Page 34

Riven

“This isn’t possible.”

The words feel foreign in my mouth, but they come anyway, spilling into the empty air. Because I have to say it. If I don’t, then I have to accept that I’m staring at a future I’ve always feared.

“I don’t want the throne,” I continue. “I never have.”

“I know,” Sapphire says, and for once, she’s not arguing with me. She’s not throwing my own words back at me, sharp and cutting, because that’s all she’s been capable of doing since Eros’s lead arrow turned her love into hatred.

It was my fault.

I’m the reason she’s been suffering. The reason she’s looked at me with nothing but disgust, the reason she’s recoiled at my touch, the reason she lost herself in the excruciating pain of undying hatred.

But now, for the first time in days, she’s standing beside me again. The real Sapphire. Not the one I’ve been drowning in guilt and grief over since that arrow pierced her heart.

And I don’t know how to breathe. I don’t know what to do.

But the vision before us doesn’t care. The older version of me simply sits unmoving on the throne, a ghost of a man, a king with nothing left.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t react.

He just exists.

And I feel it—the cold creeping up my spine, the weight of something inevitable pressing against my ribs. And I don’t know why, but seeing this image of the life I’ve always feared changes everything.

“Where is everyone?” Sapphire’s voice cuts through the silence, filled with something scared and vulnerable. As if like me, she’s wracking her mind for answers. For clarity. For something that isn’t as hopeless as what we’re seeing in this vision.

“I don’t know.”

The words barely escape my lips before older me stands, his movements slow and deliberate, like even existing is too much effort. Like he already knows there’s no point. Like he’s already accepted his fate.

The temperature drops as he walks to the window, his steps slow and methodical.

Snow falls outside, covering the Winter Court in endless, suffocating white. It’s the kind of storm that erases everything. The kind Sapphire and I escaped when we took shelter in that cave in the Wandering Wilds.

But I can’t think about the cave. Because every time I’ve tried to these past few days, there’s a hollowness. A missing piece. A darkness that stretches too far and deep, like something was torn out of me that I’ll never get back.

So, I focus on older me as he presses his palm against the glass, frost blooming under it and spreading outward, thin and delicate.

And then, the images form. The same spiraling patterns I’ve carved into frost since I was a child. The ones that flow through me when emotions threaten to break the walls I’ve spent decades building—the walls my father has forced upon me.

Me and Ghost, the first time we met, when I let myself believe I wouldn’t have to be alone. That I could have something good in my life. Something beyond duty, logic, and expectation.

Me and Sapphire, back in the Summer Court, hands clasped, speaking vows that meant nothing to her.

A hardened version of me, his sword buried deep in the chest of a male night fae, the look on his face one of cold, brutal necessity.

The air freezes, and in the next breath, older me speaks words that cut through my soul.

“I failed them all.”

I hear the sorrow in his voice and feel the weight of it in my bones. There’s no anger. No shame. Just a quiet acceptance that he lost everything. That he doesn’t expect anything more from life, because he’s already given it all up.

His forehead presses against the glass, and for a second, I swear he’s crying. But it’s not tears. It’s just condensation fogging up the window, like the life inside him has melted away, leaving nothing in its wake.

My hands shake, and I call on my magic, releasing tendrils of frost from my fingers to my wrists, as it can freeze the emotions that are threatening to break every part of me.

“No.” My voice comes out hoarse and broken, barely more than a breath. “This can’t be my future. My father will recover. He’ll rule again. I’ll make sure of it. And I won’t be alone. Not when I have?—”

I stop, the words dying in my throat. Because if this is real—if this is the truth waiting for me—then it means Sapphire left me. That I have nothing but a kingdom of ice and a fate I can’t escape.

I won’t survive that.

And yet, I turn to her, unable to take my eyes off her.

Because even with the hatred that’s been poisoning her heart for days—even when she’s recoiled from me like I’m something wretched and unworthy—she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“I’m so sorry,” she says softly, and there’s no anger. No poison from Eros’s lead arrow twisting her words into knives.

Before I can think, I’m pulling her into my arms, like she’s the only one who can stop me from becoming the man on the throne who’s lost everything.

