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“You can’t stop this,” she says, eerily calm. “No matter what path you choose, no matter how hard you fight, we will always return to this moment.”

No, I try to scream, but no matter how hard I try to push it out, the word is stuck.

So, I reach for my magic—water, ice, air, anything—but nothing responds. It’s as if all my power has been stripped away, leaving me helpless as she lowers the torch to Riven’s chest.

“Some fates can’t be changed,” she continues, tilting her head as she studies me. “The threads bind us to this end. By fighting it, you’re merely delaying the inevitable.”

As the flames touch Riven’s skin, a scream builds in my chest, desperate to escape. Water magic churns inside me, but it can’t break free. I’m powerless, watching as the fire consumes him.

Her eyes— my eyes—meet mine again.

“All rivers reach the sea eventually,” she repeats, and then I jolt awake with a gasp, my heart hammering against my ribs so violently I fear it might shatter.

Riven sleeps beside me, the moonlight streaming through the Summer Court windows catching on his beautifully perfect features. The sight of him alive and whole, his soul tethered to mine, should calm me.

Instead, another memory crashes into me.

Riven, deathly pale, his life draining away as I drink his blood in the Cosmic Tides. His heart stopping. His voice whispering his final haunted words to me:

“If love is destruction, then let it destroy me. At least this way, I’ll be part of you forever.”

I reach out with shaking fingers to touch his cheek. He’s warmer than before our souls fused in the Tides, when I stole him back from death.

I curl against him, pressing my ear to his chest to listen to his heartbeat, and the tears come without warning. They soak through the fabric of his shirt, and I can’t stop them.

“Sapphire?” Riven’s voice is thick with sleep, worry cutting through it as his arms tighten around me. “What’s wrong?”

The tears come faster now, water swirling around us, a silent echo of the grief trying to drown me.

“Hey.” His silver eyes, now sharp and alert, search my face. Frost spreads across his palms as he cups my cheeks, his thumbs brushing away tears that are quickly replaced by new ones. “Talk to me. What happened?”

“The dream. She spoke to me.” I curl my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, needing him closer, needing to assure myself he’s real. “She told me that I can’t stop it. That no matter what I do—no matter what path I choose—I’ll end up there, standing over your bodies...”

“We’ve already changed our fate once,” he says, his arms tightening around me, anchoring me to reality. “We’ll do it again if we have to.”

“But what if we can’t?” The question escapes before I can stop it, raw with the fear that’s been haunting me since the Tides. “What if fate just bends around us and still brings us there in the end, no matter how hard we try to stop it?”

“Then we keep fighting. We bleed. We burn. We break the world open again if we have to.” He grabs my hand and places it over his chest. “But I’m not letting you go. Not to fate. Not to visions. Not to anything.”

His fingers trail along the scar of frost and starlight carved into my left palm—our vow made in blood. Then he traces eight letters into it, slow and deliberate:

I love you.

My heart all but bursts with gratitude for him, and I turn his hand over, tracing the same words onto his scarred palm.

When I finish, he brings my hand to his lips and kisses the center, his eyes never leaving mine. There’s something wild in his gaze—something beautiful and broken, the kind of storm that only exists after love survives death.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he says, his voice dropping lower. “No matter what it costs. No matter what I have to do, or what I have to become.”

There’s something in the intensity of his gaze that sends a chill through me—not from his ice magic, but from what I feel radiating through our bond. Fear. Doubt. And a darker emotion I can’t quite name.

“Riven?” I reach out, tracing the sharp line of his jaw. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He blinks once, the mask of the Winter Prince sliding back into place so quickly it steals my breath away. “Nothing I want you to worry about,” he replies, clearly wanting to leave it at that .

But I feel it. Beneath the frost, the storm churns.

Without thinking, I lean in and kiss him. It’s tentative at first—a question without words—and I tug him closer, needing something solid to hold on to. Needing him .

For a heartbeat, he remains still. But then the wall crumbles, and his arms wrap around me, pulling me impossibly closer, his lips moving against mine with an urgency born of fear, need, and love.

When we break apart, his breathing is ragged, his eyes darker and wilder than before.

And for just a moment, I see him. Not the prince.

Not the warrior. Not the weapon. But the boy who lost his mother.

The one who watched his father descend into madness, and who has now taken the lives of those he once called friends—all to protect me.

“I won’t let you face this alone,” I whisper, resting my forehead against his. “Whatever’s coming, whatever you’re afraid of becoming—you don’t have to carry it by yourself.”

I slide my hands up his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady beneath my palm.

“It’s yours,” he says. “Our souls are fused, Sapphire. Every breath I take is yours. Every heartbeat belongs to you. As long as I’m alive, no god, no court, and no fate will ever take you from me again. ”

The storm still rages in his eyes, but now there’s heat crackling through it, too.

In response, I kiss him again. Harder. There’s no question this time. Only fire.

And then—something snaps.

His hands, usually so controlled, turn desperate as they slide beneath my nightdress with the sort of urgency that makes my body heat with desire.

Every touch sears. Every breath is shared.

And soon, we’re moving together in perfect rhythm, as if our bodies remember the dance, even when our minds are lost to fear and fate.

