Chapter 46 Harper #2
“You are,” he says, and there’s no accusation in it. Only resignation. His hands stay under my shirt, unmoving now, palms warm against my skin. “That photo wasn’t supposed to touch you. Not yet. Althea shouldn’t have shown it to you. Every time you push against the block, it pushes back harder.”
His thumbs stroke gently, up, down, up, as if soothing both my wounds and whatever invisible bruise exists in my mind. I watch him in the mirror behind me: the curve of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw, the way his throat works when he swallows.
He looks like a man holding back a hundred truths.
And my body trembles with the sense that each of them belongs to me.
I grip the edge of the counter, grounding myself as I look at him, really look at him, his face carved in an expression that holds both longing and grief.
“In the photo,” I murmur, searching his eyes for something solid to anchor myself to. He meets my gaze with a sadness so heavy it threatens to pull me under. “Where was Sebastian? If he’s always known us, why wasn’t he in it?”
At the mention of Sebastian, Ares’s hands still. The tendons in his forearms tighten almost imperceptibly, but I feel the shift as if the air itself tenses around him.
“I’m still navigating which memories are mine and which ones aren’t,” he says quietly. It’s not an answer, not really, but it’s all he can give. And somehow the uncertainty in his voice feels truer than any certainty could have.
“He was in the manor,” I whisper. A flicker of something, frustration, resignation, maybe even jealousy, crosses Ares’s face before he shakes his head with a small, defeated motion.
“So was I,” he says. The simple statement sends a shock through my skull, a bright spike of pain ripping through whatever mental wall has been barricading my memories.
I gasp at the sudden pressure, gripping the counter harder as the remnants of some half-forgotten memory slip through my fingers like water.
Ares reacts instantly. He withdraws from my wound but closes the space between us, both hands rising to cradle my face.
His palms are warm, steady, trying to soothe a storm he can’t control.
His thumbs sweep along my cheeks in slow, comforting strokes, his breath shallow, his eyes searching me as if he’s desperate for me to recognize something, anything, about him.
Everything in me responds to the touch. My body leans, gravitates toward him like instinct.
But it’s as if invisible chains tighten around my ribs, holding me back from the impulse to close the remaining distance between us.
Something inside of me trembles at the edges, fighting to surface through whatever block is strangling my memories.
“We need to get some sleep,” he murmurs, though exhaustion is only half the reason behind the retreat. He lets his hands slip away, his warmth disappearing from my skin too abruptly, leaving me cold in the space he no longer occupies.
He turns toward the door, reaching for the knob, but stops. His shoulders rise with a sharp breath before falling again, as if he’s bracing himself against his own words.
“Do you love him?” Ares asks without turning around.
The question freezes me. My heart stutters against my ribs. He slowly pivots to face me, blue eyes sharpened by something raw and vulnerable.
“W-what?” My voice fractures.
“Do you love Harwood?” he asks again, more steady this time, though the steadiness only makes it worse. There’s an ache buried beneath the words, an ache he’s trying and failing to hide.
Sebastian’s face flashes through my mind like a fading portrait. His laughter. His warmth. His steadiness. But the image feels strange, distant, as if someone has drawn fog over the memory, softening its edges. The certainty I once had slips from my grasp before I can catch it.
“Yes,” I manage, but the word rings hollow. It feels borrowed, like a truth I was supposed to believe rather than one I still do. Ares hears the hesitation, how could he not?
Something in his expression caves inward.
He bows his head, pressing it to the wooden door as though he needs the support. His eyes slip closed, lashes trembling, and he releases a slow breath that shakes just slightly.
“Then I will get you healed and trained,” he says, voice low but resolute. “We’ll get you two back together. And once this is over, I’ll take you both as far away from this mess as I can. I promise.”
The promise tastes like ash. He doesn’t look at me again before opening the door. The cool air of the hallway rushes in, brushing against my damp skin, and then he’s gone, his footsteps fading into silence.
