Page 35

Riven

Sapphire flinches.

It’s slight, almost imperceptible, but I see it. Like she wasn’t expecting the question. Like she doesn’t know how to answer it.

For a moment, I think she won’t.

I think she’ll turn away. That she’ll let the silence be my answer, and let me drown in it the way I deserve.

But then?—

She looks at me. And she’s beautiful. Not just in the way she’s always been—the impossible symmetry of her features, the way her blonde hair catches the celestial light of the Tides, and the way her skin glows beneath the shifting magic surrounding us.

It’s the way she’s still standing here, fighting for something neither of us fully understand, holding onto something neither of us can name.

And when she speaks, it wrecks me.

“The Riven I saw in those visions—the boy who couldn’t hide his tears, who found companionship when he was most alone—deserves better than that emptiness. And because?—”

Her magic flickers, the water trembling between her fingers, as if she’s struggling to hold it together.

I step closer, my body coiled tight, waiting for the rest of her answer.

“Because what?” I push, my voice dropping lower.

I need her to finish. I need her to say it.

She swallows hard, and when she looks at me, it’s like she’s seeing something I don’t. Like she’s looking at someone worth saving, even though I’m so far past saving.

“Because I’ve seen what you’re like when you drop the ice prince act and are just you,” she whispers, her voice trembling with something too fragile to name. “And that Riven is worth fighting for, even if he’s buried so deep I can barely find him anymore.”

The words hit me like a slow, brutal ache sinking into my chest.

She still sees me.

Even after I took that deal with the dryad, even after I lost my love for her, and even after her love got twisted into an endless wave of fury directed straight at me. Even after she’s spent days looking at me with pain and disgust, like I’m a mistake she wishes she could erase. Like I’m just a cold, apathetic, insufferable winter prince she wants to throw overboard and let drown in the deepest part of the ocean.

Even after all of that, she still sees me.

A bitter, broken chuckle escapes my lips. It’s not real amusement—it’s never real anymore. It’s just something sharp and jagged clawing up my throat, something that might be grief, resignation, or the sheer, unbearable weight of everything pressing down on us.

“Maybe he was never real,” I murmur, and I hate the way my voice sounds—hollow and distant, like I’m already that version of myself sitting on the cold throne, waiting for my soul to freeze over completely.

I reach out without thinking, my fingers barely brushing her cheek, cold but careful. She’s so warm. So impossibly, painfully warm. And I don’t know how to accept what she’s offering. I don’t know how to let myself believe in something that might disappear the moment we emerge from these Tides.

“Maybe he was just another illusion you wanted to believe in,” I continue, and I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince her, or me. “One that will melt away the moment we leave this place.”

Her breath catches.

Magic hums between us, warm against my ice, stubborn against my resistance.

“He was real,” she insists, and there’s something in her voice that makes me painfully aware of what I erased—of the emptiness that took its place. “You are real. And you’re not going to melt away. I won’t let you.”

I let out a slow, uneven breath, my throat tightening, the hand that’s still by my side clenching into a fist.

“You really believe that?” I whisper, although I don’t know who I’m asking. Her? Myself? The gods who abandoned me decades ago?

“I have to believe it,” she murmurs, and then—gently, carefully—her fingers trace my arm.

It’s a simple touch. But it feels like so much more. Because it’s also an anchor, pulling me back from the abyss I’ve been drowning in for days.

It’s like she’s choosing me.

My breath shudders. Because hell, I think she’s the only person who’s ever wanted me for something other than power, a throne, and what I could offer.

Instead, she wanted what I gave her in the Wandering Wilds, when I let my walls crack, my magic spill out untamed, and my words slip free before duty could freeze over my heart. She wanted what was there before my father’s harshness, cruelty, and madness forced me to bury it all beneath an endless sheet of ice.

She wanted the moments we shared that I’ll never fully remember. That I’ll never actually feel.

I barely register what I’m doing until my forehead is resting against hers, her warmth melting the ice I’ve been wrapping around myself for years.

And she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t recoil. She doesn’t look at me with the hostility I thought I’d see in her eyes until the end of time.

“I don’t deserve you,” I whisper, and I hate how wrecked I sound.

I hate that she can hear it trembling beneath my skin, and that she can feel it breaking through the ice.

But she doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t contradict me. She just stays.

And that’s worse. So much worse.

Because I don’t know what to do with the fact that I’ll lose her again when we escape these godsforsaken Tides. The real her, beneath the lead arrow that poisoned her heart.

“You don’t get to decide that,” she whispers, her hands trembling against my chest, my heartbeat racing beneath her touch. “We’ve been through too much for me to lose you. Not to the Tides, not to pain and anger and grief, and definitely not to that empty throne.”

I want to believe her. So badly that I think I might fall apart from it.

But fate has never been kind to me. I learned that lesson as I stared at my mother’s coffin of ice when I was only eight years old.

I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until it finally leaves me in a slow exhale.

“Then promise me you won’t let go. Not now, and not ever,” I say, barely recognizing my own voice. Because it’s raw with something I can’t name, something desperate that’s clawing at the ice that encases my heart, tearing at my soul as it tries to escape.

The words hang between us, the weight of them thick in the air.

Then—

We collide.

I don’t know who moves first. I don’t care.

Because suddenly, she’s in my arms, and I’m inhaling her, consuming her, burning for her.

The kiss is a battle. A war. A devastating crash of past and present, love and rage, heartbreak and want as her hands fist my shirt, her grip desperate and clinging.

I can feel how much she needs this. How much she needs me. I feel it in the way her breath hitches as my fingers tighten on her hips. I feel it in the way her body presses closer, like she’s starving for something, like she’s trying to drown out the future with the only thing we have left—the now.

But she doesn’t realize that she’s the only thing keeping me from sinking, too.

And so, I crush her harder against me, my hands sliding into her hair, pulling her closer as if I can fuse her to my soul. Like I can burn this moment into my bones, so I’ll never lose it again.

“Sapphire,” I whisper against her lips, and the way she shudders against me destroys me. The way her breath catches, and her fingers tighten, like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go.

But I won’t.

Because I refuse to lose her ever again.

“I’ve missed you,” she breathes, and I kiss her harder, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s trying to break free before it freezes over again.

“I’m still here,” I promise, and I press my forehead against hers, my breathing uneven, my hands shaking where they hold her. “I’ve always been here. And I know you have, too.”

And then she’s kissing me again, and I’m pulling her under with me, and time stops existing.

Because I don’t care that we’re on a spectral ship lost to the Tides. I don’t care that she’ll hate me when we leave this place. I don’t care that I’ll never deserve her.

Because right now, I have her.

And I’ll take every single second of it before fate rips it away from me again. Because for the first time in days, she’s looking at me like I’m something other than a mistake. And for the first time in my life, I’m letting myself believe it.

But then, as if the Universe is determined to destroy the one good moment we’ve had since that cursed dryad’s tree, the ship lurches, the air around us shifts, and a new vision unfolds.

I barely register the moment Sapphire turns from me and gasps.

Because in the vision, she’s standing over two lifeless bodies, her dagger raised and dripping with blood.

Her face is streaked with crimson, her hands stained with it, her expression hard, cold, and unreadable.

And at her feet?—

Zoey.

And me.

Dead. Motionless. Gone.

The air leaves my lungs, ice crackling at my fingertips as the truth settles over me like a death sentence.

Sapphire is going to kill me.

And I don’t know why, but I feel like that version of myself is going to let her.