Page 24

RIVEN

“Now you,” Anteros says to me, and the thought of being seen—truly seen—sends frost spiraling up my arms.

Sapphire squeezes my hand, her warmth melting through my cold, and I force myself to stare into the water.

The mirrored surface trembles, clears, and then I’m looking at myself through Sapphire’s eyes.

The shock nearly knocks me backward.

Because the man reflected isn’t the man I know. He isn’t the cold, ruthless Winter Prince who pushes everyone away. He isn’t the failure who couldn’t save his mother, who can’t heal his father, and who deceived the only woman he’s ever loved.

He’s radiant.

Not with warmth or light, but with a different kind of brilliance. Like moonlight cutting through darkness. Like the deadly beauty of an ice storm.

“This can’t be right,” I mutter, shaking my head as frost forms in my hair. “This isn’t me.”

“It is,” Sapphire whispers. “It always has been.”

The mirror shifts, pulling me deeper. I watch myself at the bar in the Maple Pig, dangerous and magnetic. She noticed the exact moment my gaze landed on her. She felt the charge in the air between us.

I feel her fascination with the frost patterns I create. How she finds beauty in my control, rather than coldness. I feel her admiration for my loyalty, my steadfastness, and my refusal to break, even when she doesn’t know how shattered I am inside.

“You see warmth in me,” I say through my surprise. “Even when I’m at my coldest.”

But it’s not just good she sees.

I also see my arrogance. Infuriating—and intolerable—at times. The way I dismiss her ideas, and the way I act as if I know better than everyone else—even though, let’s be honest—I usually do know better than everyone else.

Then, the perspective shifts, and I flinch as I see myself after the dryad took my love. The hollowness, the casual cruelty, and the way I wielded her feelings for me like a weapon.

“How can you possibly love me after this?” I demand, ice daggers exploding in a circle around us. “I deserved the hatred you threw at me after getting struck by that arrow. Every sharp word, every furious look—I earned them all.”

The reflection doesn’t answer with words.

Instead, it shows me dying in her arms, and her terror and refusal to let me go. It shows me the way she tore her soul apart to save me, and how she touched every broken piece of me and loved them all.

She doesn’t just see me. She knows me. Every dark corner, every sharp edge, every frozen wasteland—and still, she chose me. She fought for me. She saved me.

“I don’t deserve this,” I repeat, frost glistening on my eyelashes as tears try to form. “I don’t deserve you.”

“You deserve every single second of it, and every single part of me,” she tells me, water droplets dancing around her and warming the air around us.

The reflection ripples, showing me in countless small moments—the softness in my expression when I look at her, the way my body shifts to shield her from danger, and the way I orient myself toward her like a compass finding north.

“This is who you are to me,” she says. “Not perfect. Not flawless. But whole. Complete. Worth everything and more.”

Something inside me—something frozen and dark that’s been there since I watched my mother’s ice coffin being carried out of the palace—begins to crack.

And then, it shatters.

Frost flowers bloom around us, impossibly delicate and fiercely beautiful, summer and winter combined into one.

“I see you,” Sapphire says, her water joining my ice in spirals that catch the light. “And I love what I see.”

“Even the parts I tried to bury?” I ask, and the water glows, pulsing with light. “The ones I tried to freeze beneath layers of ice?”

“Especially those,” she says, and I close my eyes for a second, letting her love break apart every wall I’ve built since I was a child.

Finally, I surrender.

I pull her into my arms, ice and water exploding around us in a storm of light and magic. She clings to me just as fiercely, and when I open my eyes, the pool erupts into pure radiance, flowing into the altar’s gemstones.

“I accept it,” I say, my voice raw but unwavering, resting my forehead against hers. “I accept who I am through your eyes.”

The light intensifies, so bright it should hurt to look at.

And then Ghost and Nebula begin to stir, their bodies glowing with the same light that fills the chamber.