Chapter 45 Liam
LIAM
My pencil taps against the library desk in a steady, anxious beat, Sebastian’s glare cutting sideways every time the rhythm shifts.
The quiet of the room hangs heavy, smothering rather than soothing.
Stacks of books rise around us like watchtowers, sunlight spills across the wood grain in pale strips, and still, nothing distracts from the gnawing unease crawling beneath my ribs.
Harper has been gone too long. She left a rushed note, words tilted and uneven, the kind of handwriting she only uses when she’s cracking under pressure.
We’d all agreed to give her space, to let her decompress, but every minute she doesn’t walk through that door twists tighter into dread.
Theo sleeps against my arm, lips parted, breath slow.
He tried reading for twenty minutes before exhaustion consumed him; now he’s slack on the open braille page, head angled at an uncomfortable tilt.
The weight of him keeps me anchored in a reality that otherwise feels like it’s shifting underfoot.
On the other side of the table, Sebastian fidgets.
His pencil has been through a dozen positions in the last ten minutes.
Spinning. Rolling. Clicking against his teeth.
Tap. Tap. Tap. His restlessness mirrors the tension in the air.
“How’s Anne?” The question slips out before I can overthink it. His shoulders stiffen. Eyes flicker with something raw.
“She’s been better,” he admits, leaning back with the kind of forced ease no one buys. “Whatever magic Andrew cursed her with… it comes in waves.”
The confirmation sits like a stone in my gut. Father really did hurt her.
Thoughts rush ahead before I can stop them. Maybe letting Ares teach her how to use that magic could-
A wall slams down inside my skull, white pain exploding behind my eyes. Hands fly to my head as the library tilts. Every attempt to follow the line of that thought only intensifies the pain, as if some invisible hand is gripping my mind and squeezing.
Sebastian is on his feet in an instant. “Liam, what happened?”
“It was nothing,” slips out because it has to. The pressure eases only when the thought disappears entirely.
Theo shifts when I slide my arm out from beneath him, his cheek dragging across the table. “Just need some water,” leaves my lips before Seb can pry.
Cold water spills down my throat in slow relief, easing the pulsing heat in my temples. Still, unease thrums below the surface, something is wrong, out of place, tightening like a snare.
A flutter of movement catches at the corner of my eye.
A raven, black as pitch and unmistakably conjured, lands on my abandoned chair.
A scroll is clamped between its beak, the wax seal imprinted with initials I don’t recognize.
Sebastian reaches it first. His entire expression changes.
Fear. Shock. A rage edged with something like grief.
The chair screeches as he stands, jolting Theo awake.
The letter crinkles between my fingers as the words register in pieces:
SOS.
Coordinates on the back.
Something attacked us.
They need my blood to fix what happened.
Please help me.
I need you.
I need all of you.
—Harper
A.C. is carved into the seal.
Sebastian’s fists clench until the knuckles blanch. “He’s with her.”
“And so is whatever hurt her,” comes out steadier than I feel. It isn’t comfort, it’s truth. Harper asking for help is serious. Harper begging is catastrophic.
Sebastian drags a hand down his face, breath coming too fast until he forces control back into his limbs, organizing chaos into something functional. The fury doesn’t leave his eyes, but it focuses. Sharpens. He looks to me for direction, shoulders squared despite the tremble beneath his skin.
“When do we leave?”
The letter folds neatly between my hands, a poor attempt to contain the terror gnawing beneath my ribs.
“Now.”
HARPER
Helping Althea strip away the remnants of Ares’s shredded shirt feels like peeling raw skin from bone.
Every time the fabric pulls, he winces; every time he winces, something in my ribcage twists.
Blood has soaked through so much of the material that it clings to him like a second, decaying skin, and each tear of it reeks of iron and poison.
The IV tube feeding my blood into his arm coils between us like an oath I never meant to make, but half an hour in, the faintest wash of color returns to his face.
The sight steadies me even as waves of dizziness keep knocking my balance sideways.
Losing this much blood feels like drifting underwater while someone else holds the rope to the surface.
At some point, we moved him into one of Althea’s spare rooms, the two of us maneuvering his deadweight body inch by inch down the narrow cottage hallway.