She doesn’t pull away.

And that wrecks me even more. Because I know—I know —that this moment won’t last.

So, I pull back, memorizing the way she’s looking at me in this one, fleeting moment when she doesn’t hate and resent me.

“Sorry for what?” My voice is barely above a whisper, but gods, I need her to answer.

“I’m sorry I’m not there,” she says, the words strained, like it’s taking every ounce of her strength to get them out. “That I failed. Because if this is your future, then something must have happened to me. There has to be a reason why I’m gone.”

The words rip me in half. Because I can tell from the look in her eyes that she’s not talking about leaving me.

She’s talking about dying on me.

“You’re not gone.” It comes out rough, more of a plea than statement, but I don’t care. I just tighten my grip on her, holding her like I can keep her here, like I can rewrite whatever fate the Tides have written for us.

“You think you have control over that?” Her voice wavers, quiet but sharp. “I could die tomorrow, or even today, in these Tides. And if I do, then that’s what’s left of you. But I need you to promise me you’ll fight it. That you won’t lose yourself completely. No matter what.”

Her words sink deep, dragging me under until I can barely breathe.

Because even the broken version of her outside the Tides—the one poisoned by Eros’s lead arrow, who’s spent days looking at me like she would rather die than touch me—is better than no her at all.

“I don’t need to promise anything, because I’m not going to lose you,” I say, my jaw clenching as the ice inside me thickens, trying to hold back the cold storm of emotions threatening to surface at the reminder of how close I was to losing her in Eros’s arena.

“How can you be so sure?” she asks.

I close my eyes for a moment.

I could avoid telling her the truth. I could hide it in wit and indifference—in some sharp-edged remark meant to deflect—to keep her from seeing how wrecked I really am.

But, for gods know what reason, I don’t.

“Because if you were gone—really, truly gone—then I’d already be dead.”

The words tear out of me, scraping against my throat like shattered ice. And now that they’re said, there’s no taking them back. No softening them. No burying them. They’re too final and absolute.

Her entire body shudders, her hands trembling where they rest against my chest.

And I see it—the shift in her expression, the untamed ache pooling in her eyes.

It almost hurts more than the hatred.

Because I don’t deserve her looking at me like I’m something worth saving. Not when I’m the one who shattered her in the first place.

But she’s listening now. She’s feeling this now. And hell, she needs to. Because if I ever lost her—really lost her, not just to the cruel twist of Eros’s arrow, but to death itself—there would be nothing left of me to save.

But then, she speaks, and there’s only warmth in her tone. It’s how she spoke to me in the Wandering Wilds before everything got ripped away, and it doesn’t cut through me like it has for days, making me bleed in ways she doesn’t even realize.

“Fate is like water,” she says, bringing me back into focus, her voice steady despite the turmoil inside me. “It carves its path whether we want it to or not. But water can be redirected. It can be shaped. The future isn’t set in stone.”

I almost laugh at how na?ve it sounds.

She wants to believe we have control. That what we saw—the throne, the loneliness, the emptiness—can be undone. That it’s not already burned into my bones, waiting for me like a slow, inevitable death.

I shake my head, staring at the starry, celestial waters swirling around us, frost curling across my skin.

“Some currents are too strong to be changed,” I say, and I expect her to hesitate. To waver in the face of what we both know is coming.

But she doesn’t.

“Not for me,” she says, and she lifts a hand, drawing her magic into an orb of water before us.

It’s shimmering, beautiful, and undeniably hers . I’d want to see it—to feel it—even if she was hurling it at me like a tidal wave.

Because if she’s trying to hurt me, at least it means she’s here.

“Water is my element,” she continues, watching the water as her magic bends to her will. “And I won’t let this be your fate. I can’t. Not after seeing you like you were back then, and right now, and…”

She motions to the hollowed-out version of me sitting on the throne.

Something inside me fractures.

Because even after everything—after all the ways I’ve hurt her, after all the cruel things I’ve said to push her away—she cares.

“But why?” The words slip out before I can stop them, softer than I intended, and far too desperate. “After everything I’ve done to you—after all the ways I’ve hurt you—why would you still care?”