I don't move. I sit perfectly still on the counter, staring at the doorway long after he’s disappeared, waiting for him to come back.
He never does.
My body lurches awake, a sharp inhale cutting into the stillness.
For a disoriented second the room tilts, shadowed except for a single flickering candle guttering on the nightstand.
The sound that woke me isn’t subtle, ragged breathing, strained and uneven, like someone drowning in their own sleep.
My heart kicks up. Ares had insisted on taking the couch after our conversation in the bathroom, putting as much distance between us as the cottage allowed.
But the shuddering breaths coming from the other side of the door tell me he isn’t getting rest either.
Carefully, I slide off the bed and grab the candle, its small flame trembling as I open the door into the darkened living space.
The room is dim, the shadows long and soft around the furniture, but Ares is unmistakable even amidst the quiet chaos.
His body twists in the blankets thrown carelessly over the couch, chest rising in frantic stutters, breath scraping like each inhale is a fight for survival.
He isn’t awake, he’s trapped somewhere far deeper.
I kneel beside him and touch his face gently, my fingers brushing the stubble along his jaw.
“Ares,” I whisper, giving him a small shake.
Nothing.
“Ares?” My voice sharpens, urgency bleeding through as I shake him harder.
His eyes snap open, feral and unfocused, a beast cornered in its own mind. He jerks upright, breath ripping out of him before reality finally slips back into place. His expression softens at the sight of me, shame pulling at the lines of his face as he drags trembling hands over it.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, voice cracked. “It’s… a rough night.”
I sit back on my heels, recognizing that haunted tone too well. “I get nightmares too.” The admission feels bare in the quiet. “You’re not alone in that.”
His eyes flick up to mine, something raw flickering there. “I wake up from one and fall straight into another.” A confession, whispered like it costs him something.
Silence crackles between us. He shifts, trying to wave me off. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Really. Go back to sleep.”
I rise halfway, then stop. Something fractures inside my skull, a sharp, splitting pressure that forces me still, as if my own mind is elbowing into the conversation. I shut my eyes, pushing back against the strange resistance that keeps interfering with my thoughts.
The words leave me before I fully decide to say them.
“Will you stay with me?”
He freezes. Not dramatically, just still, like the air crystallizes around him. His surprise is adamant, and for a moment he simply stares, searching my face.
“We don’t have to share a bed,” I add quickly. “You can take the floor. I just…” My voice falters, softer than before. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to be alone right now.”
He studies me as if each syllable is costing me something. “How much does it hurt you to say that?”
The truth slices too close, so I give the lie instead. “It doesn’t. Take it or leave it.”
Ares considers the offer for a long beat, then quietly folds the blankets in his arms and steps past me toward the bedroom.
His presence at my back is a steady hum, the air shifting subtly with each breath he takes.
I hold the door open long enough for him to enter, watching as he drops the blankets onto the floor in a messy pile.
“You’re not seriously sleeping on that,” I say with disdain.
He sits heavily in the chair beside the bed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palms, exhaustion carved deep in the set of his shoulders. “After those dreams, I’m not going back to sleep.”
“Then why come in here?”
He lifts his gaze just enough to meet mine. “Because you didn’t want to be alone.” His eyes flick pointedly to the red marks climbing my arm, scratches from restlessness and fear. “You do that when you’re fighting sleep. You hate sleeping alone.”
A chill drags down my spine. “How well did we know each other?” I whisper.
His fingers drift to the chain at his throat, the gesture defensive, full of things he will not say. “Get some sleep,” he murmurs instead, leaning back, eyes half-lidded but very much awake.
I settle beneath the sheets, turning so I can watch him as he watches me. Neither of us speaks for a long moment, the candlelight catching on the sharp planes of his face.
“Do you know any stories?” I ask quietly, staring up at the ceiling covered in hand-painted stars. The childishness of the request embarrasses me instantly. “They help me sleep.”
