Page 33

Sapphire

The water doesn’t touch us. It just swirls around us as the ship sinks into the Tides, like we’re floating in the winds of a cosmic, slowed-down tornado.

Then, the walls shift, images shimmering into existence like projections cast upon the veil of reality itself.

I freeze as I recognize the first.

Central Park at night, illuminated by the glow of nearby skyscrapers.

Queen Lysandra is beneath a tree, crouched beside a woman sleeping under a tattered blanket. She’s holding a finely wrapped bundle in her arms—a baby with wisps of silvery blonde hair barely visible beneath the folds of fabric.

Me.

She’s stroking my head with a tenderness I never would have expected. Then, with visible reluctance, she pulls aside the woman’s blanket, revealing another infant. This one has clumps of dull brown hair, her tiny fists curled close to her chest.

My throat tightens at the conflict written across Lysandra’s face. Because the normally poised, unshakable queen looks tormented, her hands trembling as she forces herself to complete the swap.

Something inside me breaks a little at the realization that she wasn’t completely heartless.

She was torn.

I turn to face Riven, searching his face for answers.

“Is this real?” I ask him, although his gaze remains locked on the vision, his eyes shadowed.

“I don’t know,” he admits, turning slightly to look at me. “But don’t let go of me. No matter what. Okay?”

His fingers tighten around mine, grounding me against the rising storm of emotion in my chest—especially after everything he said to me before we were swallowed by the Tides.

“Okay,” I say, and the vision dissolves into silver ripples, washing away like ink bleeding into water.

For a moment, nothing.

Then, another memory materializes.

A grand hall of glistening frost, draped in black cloth. Snowflakes swirl in ghostly patterns through the air, melting before they touch the ground, and at the center, a boy stands motionless before an ornate casket carved entirely of ice.

I inhale sharply.

The boy is young—no older than seven or eight. His midnight hair is tousled, his silver eyes unreadable as he stares at the frozen figure encased in the ice.

Riven. A young Riven. And after everything he told me during our time together in the Wandering Wilds, the casket belongs to his mother.

I glance at the Riven beside me. His jaw is tight, his body unnervingly still as he watches the scene before us.

The boy in the vision doesn’t move. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t waver. He simply stands there, cold and distant, like nothing can touch him.

Just like my Riven.

But then, young Riven’s composure falters. Frost crawls in intricate patterns up his arms, and his eyes shimmer, pain rising like a tide he doesn’t know how to hold back.

I recognize that look.

I saw it when I spoke my harsh vows at our wedding ceremony, and I saw it both times Riven and I surfaced from the water, after whatever happened to us in its grasp.

It always vanished in an instant, concealed beneath layers of icy control, but I see it now. Raw. Unguarded. The part of himself he’s spent his entire life trying to bury.

I move closer, my body pressing against his startlingly rigid one, and he doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t even flinch.

He just watches.

His younger self stiffens as the Winter King approaches, towering over him like a looming shadow.

The king’s expression is as frozen as the ice casket before them, and he places a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder, his fingers digging in, the silver ring on his middle finger glowing with frost.

Then, he crouches slightly, bringing himself to his son’s level.

“Your mother wanted to cast out her feelings entirely,” he tells young Riven. “But leaning into emotion instead of logic is what made her drink that potion before it was ready. She was so desperate to dispose of her feelings that she acted impulsively instead of practically.”

His grip on his son’s shoulder tightens.

“You will not repeat her mistake. Because as you learned today, power and love cannot coexist. And if I see any sign of her weakness in you—of her emotion-based impulsivity—” the king leans in, his voice dropping to a whisper, “I will rip it out myself before it can claim another life. Do you understand?”

Young Riven doesn’t tremble. He doesn’t flinch. He simply nods, spine straightening, the grief in his expression swallowed by his father’s command.

“I understand,” he says, his voice devoid of warmth.

The sound cuts through my chest like a blade.

Because the ice has already started to wrap its frosty grip around his heart and turn him into the hardened prince he is today.

But when his father stands, young Riven clenches his fists in an obvious attempt to bury the pain that’s threatening to surface.

My Riven tightens his grip on my hand even more, trying to do the same.

“You were so young,” I say softly, and when he glances down at me, I don’t see the cold, untouchable Winter Prince.

I see the grief-stricken child who never let himself cry.

Suddenly, the hatred I’ve carried for him melts a little. Because young Riven is still in there. He’s long buried, but now that I’m seeing both versions of him at once, I understand that the coldness in my Riven’s eyes isn’t cruelty.

It’s pain. Grief from something he lost.

Something he’ll never get back.

“It was a long time ago,” he replies, looking away as the vision dissolves, replaced by the hallway of Presque Isle High School.

A younger me stands at my locker, head down as a group of girls whisper and laugh nearby, their eyes fixed on me with obvious disdain.

I remember that morning clearly. Too clearly. I’d dyed the tips of my hair blue that weekend, with Zoey’s help. I’d felt electric. Like I was finally stepping into myself.

To say that the new style wasn’t a hit at school would be an understatement.

Now, I watch my past self fumble with the combination lock, shoulders hunched as the girls inch closer. Madeline Simmons—queen of high school cruelty—grabs a strand of my freshly dyed hair, holding it up between her manicured fingers with theatrical disgust.

“Thought you’d look cool with mermaid hair?” She laughs. “Or maybe you’re trying to convince people you’re an alien from Neptune?”

Her friends giggle, and my past self shrinks back, hugging the textbooks to her chest like a shield.

“Say something,” Madeline’s friend snickers. “Or is that radioactive dye short-circuiting your brain?”

Then, Zoey appears, planting herself between me and the girls.

“Back off,” she says, something dark and predatory flashing in her eyes as she invades Madeline’s personal space.

