Page 15 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

The Hunger in the Dark

I can't sleep. Riven is, or pretending to be anyway, stretched across the far side of the bed like he’s not still vibrating with everything we just did.

I stare at the ceiling. The spirals carved into the black wood twist every time I blink.

I see them when my eyes are closed, etched behind my lids like sigils I was born knowing but never taught.

The air feels different now. Not heavy and charged, but as if it’s thin. Like something’s stretching too far, trying to hold back what comes next, and failing.

I get up and pick up the shirt he gave me that’s puddled on the floor. My skin is still humming from the heat of him, from the scrape of his teeth, from the fire that never really left. I want the cold now. The sting. I want to feel my own goddamn heartbeat .

The hall is dark when I step out, but I don’t need the light. I know the way. My bare feet find marble, then stone, then something older. Older than him. Older than me. The air shifts as I move through it, like it’s watching. Like the mansion itself remembers what I’ve done. What I’ve become.

I don’t stop until I’m back in the hallway of glass.

The cases don’t glow like they used to. They throb.

Every artifact feels alive. Angry. The crown is still broken.

The blade is still waiting. I walk past them all like they don’t scare me anymore.

Because they don’t. What scares me is how familiar they feel.

Riven appears behind me like he was never gone.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he murmurs, voice hoarse from fucking, and fury, and something he’s not naming yet.

I don’t turn around. I stare into the cracked glass of the nearest display, a shattered crown under cold light.

My reflection twists around the edges like it doesn’t belong to me anymore.

“I don’t want to hear that this is normal,” I say.

Riven’s voice comes low and careful. “It’s not. ”

“Good.” I turn to face him. “Because I feel like I’m becoming something I don’t recognize.”

“You are.”

“And you’re still here.”

“Because I recognize it.”

“You think I’m afraid of Elias getting into my head?” I ask.

“He didn’t put something in there. He awoke what was already there.” Riven’s jaw flexes. I walk past him. Into the room. His war room. His reliquary of ruin.

“I don’t want comfort,” I say. “I don’t want caution. I want truth. And if that means you break me…” His voice cuts through the dark.

“Then I’ll make sure you survive it.” I stop walking. My pulse spikes, because for the first time, I believe him because he’s brutal enough to hold me together when I fall apart.

Riven doesn’t ask if I’m ready. He doesn’t need to.

He just walks to the far wall of the room, presses his palm to a panel carved with a symbol I haven’t drawn yet but already know, and the door behind him clicks open.

He steps inside, waiting. I walk past him without a word.

Down into the dark. The staircase coils deep, cut from stone that feels older than time.

The walls close in around us, lit only by the flicker of torches that shouldn’t exist in a place this modern.

“Welcome to the part of the mansion I don’t show anyone,” he says, following just behind me.

“You mean the dungeon?” I deadpan.

“I mean the place where the lies stop.” he replies, annoyance in his tone.

The air is cold. Something is off. It feels wrong. It buzzes at the edges like a phone about to ring, or a siren just out of earshot. Like something’s coming. Like something’s always been coming. When we reach the bottom, it hits me. The pressure, like gravity just doubled.

The room is circular. Black stone floor. Walls lined with mirrors, not reflecting what’s in front of them, but what’s just behind. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. My heartbeat stutters in my throat. “What the fuck is this place?”

“The archive.”

“Of what?”

“Everything that was. Everything that might be. ”

The center of the room holds a pedestal, and on it, one thick ancient book, bound in cracked leather, sealed with iron clasps etched in runes I recognize but can’t read.

“You brought me to look at bedtime stories?” I mutter.

He moves to the book and unfastens the clasp with a single press of his hand. The air shifts again. The mirrors groan and the pages flutter open like they’ve been waiting for me.

I step forward, and the words change. Right there on the page. Letters I couldn’t read a second ago reshape. Refract. Twist until they make sense.

She who binds War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death shall unmake the End.

Each will fall.

Each will feed the fire inside her.

And when the trumpet calls she will not run. She will answer.

The room vibrates and the mirrors fracture. Just hairline cracks, but they spread, spidering out like veins of warning. I stagger back. “What the fuck…”

“It’s you,” Riven says, voice low. “It always has been.”

No mask now. No mystery. Just a man who knew this truth would ruin me and brought me here anyway. “Why me?” He steps closer.

“Because the world doesn’t need a savior,” he says. “It needs a reckoning.”

When his gaze finds me, I realize he no longer sees a girl.

He sees the end. The moment I look toward him I feel it.

Something inside me uncoils, not like a snake waking up.

Like a blade being unsheathed. The mirrors groan again.

Low. Deep. Like thunder rolling through stone.

The cracks widen behind me, and I swear I see eyes in one of them.

Watching. Waiting. I don’t look away. Not this time.

I step closer to Riven, barefoot on the cold stone floor, body humming with fire and fear, and whatever the fuck Elias woke up in my head.

“Is this what you wanted?” I ask. He doesn’t answer.

He just watches me like I’ve already caught fire.

Like I am the fire. I press my palm flat to his chest, “Say it.”

“Say what? ”

“That you knew. That you’ve always known who I was. What I am.” His jaw tenses. “I didn’t want to believe it.” I drag my hand lower.

“Then believe it now.” He exhales like he’s trying not to burn.

“You’re not just waking up,” he says. “You’re feeding it. Every time you touch me, every time you take what you want, you’re giving it shape.”

“Good,” I whisper. “Let it take shape.” The silence between us snaps. He grabs me hard, hands on my hips, slamming me into him, not to hurt, but to own. “I could break you,” he says into my throat, voice gravely.

“You could try.”