Ares huffs a quiet laugh, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth as he shifts in the chair. “You’re asking me to tell you a bedtime story?”
Heat creeps into my face, but I nod anyway.
He sighs, soft, almost fond, and lets his head rest back against the chair.
Ares lets the silence stretch until it becomes something fragile between us, something trembling and close to shattering. His eyes are half-closed, head tipped back against the chair, but his voice slips out steady enough to paint the darkness around us.
“There once was a raven,” he begins, and the simple weight of those words pulls me upright.
“He lived in a nest he loved more than anything. He loved the other ravens inside it too, even when they didn’t deserve him.
They lived quietly, the way ravens do, until the gardener arrived.
” A pause. A breath. “The gardener clipped their wings, broke them, healed them, broke them again. He needed a bigger nest, so he used the ravens to build it for him.”
My brows knit, but I don’t interrupt.
“With time,” he continues, voice thinning around the edges, “some of the ravens grew close. Too close. Bonds the gardener didn’t approve of.
Bonds that made them brave enough to think beyond the nest. He hated that.
Hated them for it.” His throat moves in a hard swallow.
“So one night, he tore the ravens apart. Ripped their worlds into pieces. Rewrote their memories, twisted the way they saw each other. Some remembered what he did. Some… remembered nothing except the lies he carved into their minds.”
The ceiling holds his stare, unmoving. I grip the blanket tighter.
“The ravens begged him to undo it. Promised to behave, to be quiet, to obey him if he’d just give their friends back.” His voice cracks. “So he stole their voices too. Buried the key. Made them watch, year after year, as the ones they loved forgot them over and over again.”
My chest tightens until breathing feels like trying to inhale broken glass.
“Every time one of the ravens finds the friend he lost,” Ares says, softer now, “he sings to her. Calls for her. But no sound leaves him. She looks right through him. Sometimes she hates him without knowing why.”
He finally looks at me. His blue eyes shine raw in the candlelight, and the story stops feeling like a story at all.
“Now the raven fights every day to undo the gardener’s work,” he whispers. “But it’s a labyrinth. One he’s never been able to escape.”
The room is unbearably quiet. I taste salt before I realize tears are spilling down my cheeks.
“What am I to you, Ares?” The question comes out cracked, aching, trembling with a fear I can’t disguise.
His jaw trembles. “She was everything to the raven.”
The air leaves my lungs in a soundless sob. “Why haven’t you ever told me this story before?”
“I have.” His voice shatters. “You don’t remember it for more than a few hours.”
A tear slips down his cheek, and something inside me keels over. I move before I think, reaching for his face, wiping the tear with my thumb. He leans into my touch like he’s starving for it, a laugh escaping him, strangled and breaking.
“Every time I tell this story,” he murmurs, “you do that.”
My heart stutters painfully. “How many times have we been here?”
“Enough,” he whispers, “to torture me for a lifetime.”
I surge forward, wanting to close the space between us, wanting, gods, wanting something I don’t even have words for. But his hand presses firmly against my lower stomach, stopping me.
“Don’t,” he breathes. “There’s one more part to the story.”
My body stills beneath his touch.
“Each time the birds kiss,” he says, his voice barely holding together, “the raven forgets everything all over again.”
A sharp wave of dizziness slams through my skull, as if something inside me is fighting to rise. “How did you know I was going to try that?” My voice shakes. “I-I didn’t know.”
“Because you always try after the story,” he says, staring straight into me, hollow with longing. “And I always give in.”
I fall back against the bed, breath unsteady, mind splintering under the weight of truths I can’t reach. “Then why stop me now? What’s different this time?”
His answer is barely a whisper. “Everything.”
Terror, grief, hope, they all twist together inside me until the only question left is the one I’m most afraid to ask.
“What did my father take from you, Ares?” My eyes close. I brace.
Silence blooms wide enough to hurt.
Then-
“You.”