if he’s trying to hold himself together by sheer force of will.
His wand lies abandoned in the dirt at his feet.
His eyes lock on mine for only a second, but it’s enough.
His face is pale. His lips tremble. He takes one fractured inhale, and then his knees buckle.
“No-” My voice breaks before the word is fully formed.
Liam collapses hard, his body folding as if the strings holding him upright were severed all at once.
His head lolls, eyes rolling back until only white shows.
A sound squeezes out of me, half-scream, half-silence, trapped behind the sharp rise of panic closing my throat.
My legs refuse to move. My lungs go tight. The forest spins.
Ares steps forward sharply, wand raised again, his eyes wide in horror. Poppy gasps in horror beside me, already running toward Liam’s fallen form, her boots slipping through leaves and mud as she drops to her knees at his side.
But I can’t move.
I can only stare at my brother’s body, crumpled and bleeding into the roots and moss, the smoke of dark magic curling above him like a ghost.
It hits me with the cold clarity of a blade pressed to my spine:
This was never about the poachers.
This was never about the forest.
This was never even about the deal.
My father has reached us.
And as the truth settles like ice in my bones, one thought whispers through the trees, curling itself around my throat with a familiarity I hoped I'd never feel again:
The devil has come to collect, every single one of us a pawn in his sick game.