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RIVEN

The Frost Arena is like a crown of winter carved from a frozen lake, the smooth ice reflecting the sun’s rays with blinding brilliance.

Guards escort Sapphire and me through the entrance tunnel, Ghost and Nebula walk beside us.

“Remember your promise,” Sapphire says as we reach the point where we’re told to separate.

“I will,” I promise, inhaling the steady pull of her magic—the warmth of her skin, and the heartbeat that grounds me. “I love you.”

She tightens her grip on my hand, frost— my frost—crackling at her fingertips. “I love you, too. And I need you to fight like the man I fell in love with—not the prince your father tried to carve you into. Because you’re stronger than him, . Don’t ever let him make you doubt that.”

I exhale slowly, the weight of her faith settling onto my chest like armor.

“He rules with fear,” I tell her, but even though my voice is low and steady, inside I’m a blizzard held barely in check. “I’ll win because I don’t need fear. I have purpose. I have you.”

A guard approaches, breaking the moment. “Princess, this way to the royal viewing box,” he says, motioning to where she’ll be heading—a box I’ve sat in many times, shielding my heart with ice as I watched countless displays of horror and bloodshed.

Sapphire gives my hand one last squeeze. “Don’t let him get in your head,” she reminds me, and then she follows the guard to the box.

Ghost and Nebula follow at her heels.

Alone now, I walk to the center of the arena, every step measured, every movement deliberate as I study my surroundings.

Walls of ice stretch toward the sky, circling the sunken combat floor. Tiered seating accommodates nobility in the lower stands, and commoners in the upper ones. At the highest points of the structure, massive ice sculptures of past Winter Kings loom over the battlefield, their frozen eyes following my every movement.

This isn’t just a fight. It’s a spectacle. A ritual as old as our court itself. And my challenge has drawn every winter fae who can squish their way into the stands from their homes to watch as father fights son—king against prince.

Across from me, my father enters, controlled, cold, and cruel. He doesn’t stop until he stands ten paces away, chin lifted, eyes full of disdain.

He unsheathes his sword and examines the blade.

The Master of Ceremonies stops the chatter, his voice loud enough to fill the arena from the box across from Sapphire’s.

“The Winter Court bears witness!” he says, his arms raised in excitement. “King Nivian Draevor and Prince Draevor are bound by blood and now separated by challenge. The Trial of Frost and Blood has been invoked and accepted!”

My father’s eyes remain on mine as he takes his position opposite me. There’s no warmth there—no acknowledgment that I’m anyone of note to him. There’s only cold calculation and the madness that’s consumed him for far too long.

“You were always weak, boy,” he says, his laugh low and mocking. “Did you really think you’d become anything more than a trembling shadow at my feet?”

I stand strong, refusing to let him get to me.

“I challenged you so you can prove you’re fit to rule, and to convince you to accept the clarity I’m offering you,” I reply evenly. “Not to take your crown.”

Ice shoots up along my father’s blade.

Chatter sounds from the audience.

“The rules of combat are thus,” the Master continues, silencing them. “Magic and weapons only. Both contestants are to stay inside the fighting ring. The trial ends with surrender or death.” He pauses, his eyes meeting mine with something like pity. “May the coldest ice withstand the thaw.”

The crowd repeats his final sentence, he strikes his staff against the ground, and the trial begins.

My father’s first attack comes with no warning—a blast of razor-sharp ice shards that explode from the ground at my feet.

I leap sideways, summoning a shield that deflects the worst of it. But one shard grazes my cheek, drawing first blood.

“Too slow,” my father taunts, circling me with predatory grace. “Will you cower behind your shield forever? Or will you fight like the warrior I trained you to be?”

I launch my first attack, and from there, he fights like a hunter cornering prey. Methodical, patient, and cruelly precise. He deflects my frost-covered blade with insulting ease, barely moving as his magic responds to his will.

“Is this what the Summer Princess taught you?” he sneers. “Have you forgotten everything I beat into you—discipline, control, and excellence—because you tasted a different court’s magic?”

I grit my teeth, focusing my power into a more concentrated attack—a spear of ice that shoots toward him with deadly speed.

He sidesteps it, but I graze his arm, pushing him back.

His smile vanishes as he rights himself. “Love makes you weak,” he says, his voice dripping with venom. “Your wife is a liability. A burning chain around your neck. She will melt everything that made you strong.”

He glances at Sapphire in her viewing box, and I make the mistake of following his gaze.

It’s all the opening he needs.

Ice erupts in a circle around him, shooting outward in deadly spikes.

I dodge most of them, but one pierces my shoulder, pain shooting down my arm.

