Page 26 of The Scars of War (Of Ruin and Fire #1)

Everything I’ve been holding, every scream I swallowed, every warning I ignored, every bruise on my soul I painted over with sarcasm and cheap bourbon.

It all starts pouring out at once. Like the bond with Riven didn’t just mark me, it opened me.

Peeled the armor off with a blade and left me bleeding under it.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I whisper.

“That’s because the version of you who didn’t know the truth is gone. ”

I don’t answer. I can’t.

He shifts and pulls me up into his lap like I’m made of nothing, settling back against the cracked wall behind us.

I end up sideways, straddling one of his thighs, my chest against his.

His jacket is gone. His shirt’s unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled, forearms bare and lined with old scars I want to trace with my tongue.

But not now. This isn’t that moment.

His palm presses flat between my shoulder blades, urging my body to stay close, to feel. Not to hide. Not to run. Not this time. “I can feel it,” I say after a while. My voice is hoarse. “Like…the bond. Still alive. Still burning.”

“Of course it is. You didn’t close the door.”

I lift my head enough to look at him. His eyes are a storm of gold and shadow. “What door?”

“The one between you and everything that’s always been waiting.”

My chest tightens. “You mean you?”

He smiles, honestly. “No. I mean us.” When he says this, I flinch.

“You think it’s just me, Lux? Just one man playing God with a ceremonial blade and a house full of weapons?

” He reaches up, dragging his fingers through the sweaty mess of my hair before resting them lightly at my neck.

His thumb brushes the edge of my jaw. “This bond, it’s not mine.

I didn’t create it. I didn’t make you bleed. ”

“You asked me to.”

“I gave you a choice. You said yes.”

His tone doesn’t apologize or try to justify. It just is. And he’s right. I did say yes. I offered myself on the edge of a blade and meant it. The weight of that sinks like a body dropped into water. Cold. Final.

“I don’t want to be a weapon,” I whisper.

“Too late.” He shifts again, this time to face me fully.

His leg moves beneath me, and I straddle his lap without thinking, thighs on either side of his hips, knees bent against the ruined floor.

He holds me there, hands resting low on my back, not guiding but inviting.

“You don’t get to choose what you are,” he says, voice low. “Only what you do with it.”

“And what if I make the wrong choice?”

“Then you’ll burn,” I just stare at him. “But I’ll burn with you. ”

The words land between us like the echo of something inevitable. And I hate how badly I want to believe them. How part of me already does. He lifts a hand and brushes a single finger over my mouth. “You scare me,” I say.

He leans in, close enough that I feel his breath in the hollow between my collarbones. “Good.”

I laugh, a small, ugly sound, and then I’m crying again. Quiet, brutal tears that slip down my face without my permission. I bury my face in his neck and breathe him in, smoke and leather and the faint metallic tang of blood.

His arms tighten. He doesn’t tell me it’s okay. Doesn’t tell me to be strong. He just holds me like I’m not broken glass, like I’m allowed to come apart, like this moment…is what the bond was truly for.

I close my eyes. And I let myself fall into him, heart open, skin buzzing, body heavy with power, and grief, and need.

I don’t mean to speak. The words just come. Low. Barely audible. The shape of them worn and smooth from being carried in silence for too long. “I’ve done this before. ”

Riven is still.. His hand stays flat on my back, the other tracing lazy, grounding circles at the base of my spine. His silence doesn’t feel like waiting, it feels like permission.

I curl my fingers tighter into the fabric of his shirt.

The words taste like ash. “I was fourteen,” I say.

“It was spring. I remember because my mom had just planted marigolds outside the kitchen window, and she made me help. Said it would teach me patience.” A breath catches in my throat.

I let it. “My little brother was playing with this plastic lightsaber, trying to fight the dog. He was making those sound effects with his mouth, and the dog kept barking every time he swung it. It was loud. Normal. Stupid, warm, and good.”

