Chapter 37 Harper #2
Liam’s chest jerks under Ares’s hands, once, twice, before settling into shallow tremors.
Ares leans over him, shoulders straining, tendons standing out along his neck as he forces the spell through a barrier I cannot see but can feel.
Everything around him vibrates with the violence of the magic he is commanding.
The ground trembles. The air thickens. Even the trees seem to tilt inward, drawn to the gravitational pull of what is happening.
A heartbeat stirs under my palm.
Faint. Weak. Impossible.
Real.
Poppy collapses into a sob behind me, her hands over her mouth as though trying to keep her hope from spilling out.
Theo bends over Liam, his trembling fingers searching for another breath.
Sebastian staggers, one hand in his hair, the other pressed against a nearby tree as though bracing himself against the weight of the world.
Ares releases my wrist, blood dripping down both our arms. He keeps one hand against Liam’s sternum, steadying him as a slow inhale finally shudders into my chest. My own breath catches violently. Liam, my brother, my other half, breathes again.
Ares wipes his face with the back of his hand, smearing my blood across his mouth and cheek like a dark, accidental mark of devotion. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse.
“Stop her bleeding.”
Sebastian rushes toward me, ripping at his shirt until he tears off enough fabric to wrap my palm, but my eyes are fixed elsewhere.
Ares’s back.
The blood.
The new wound.
A lesion carves across his shoulder blade, splitting open beneath the fabric as though scorched into him by the spell’s cost. My breath falters. The magic didn’t just drain the poacher. It carved its toll from Ares himself.
Theo presses his ear to Liam’s chest, a sound of relief cracking out of him when he finds the faint rhythm he so desperately hoped for. Poppy clutches Liam’s wrist as though anchoring him to the world.
And for the first time since he died, Liam stirs, a breath brushing his lips.
The forest exhales with him.
Ares remains kneeling, chest rising hard, hands still stained with the remnants of two different lives. And as he lifts his gaze to mine, something inside me shifts irrevocably.
He brought my brother back from the dead.
And he paid the price in his own blood.
Theo’s voice breaks first.
“His heart is beating.”
It comes out raw, trembling at the edges as though he’s afraid the words themselves might shatter.
His hands cradle Liam’s face with a tenderness so fragile it barely survives the shaking in his fingertips.
Beside him, Ares pushes himself upright, swaying a fraction before steadiness returns to his posture.
His breathing is uneven, his shoulders shuddering with each inhale.
“I know.”
He tilts his head back, eyes closing, the tendons in his neck stark beneath skin gone pale. For a moment he simply stands there, letting the magic settle, letting the world stop spinning, letting the cost bleed out of him in silent waves.
Sebastian’s hand clamps around mine with desperate urgency, pulling my attention to him. His eyes shine with remorse, fear, relief, everything tangled into a single expression that nearly cracks me open.
“Harper, I never meant for any of this to happen,” he murmurs, voice frayed. His thumb strokes the back of my hand, as though by touch alone he can rewind time.
I swallow hard. “I know, Seb-”
I reach up, pulling his forehead down to mine. He kisses me before I can finish speaking, a frantic, hungry press of lips that carries every apology he doesn’t know how to voice. His hands slide around my waist, gripping too tightly in his need to anchor himself.
Pain lances across my side.
I wince, breath catching, too quiet for Sebastian to hear but not quiet enough for Ares to ignore.
A touch grazes my hip. Not a soft one. A directional one.
Ares’s hand slides between Sebastian’s and my side, shoving Sebastian’s fingers lower with a swift, irritated pressure.
“She was injured there. You’re tearing her wound more.”
His annoyance rings clear, even through the strain in his voice. A curled line of blood starts beneath the fresh strain on my stitches.
Sebastian rounds on him with a brutal snap of temper. “Someone should kick your teeth in.”
My hand flies to Sebastian’s chest, pushing him back before he can lunge. Ares doesn’t even flinch, he only watches him with a feral, entertained sharpness.
“You keep tossing empty threats like that, Harwood,” Ares says, a grin spreading slow and dangerous across his blood-streaked mouth, “and I might have to show you what a real one looks like.”
Before Sebastian can respond, before the bite in Ares’s grin can deepen, Liam gasps.
Not a breath. A gasp. Violent enough that his whole chest jerks.
All three of us freeze. The forest seems to stop breathing.
I tear myself away from the boys, knees hitting the earth as I drop beside my brother.
Liam drags in another breath, shaky and uneven, his hands blindly reaching until they find Theo’s trembling frame.
He fists his fingers in the fabric at Theo’s back, anchoring himself to the boy who won’t stop sobbing against his chest.
“Theo…?”
Liam’s voice is sanded down to something thin and bewildered. He brings a shaking hand to his mouth, smearing across his lips. When he tastes the blood, confusion deepens across his face.
His eyes lift, sweeping the scene before him, Poppy’s tear-stained cheeks, Sebastian’s clenched jaw, me hunched over him, Ares looming nearby with blood smeared down his neck and a new wound cracking open across his back. He looks as if he’s woken from a long nightmare into another one.
“What happened?”
His hand finds my leg, squeezing, searching for an answer that won’t destroy him.
The silence stretches, taut and fragile.
And then Ares fills it.
“I brought you back from the dead,” he says simply, arms crossing over his chest as though nothing monumental has just transpired. His voice is steady...too steady, considering the tremor still clinging to his limbs. “Second time’s the charm… isn’t that the saying, Liam?”
The clearing goes still.
Poppy stops breathing.
Sebastian’s jaw locks so tight it trembles.
Theo lets out a tiny, broken noise.
And Liam, alive but pale, breathing but shaking, stares at Ares with an expression that fractures something deep inside the air between them.