I don’t make a sound. I don’t even flinch.

“Your mother was weak, too,” he says with a sickly amused laugh, and I draw my sword, charging before he can continue.

His blade meets mine with a crash that sends shock waves through the arena. Ice against ice, king against prince, father against son.

“She believed in mercy. In compassion,” he hisses, each word punctuated by a strike that forces me back. “And what did it get her, other than a frozen heart?”

I block out his words, fighting back with everything I have. Ice forms at my command, turning into weapons, shields, and barriers. I’m quick, using my grace to counter his brute force, but for every successful blow I land, he counters with two more.

The crowd watches in silence, the only sounds the clash of our blades and the crackle of magic. From the corner of my eye, I see Sapphire leaning forward, her knuckles white as she grips the railing of the viewing box.

“You think you won because you married her?” My father laughs, deflecting another of my attacks. “Your little fairy-tale romance will shatter under the weight of reality. When it’s done, you’ll be alone. You already learned it once, with your mother. And look what she did? She left us. She left you,” he continues, each word breaking whatever remained of the wreckage her death left around my heart. “She saw how her softness was making you weak, and she chose to die rather than stay. This perverse marriage to the Summer Princess is no different. It will break you all over again. And this time, you won’t survive it.”

His words hammer into the deepest parts of my soul, and then the tip of his blade is catching my side, cutting through flesh and knocking me to the ground.

A scream pushes at the back of my throat, but I force it down, refusing to give him the satisfaction of it. Instead, I jump to my feet and strengthen my shield. The cut along my side throbs, sharp and deep as it heals, the blood already freezing on my skin.

The pain is nothing compared to the agony twisting inside my chest.

You will always be alone.

I throw more magic into my shield, making it larger, thicker, and harder.

“No one will ever truly care about you,” he snarls, stalking forward. “Not even your precious Summer Princess. She might cling to her fantasy, but you and I both know the truth.” His voice drops to a softer, more vicious tone. “I made you what you are. Ice, through and through. Cold. Hard. Empty.”

He laughs, sharp and cruel as he hurls more ice daggers at me that I block at the last second.

“No one loves a heart that’s been frozen solid, chiseled into something sharp and hollow,” he continues, shards of ice bursting from the ground, forcing me to dodge them to avoid being speared or knocked to my feet. “They survive it. They bleed for it. They fear it. And then they leave. Because all ice does is crack and break. And when it’s over, you’ll be left alone, drowning in the shattered pieces of it.”

He rushes at me with his sword.

As I block his attacks, my time with him while I was growing up roars through my mind like an avalanche.

I’m thirteen, kneeling in the snow on the training ground after a humiliating defeat in front of the court.

My father loomed over me, his eyes filled with disgust.

“Emotion has no place in you,” he said, his voice a whip across my skin. “Swallow it. Freeze it. Or it will tear you apart.”

Me at fifteen, standing amid the carnage of my first border skirmish. Blood on my hands. Horror in my chest. My sword shook.

“Fear makes you slow,” my father said from beside me. “Slow gets you killed. Bury it.”

Then, I’m twenty-one. I’d just given an order that ended in far more bloodshed than expected, doubt gnawing at me until it nearly broke through.

My father turned on me, his eyes shards of ice. “Right and wrong are for the weak,” he said. “The worthless. The undeserving. Harden doubt, or drown in it.”

It keeps coming.

“Falter in front of me again, and I’ll freeze you where you stand and watch you shatter and melt.”

“Hesitate, and I’ll exile you to the Wandering Wilds, where the monsters will eat you alive until not even your bones remain.”

“You deserve nothing but silence, solitude, and ice biting at your throat.”

“Emotion makes cracks. You crack, and I’ll grind the pieces beneath my heel and throw them into the ravine.”

The memories echo in my mind, tightening around my chest like chains. They’re pulling me down, dragging me back to that boy who swallowed every scream and buried every tear. Who told himself that if he could just be perfect—just be cold enough—maybe he’d be worthy.

Then I feel Sapphire through the soul bond.

She’s steady. Warm. Here.

She knows me. The broken pieces, the sharp edges, and the fragments that never thaw. She’s been inside the wrecked, shattered parts of my heart that were nearly destroyed by decades of my father’s threats and malice. And despite it all, she loves me, anyway.

Still, as I grit my teeth and ground myself against my father’s relentless cruelty, frost fills my chest and ice rushes my veins. Because even though Sapphire’s fought like hell to make sure I’m not empty, frozen, or alone, I’ll never be worthy to him.

Which is why there are only two options—force him to accept what I’m offering, or kill him.