My eyes sting. I blink and keep going. “I remember standing by the fridge. The door was open. I was just staring at the light inside, completely zoned out. I think I was mad about something, maybe a fight with my mom. I don’t even remember why.

Just that I felt this pressure. This buzz in the air. Like everything had gone tight. ”

Riven’s hand moves up, fingers threading into the sweaty mess of my hair, the touch light but anchoring. I lean into it.

“I told myself I was imagining it. That I was being dramatic. The lights started to flicker. The room got…hot. Too hot for spring. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Like the air was choking me from the inside.

” I swallow hard. “So I stepped out onto the back porch. Just to get some air. Just to cool off. And then…” My voice breaks.

I close my eyes. “I heard the scream.” Riven stiffens beneath me but doesn’t interrupt.

“I turned around, and the kitchen window was glowing. Orange. Red. The curtains were already on fire. I…I ran back inside, but the smoke hit me like a wall. Thick and black and heavy, like it didn’t want me to come any closer.

” I press my fist against my mouth, trying to muffle the sob that wants out.

“I called their names. Over and over. It was like I was underwater. Everything felt wrong. The air buzzed in my ears, and I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t even get past the living room. The heat peeled the skin off my hands just trying to open the hallway door. ”

Riven’s grip tightens, arms around my middle now, his chest pressed to my back like he’s trying to hold my body together from the outside in.

“I remember falling,” I whisper. “Someone dragged me out. One of the neighbors, I think. He had a wet rag over his mouth. He kept saying my name. All I could do was scream. Because I could still hear them inside.” My voice collapses into silence. The weight of it hangs thick in the room.

“They never made it out,” I say. “There was…nothing left. The coroner found pieces of my mom’s wedding ring in the hallway. That’s how they identified her.”

I don’t realize I’m shaking until Riven moves again, shifting so that I’m fully straddling his lap, knees against the floor, my body caged between his and the cold wall behind him. His hand comes up to cup the back of my neck, thumb moving in slow circles over the tender spot just behind my ear.

His voice is low. Rough. “You think you caused it.” I don’t answer. “You think it started with you,” he says again. “That the power inside you broke loose and killed everyone you loved. ”

My throat aches. “Isn’t that what just happened here?”

“No,” he says. “That wasn’t fire. That was raw instinct. That was you finally waking up.”

I pull back far enough to look him in the eye. “And what if I’m wrong? What if I did cause it back then?”

“Then someone else used your power against you.” His gaze doesn’t waver. It drills into me, sharp and unyielding. “You were a child,” he says. “Unbound. Unaware. And someone knew that.”

I stare at him, and something unspoken passes between us. Not comfort. Not forgiveness.

A truth.

We slowly stand and move to the booth where I sit slumped, shoulders curled forward like I’m trying to protect something that’s already been taken.

My fingers are splayed across the sticky surface of the table, but I can’t feel it.

Not really. Everything feels distant. Like my body’s here, but the rest of me is still somewhere inside the whiteout, drifting through the ash, through the wreckage, through what used to be me.

Across from me, Riven doesn’t speak .

He leans back in the shadows, one arm resting along the torn vinyl of the booth.

His legs are spread, loose and relaxed like he didn’t just watch me detonate.

Like he hasn’t spent the last hour holding my gasoline-soaked soul in his hands.

His gaze doesn’t move from mine. He watches me like he always does, measured, careful, like he’s reading the language of my undoing in real time.

It should piss me off. But it doesn’t.

Because beneath that stillness, I can feel it. That hum. That pull. The bond is still hot between us, a thread of heat coiled low in my belly. It’s different now, less of a spark, more of a throb like it’s settled in my marrow, waiting.

My breath shudders out.

“I thought the fire would end something.”

The words come out before I can catch them. They fall flat in the air between us and hang there like smoke. Riven watches me across the table, eyes unreadable. “What fire?” he asks. Not because he doesn’t know, but because he wants me to say it.

I glance down at my hands. Still faintly shaking.

Still coated in the memory of power I haven’t begun to understand.