The infection halted the moment my blood began its course through him; everything else still threatens to eat him alive.
Althea mutters diagnostic spells under her breath, working with frantic precision, fingers stained with unfamiliar roots and golden tinctures.
“We have to get every scrap off him. Anything from that Fetch left on his skin will drag the poison deeper.” She grips his shoulder and hauls him forward so I can peel the last piece away.
The moment his torso is fully bared, the air changes.
Black ink arcs across him, vines twisting up his waist, blooming across his ribs, swallowing his collarbone before spilling over his shoulder and down the carved line of his arm.
Two worn rings hang from a silver chain around his neck; the metal glints against skin that carries too many stories.
My eyes drift lower before I can stop them, toward the sharp curve of his hip, the edge of a serpent tattoo slithering up from his V-line, its body bold and unapologetically placed as if guarding something sacred.
His scars… gods, his scars are everywhere.
He is a tapestry of carved wounds, burned sigils, claw marks, lash marks, each one evidence of a life scraped raw.
“All of those scars… they’re because of my father.” My voice fractures as my hand skims along the plane of his stomach. His skin is warm beneath my fingertips. I trace the line of one half-healed gash from the Fetch, the edges softening under the influence of my blood.
“Is that really all you see?” Althea asks, pulling a chair over as she watches me with unsettling intensity. Her tone carries something brittle in it, the way someone sounds when they’re asking a question they already know the answer to.
His forehead glistens with sweat. I pull a thin blanket up over his hips, gather a cloth, and rest it against his brow.
Sleep holds him in its claws, his breathing slow and unguarded in a way Ares never allows himself to be when awake.
Something about it strips me open. I slide a chair beside his bed, leaning forward until my face is level with his.
A faint scar crosses his cheekbone, almost delicate compared to the brutality of the others.
My fingers lift toward his face, brushing one of the stray curls away from his eyes.
“Why does he keep doing this?” My thumb pauses on his jaw. “Throwing himself into danger for me?”
Althea rocks back on her chair, exhaustion clinging to her shoulders like a weighted cloak. “Does nothing in your life feel… off to you?”
A scoff leaves me before I can rein it in. “In what way?”
“Wrong,” she clarifies. “Rushed. Incomplete. Like every time you try to recall something important, the memory bends out of shape?” She rubs at her eyes and lets out a dark laugh.
“Your father made sure none of us could speak plainly. We’re cursed, Harper.
Try to explain too much, and it’ll tear your throat apart. ”
My palm brushes Ares’s cheek again, grounding me as the room threatens to tilt. “I wish you’d stop speaking in riddles.”
“I wish I could.” Her voice breaks. She slams her hand against the side table, the sound so sharp I flinch.
“Imagine seeing someone you’ve known your whole damn life and being unable to say it.
Imagine being forced to watch them forget you.
Forget everything. It’s hell. We’ve been stuck in hell for years. ”
Her words gut me. “Who can I trust?”
Instead of answering, she moves to a cabinet, cluttered and full of oddities. After rummaging, she pulls out a small wooden box. Without explanation, she presses it into my hands.
“You’ve never been senile,” Althea whispers. “Your memories have been tampered with. So have ours. So has his. Ares has spent years trying to untangle what’s real and what your father implanted.”
My stomach caves inward.
“He’ll wake soon,” she continues, wiping her eyes and stepping aside. “Hungry, furious, ready to kill the Fetch that did this.”
But her voice fades as I open the box.
A photograph stares back at me, five witches and warlocks in Shadeborne attire, arms slung around each other like they’re carved from the same joy.
Liam’s grin takes up half the frame, Theo pressed against him with matching dimples.
Althea stands beside them, red hair blazing as she flashes a thumbs-up.
And beside her is… me.
Laughing. Glowing. Leaning into a boy who holds me as though he’s always held me.
His arm crosses over my shoulders; his fingers curl at my waist as though it’s the most natural place for them to rest. My hand is on his chest. My head is tilted toward him.
My smile is nothing like the smiles I force now. ..it’s alive.
I lift the corner of the photo to reveal the face I somehow already know is there.
Ares.
Not Sebastian. Not a stranger. Ares, smiling at me with soft blue eyes filled with devotion I’ve never seen on him in my life.
The world detonates.