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“I want to keep training,” I murmur, watching the faint shimmer of the pillar’s runes in the dimming light. “With you.”
His body stills beside me—not in rejection, not quite—but like he’s checking himself before something rises too fast. Too hard.
I keep my voice low. Even. Like it’s not a big deal. Like the bond between us isn’t thrumming like a livewire through my ribs.
“You’re good at it,” I continue, brushing imaginary dust from my knee. “The fighting. The power. You don’t justuseit, youunderstandit. And I think... I think that’s what I need. To understand.”
His knee brushes mine. Not accidental.
“Wrath doesn’t ask for understanding,” he says, voice low, roughened like gravel over glass. “It takes. Destroys. That’s its language.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But I speak a few of those languages now.”
That gets him. He turns, finally, and I meet his gaze. Red eyes lit from within, anger always simmering beneath—but I see something else, too. Wariness. Wonder. A reluctantwant.
“You’re not scared of it,” he says.
“I’m not scared of you.”
His lips twitch—half a smirk, half disbelief. “You should be.”
“Probably,” I say, and smile like I mean it.
And then he nods. Just once. But it’s all I need.
“We’ll start tomorrow,” he says. “Early.”
“How early?”
He shrugs. “Whenever I feel like watching you fall on your ass.”
“You mean, like how I saw you trip over your own rage shadow yesterday?”
His eyes narrow. “That was tactical retreat.”
“Into a tree?”
“You’re really asking to get your ass handed to you, aren’t you?”
I grin. “Someone’s got to humble you.”
He doesn’t reply to that—but he doesn’t deny it either. The bond flickers between us, heat and static, and I feel it settle like a promise in my chest. Not an oath, not from Riven. But something rawer. Realer.
When I stand, the grass crunches faintly beneath my boots. Riven rises with me, slow and unhurried like he’s trying not to startle the moment into fleeing. The beer bottle in his hand swings low at his side, forgotten, the label peeled half off by his thumb.
Then I see them—his eyes.
Not red. Not burning.
Gray.
Soft, storm-washed gray. Still sharp. Still unflinching. But calmer. Human, almost. And it's... it’s disarming in a way that feels unfair. Unarmed Riven is more dangerous than war-bound Riven. Because I don’t know where to aim.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I blurt, the words slipping before I can wrestle them down.
He frowns slightly. “Doing what?”
“Looking at me with those stupid, pretty eyes.”