“This one,” I whisper as I point at my chest. “What just happened. Back there on the floor. The heat. The whiteout. The way everything cracked open. I thought it would burn itself out. I thought that when it was over, I’d feel empty.

Clean. Finished.” I drag in a breath. It catches. “But I don’t. I feel…”

“Ruined?” he offers.

I shake my head. “Ready.”

His mouth twitches. It isn’t quite a smile but something darker. Something reverent. “It didn’t end you,” he says. “It began you.”

I look up. And that’s when he gives it to me. The line that will stay with me longer than his touch. “Fire doesn’t erase the forest, Lux,” he says, voice low, rough, like something sacred. “It clears the way.”

I lean back, closing my eyes for a second too long. And that’s when I feel them. Not memories. Not dreams. Presences, threads of something deeper than thought brushing against the edge of my consciousness.

The first one is cold. Clinical. Precision honed to a blade so fine it slices without pain, until it’s already too deep. It slides behind my ribs like a scalpel. Cold hands. Cold eyes. Cold intention.

Elias.

His presence is exact. Sterile. I can almost feel the way he catalogues the damage, makes note of the fractures, and measures my pulse from a distance.

It doesn’t feel cruel. But it’s not kind.

He’s watching me like a specimen under glass, trying to understand what I’ll become if I’m left to grow wild.

My breath falters.

The next wave is heavier. Not physical. Not even warm. Just…inevitable.

Like a shadow in a hallway, I never noticed until it moved. It doesn’t press. It waits. Still. Soundless. I don’t see him, but I know, somewhere beyond the veil, he’s already seen me.

Vale.

Death.

He feels like an echo. Like silence after something sacred. He’s not touching me, but he’s there. The moment I let my guard drop, I know I’ll feel his breath against the back of my neck. I know he’ll speak my name like he’s always known it.

And then there’s him.

The third.

Different from the others.

Famine.

The moment his presence brushes against mine, my stomach twists.

My mouth goes dry. The air feels rich, and sweet, and rotten, like fruit left too long in the sun.

There’s something fluid about the way his awareness slithers under my skin, sticky, and sinuous.

and satisfied. He isn’t curious. He’s already decided how I’ll taste. I snap my eyes open.

Riven watches me without a word, but I can see the shift in his expression, the faint tightening around his mouth. He knows.

“I can feel them,” I whisper.

“I know.”

“All of them.”

“They’re not all here.”

“They don’t have to be. ”

The silence stretches. I press my hand to my chest. My heart’s still racing. Still trying to outrun what’s inside me now. “I thought this bond, what we did, it was ours.”

“It is,” he says. “The second you gave yourself to me, you became visible to the others. The door opened. And now they see you.”

“I didn’t invite them in.”

“You don’t have to.”

I swallow hard. Riven leans forward, elbows on the table, voice low, quiet, and made of smoke.

“You think you’re being haunted. This isn’t haunting, Lux.

This is hunger. This is what it means to be seen by the Horsemen.

You’re not prey. You’re a beacon. And now they want to know if you’ll burn for them, too. ”

I can’t look at him. I stare at my hands instead—scarred, pink, trembling.

“What if I say no?”

He doesn’t hesitate.

“Then you’ll tear yourself in half.”

My laugh is bitter. Ugly.

“So those are my choices? Be claimed. Or be destroyed. ”

Riven’s gaze sharpens.

“No. Your choice is whether you do it piece by piece…or whether you take the whole fire into your chest and make it your fucking throne.”

Something twists in my gut. It’s not rage or fear. It’s want.

Dark, slow, and settling. The kind of want that doesn’t feel like a decision. It feels like inevitability.

My voice drops. “What happens when I bond to the next one?”

“You’ll feel him,” Riven says. “Inside your blood. Just like you felt me.”

“And if I fight it?”

“Then you’ll bleed,” he says. “But not in the way you think.”

“And if I don’t fight?”

He smiles. “Then you’ll begin to understand what you are.”