He grabs me, slams me back against the cold edge of the pedestal. The book is still open beside us, prophecy breathing like a beast that just woke up. His hands bite into my thighs, and he leans in close, voice a weapon at my ear. “You want power?”

“Yes.”

“You want to play with fire?”

I smirk. “I want to burn. ”

His mouth brushes my neck. “Then let me feed the fire.” I grab him by the throat and kiss him like the answer is carved in blood.

He tastes like violence and prophecy and every bad decision I want to make twice.

His hands tighten on my hips like he wants to slam me into the wall and fuck the life out of me, but I don’t let him.

I twist. Push. Force him back. “Sit,” I growl.

His brow lifts, that slow smile curving like a blade.

“You’re giving orders now?”

“No,” I whisper, climbing into his lap as he stumbles back into the throne-like stone chair behind the altar. “I’m taking what’s mine.”

He doesn’t fight me when I fully straddle him or when I reach between us and drag his belt open and through the loops with one sharp pull.

Not even when I shove his pants low enough to free his cock, already thick and hard and flushed deep.

“I could snap your neck,” he murmurs. I grind against him, slow and deliberate.

My bare cunt sliding along the length of him like a threat.

“Then do it.” His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t move.

He’s not in charge anymore .

I grip the base of his cock, lift just enough, and sink down onto him with one smooth motion that makes my entire body scream.

He groans…deep, raw, punched out of him like I just knocked the breath from his lungs “Fuck.” I smile.

Because I feel the stretch, the thickness, and the power.

The tremble in his control. The way he holds the arms of the throne like he’s trying not to break them.

“Lux…”

“Shut up,” I whisper, grinding my hips in a slow, punishing circle.

“You said you wanted me to wake up. You didn’t say what I’d do once I did.

” His hands come up to my waist, fingers digging in like he’s trying to anchor himself.

I ride him slowly. Deep. Just enough to tease the edge of madness without tipping it.

“I’ve fucked you,” I pant, rocking harder now.

“I’ve let you take me. Ruin me. Burn me.

You’ve never seen what I look like when I take.

” He groans again, this time sharply. Like he hates how much he loves this.

I bounce faster, thighs tightening around him, his cock sliding deeper, hitting places that make me want to scream.

I don’t. Not yet. I hold it. I make him wait .

“You like watching?” I ask, hand curling around the back of his neck as I fuck myself down onto him.

“Then watch me.” His eyes are fucking feral now, pupils blown, lips parted, breath ragged.

He tries to take control. Tries to slam his hips up into me.

I pin his chest with one hand and push him back down.

“No,” I hiss. “You don’t get to lead this dance. ”

“Goddamn, Lux…”

“Say it.” He snarls, and I repeat it again. “Say it.”

“You’re mine.”

I slam down on him so hard it knocks the breath out of both of us. “Wrong.” I grind. “Try again.” He locks eyes with me, voice raw and reverent.

“You’re fucking divine.”

He reaches between us, thumb pressing tight against my clit, rubbing fast, and filthy, and perfect. I explode around him, screaming his name. My body jerks, vision goes white. Cumming so hard, clenching around him, riding it out like I’m taking the world down with me.

And he loses it. Riven growls my name, hands gripping my hips like they’re the last thing tethering him to this world.

He thrusts up into me once. Twice. Then stills.

Hot and full and spilling inside me with a groan that sounds like a man giving himself up.

He thinks I’m his, and maybe I am. I know at this moment he’s mine.

I collapse forward against his chest, still pulsing, still trembling, still gasping like I just came back from the edge of something holy. We don’t speak. Not for a long moment. He strokes a hand down my spine. “I should’ve known,” he murmurs.

“Known what?”

He tilts his head, breath still hot against my throat. “You weren’t made to be taken.” I lift my head.

“No,” I whisper. “I was made to take.”

I don’t move. Not at first. I sit there in his lap, still trembling, still slick, my breath catching on the ghost of that last thrust, that final kiss of violence between my thighs. My body sings with it—the heat, the ache, the high of owning him.

His hands are still on me. They’ve gone still.

Like he’s listening. Like something just shifted.

I blink. Swallow. My pulse starts to stutter in my ears.

“Riven?” He doesn’t answer. Not right away.

His gaze is fixed on something past me, his body is coiled beneath mine like he’s waiting to strike, but not at me. Through me.

Then I feel it. The air bends and warps.

A low hum crawls up from the floor beneath us, through the stone, into my spine.

I shudder from the recognition of something behind the veil seeing me and smiling.

The mirrors along the wall begin to vibrate, softly, and just enough for the sound to curl under my skin.

The mirror bends inward. The pressure shifts—my ears pop, my pulse surges.

Behind the glass, Elias is watching us. He physically isn’t fully there.

He is just a silhouette with a glint of pale hair, the sharp line of wire-rimmed glasses, and the edge of a white coat.

It’s him. I know it like I know the sound of my own name in someone else’s mouth.

My whole body goes still. He lifts a hand.

And presses it against the inside of the mirror.

Like he’s touching it from the other side.

Like he’s testing the barrier. The glass fogs under his palm.

Black veins crawl outward, spidering across the surface like frost in reverse.

A word slowly seeps through the center as if it’s bleeding from the inside out.

NECROSE.

It pulses once. Twice. Then disappears .

The mirror silently implodes. Like the air just swallowed it whole.

All the torches snuff out. The book slams shut on the altar.

And then silence, dark and breathless. Like the whole world just inhaled and forgot how to let go.

Riven moves first. He grabs me by the wrist and pulls me back, out of the center of the room. His hand trembles.

Riven’s hand trembles. That’s when I understand. This wasn’t just a warning; it was a message. He saw us. He saw me . And he liked what he saw. And somewhere behind the shattered glass…something else was watching too.