“Or what?” Madeline scoffs.

Zoey tilts her head, considering. Then she reaches into her bag, pulls out her phone, and scrolls through it with exaggerated care.“Or I’ll make sure you regret it in ways you can’t even imagine,” she says with a cold smile.

Madeline’s expression wavers. “You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?” She turns the screen just enough for Madeline to see. “I have some interesting things on here. Like that time at Josie’s party in the bathroom. Or the balance beam incident over the summer. Take your pick.”

“You wouldn’t,” Madeline says.

“Try me.” Zoey raises an eyebrow. “Because if you touch my best friend again—hell, if you even look at her wrong—I’ll burn your entire life to the ground. And I’ll enjoy it every single step of the way.”

Silence.

Madeline swallows. Then, without another word, she spins on her heel and stalks off, her friends hounding her with questions.

Watching the painfully insecure version of myself makes me feel small all over again. Because while starting to work at the Maple Pig a year after the hair dying incident helped me come into my own, I don’t know what I would have done without Zoey.

She’s always been the strong one.

And I’m going to return the favor by getting her out of the Night Court and safely home.

“They were jealous,” Riven says, the intensity in his gaze stealing my breath away. “Because even if they spent their entire lives trying to be more, they’d never be what you are—what you’ve always been—without even trying.”

I freeze, his words crashing into me like the echo of something I lost before I had a chance to hold it.

“You didn’t even know me back then,” I finally say. “You can’t know that.”

“It only took one look for me to see what’s been inside you all along,” he says, and suddenly, Matt’s words from Circe’s island are flooding back to me at once.

He looked at you like someone who knew they were doomed from the start, but who fell anyway. Like he didn’t have a choice.

But he did have a choice. He chose to trade his love for me away.

So why does it sound like he still cares? Like maybe—just maybe—he remembers what he sacrificed?

I almost ask. Almost demand the truth.

But before I can, the vision shifts, dissolving into a clearing in the Winter Court’s forest.

Young Riven sits alone on a fallen log, using his magic to create detailed patterns on frost-covered ground, letting them spread from his feet to the surrounding trees. He looks slightly older than in the funeral vision—maybe nine or ten—but his expression remains carefully controlled, even in solitude.

A rustling in the nearby bushes makes him look up, and a white snow leopard emerges, its eyes fixed cautiously on him.

Ghost.

Young Riven doesn’t move. Not at first.

But I know what’s going to happen. Because my Riven told me about this moment. About how terrified he was that the snow leopard would attack him, and that he would have to fight for his life.

Now, watching it unfold, I see the tremble in young Riven’s fingers as they inch toward his dagger. Not in fear, but in readiness.

He would fight if he had to. He would kill if he had to.

But his unarmed hand slowly extends toward Ghost in an offering. A choice.

“Hello,” young Riven says, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. “Are you lost, too?”

Ghost remains still, watching and waiting.

The seconds stretch, and frost thickens beneath young Riven’s boots, swallowing the patterns he was tracing only moments ago.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says steadily to Ghost. “I promise.”

Something shifts.

Ghost moves. Not an attack, but a slow, deliberate step forward. Then another. Then, with a quiet exhale, he presses his head against young Riven’s outstretched palm.

A sharp breath escapes the boy.

Then, he smiles.

Not the cold, calculating smirk I’ve seen on my Riven’s face a thousand times. Not the detached, court-polished grin he wields like a weapon.

A real, unguarded, achingly young smile.

My fingers tighten around my Riven’s hand, and while his expression doesn’t change, I can feel the silent pull of something breaking inside him. Something he’s fought to keep buried for years.

The boy in the vision doesn’t know what waits for him—the brutal training, the isolation, the ice that will thicken around his heart with each passing year. But the man standing beside me does.

And yet, he’s still clinging to that moment. To the fragile piece of himself he never let fully die. The one whose eyes glistened with tears, who created patterns in the frost when no one was looking, and who let Ghost into his heart when he was on the verge of shutting down entirely.

“Ghost saved me,” my Riven says, his voice distant. Like he’s speaking to the memory instead of to me. “In ways I don’t think I can explain.”

I look at him. Really, truly look at him. Not just at his face, but at the tension in his body, the way his fingers stay curled around mine, and how his chest rises and falls a little too carefully.

I could tell him that I understand. That I see the way he’s gripping onto the past, just like I am.

Instead, I say the only thing that feels right.

“You don’t have to.”

And as the vision continues, something shifts between us.

A silent understanding. A reminder that beneath the ice and steel, my Riven—the one who looked at me like I was his before he gave it all away—is still in there.

Tears are threatening to push their way into my eyes when the vision shifts again.

This time, there’s a strange shimmer to the edges. As if the cosmic force is thinking —struggling to piece together whatever it’s about to show us.

When the vision finally solidifies, it shows the Winter Court’s throne room. But there are differences from the room I saw when I was there on trial. The ice sculptures are more imposing, the frost patterns along the walls are more intricate, and the chandeliers overhead glow with a colder, harsher light.

A solitary figure sits upon the Winter Throne.

Riven.

But it’s not the Riven I know. This version of him looks older somehow. Not physically, since fae don’t age past their mid-twenties, but there’s a weight to him. A heaviness in his eyes that speaks of centuries of isolation.

His hair is longer. A crown of ice spikes rests upon his head, glittering with deadly elegance. And he’s wearing the same ring on his middle finger that we just saw on his father, although the swirling frost is muted instead of glowing.

There are no advisors. No courtiers. No companions. No me. There isn’t even Ghost.

But most disturbingly? Older Riven’s eyes are filled with loneliness, regret, grief, and pain far deeper than I ever imagined possible.

And his wedding band—the one that’s shimmering on my Riven’s finger—is muted completely.