Magic builds between us—water and ice colliding, swirling up into a dome of shimmering beauty above the bed. Then it bursts, collapsing into a gentle rain that soaks the sheets, our hair, and our skin.

We’re drenched in magic. In each other. And it’s wonderfully, impossibly perfect.

“I love you,” Riven whispers against my skin. “You’re mine, Starlight. Always.”

I freeze. Not from fear, but because I feel the truth of the name through our bond. The way he’s held it in silence. The way it slipped free now, when he was too undone to stop it.

He lifts his head to meet my eyes, and there’s no smirk this time. No shield.

Just truth .

“That’s what you are to me,” he continues, brushing a damp strand of hair from my cheek.

“My Starlight. You always have been, ever since you navigated us through the Wandering Wilds by the stars. But,” he says, and the smirk returns, curling at the edges of something far too sincere, “if you’re still uncertain about my state of existence, I’m happy to demonstrate it again. And again. And again.”

My stomach flips, and I tilt my head thoughtfully, fingers skating across his shoulder. “It might be wise to test that theory at least one more time,” I tell him, feigning as much seriousness as possible. “For scientific purposes, of course.”

He leans closer, his voice a velvet whisper against my ear. “Then allow me to provide you with conclusive evidence.”

His mouth finds mine again, just as demanding, just as consuming.

I gasp as his hands slide down my sides, trailing intricate, freezing patterns of ice that bloom and melt against the heat of my skin.

My fingers tangle in his hair, dark silk beneath my palms, as I pull him closer, as if I could ever be close enough.

The kiss deepens, turning into something hungrier, something primal. Something not just about proving he’s alive, but about claiming that life. About feeling it burn between us, through us.

Ice meets water, pressure building like a tide beneath the skin. Riven groans softly into my mouth as I arch against him, his body pressing me down into the sheets, his magic wrapping around us like a storm kept barely at bay.

“I’ll never get enough of you,” he breathes between kisses. “Not in this life. Not in a thousand.”

My heart clenches, his words carving themselves into the deepest parts of me, right where my magic lives. Right where he lives.

And just as it crests again—just as our bodies align in that perfect rhythm?—

A knock.

We freeze.

Riven growls low in his throat, a sound of pure, feral annoyance. “If that’s Thorne, I’m freezing him into solid crystal,” he says, his forehead dropping to mine.

I try not to laugh, but I fail. “He might deserve it.”

“Your Highnesses?” A voice calls from the corridor—one of Lysandra’s attendants, bright and formal. “The Queen awaits you in the throne room. Preparations for your departure are nearly complete.”

Riven pulls back, groaning in frustration as frost creeps across the sheets. “We’ll be out shortly,” he calls, his voice controlled despite the coiled tension pulsing through our bond.

“Very well, Your Highness,” the attendant replies. “I’ll inform Her Majesty that you’ll be joining her within the hour.”

Riven flops back onto the pillows with an exaggerated sigh.

“Time moves far too quickly when you’re thoroughly convincing your wife that you’re still alive,” he says, his smirk curling as he stretches with intentional slowness, showcasing every unfairly perfect inch of himself like a weapon he knows he’s mastered.

Then, all lean muscle and devastating grace, he rises and crosses to the windowsill where the Stillpoint Compass rests.

“It’s recharged,” he says, satisfaction evident in his voice as he lifts the artifact, its dial glowing with a soft, pulsing light. Something about it makes his features look sharper, deadlier, and more impossibly beautiful. “The full moon did its work.”

I slide out of bed and join him at the window, looking at the compass but not touching it.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, quieter now. “Ready to leave for our mission?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be to walk into a mythical volcano with my devastatingly handsome husband,” I reply, letting my gaze shamelessly drink him in. “Although I can think of at least three better ways we could be spending this already incredible morning.”

“Only three?” Riven raises an eyebrow, frost patterns swirling around his fingertips as they trace my collarbone. “ I counted at least seven before we were interrupted.”

“Maybe you can explain seven more to me during the journey,” I suggest, fingers sliding down the smooth lines of his chest.

“In excruciating detail,” he promises, his silver eyes darkening. “Complete with practical demonstrations in our carriage.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

We stay there like that for a few seconds.

Then, somehow, we pull away from each other, and as I dress in my travel clothes, his fingers are cool against my skin as he helps me with the fastenings, his lips pressing against the nape of my neck in a way that makes me seriously consider being very, very late to the Queen’s audience.

“The sooner we save the world, the sooner we can get back to more important matters,” he says, pulling me against him one last time, his lips meeting mine in a kiss that’s equal parts promise and frustration.

When we part, I’m breathless, my water magic swirling in agitated patterns around us both. “That,” I say, pressing my palm against his chest, “is excellent motivation.”

He laughs, the sound melting through me like sunlight on snow. Then he steps back—just enough to offer me his arm .

“Ready, Starlight?” he asks, and my heart stutters, a smile blooming across my face.

That’s the second time. And this time, he says it like it’s the only name I’ve ever had.

“Always,” I reply, and I slip my hand through his arm, magic pulsing beneath my fingertips as we slowly—reluctantly—make our way out of our quarters and toward the throne room.