Page 77 of Midnight Star

“There,” I say, pointing past the trees. “There’s a stream that way.”

Riven raises a brow, evaluating me. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Then lead the way, Asset,” he says, and I scowl at him, turn, and let my magic guide me forward, taking a small bit of pleasure in the fact that his only logical choice is to follow.

Sapphire

As we follow the stream,Riven returns to “strategy mode”—cool, detached, and devoid of the heat from our argument at the tree.

Despite how tempting it was to give in back there, I’m proud of myself for resisting. Because I can’t be intimate with Riven unless his entire heart is in it.

Anything less would break mine too much in the process. More than it already has, which given how much it hurts right now, would be unbearable.

“We need to be careful how we approach the queen,” he says, barely looking at me as he talks. “Lysandra is pragmatic, but she won’t be easily manipulated. She’ll listen, but only if we present the situation in a way that benefits her. Any sign of weakness, and she’ll turn us away—or worse, use us to her advantage.”

I nod absently, fine to let him talk this through tohimself. After all, he’s the expert in court politics here—not me.

His pace quickens. “Are you listening to me?” he snaps, stopping me in my path.

“Yes,” I snap right back at him, anger rushing through me too quickly for me to push it down. “Far more than you listened to me when I was reminding you who you were before you sold your love for me to a dryad.”

He exhales, slow and deliberate, as if trying to force patience into his body. “You need to stop clinging onto something that doesn’t exist,” he says. “It’s distracting you. Making you weak. The best thing you can do for yourself to ensure you’re not a liability is to move on from whatever fantasy you’ve built in your head and accept that I don’t love you.”

“Love isn’t a liability.” I step toward him, my magic brimming just beneath my skin—a reminder of the power I hold here.

“It is when it makes you distracted.” His eyes harden, and he doesn’t back down. “Is that what you want, Sapphire? To be so distracted by this fantasy of me loving you that it gets both of us killed?”

I stand there, frozen, my breath shallow, my fingers curled into fists.

And then—everything shifts.

The air thickens, pressing in around us, coilingaround my ribs and squeezing the breath from my lungs. The forest, once so alive and vibrant, goes silent. No rustling leaves. No chirping insects. Even the water in the stream stills, as if time itself has stopped.

Riven goes rigid, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of his sword as he scans the trees. But I can already see the tension in his jaw—the quiet calculation of a predator who realizes he might not be the most dangerous thing here.

Then, the air ripples, like the fabric of the world itself is unraveling.

And, out of that ripple, steps a man.

Tall, broad-shouldered, and golden-haired, that magic radiating from him is so strong I can taste it. It’s heady and intoxicating, like the first rush of pleasure before a fatal drop. I want to relish in it—to be comforted in its seductive warmth.

I’m not even bothered by the bow he’s holding in one hand, and the quiver of arrows strapped to his back. Because he’s so perfect—his face carved like a statue of some long-forgotten deity—that he’s clearly benevolent.

However, Riven must not feel the same, because he draws his sword.

“Come any closer, and you’ll regret bringing arrows to a sword fight,” he says, although the man simply laughs—a sound that wraps around me like a soft embrace.

As he does, magic surges around us, creating a dome of golden energy that seals the three of us inside. It’s like a perfectly smooth, giant igloo, although unlike an igloo, there’s no obvious way out.

Ice crackles along the length of Riven’s blade, thin and delicate, but the heat in the air is already melting it.

“I wouldn’t recommend that, Winter Prince,” the man says. “Despite your talents, fighting a god usually doesn’t end well. And lucky for you, I’m not here to kill either of you.”

Riven’s grip tightens on his sword, his eyes locked onto the man—thegod—with pure, lethal focus.

However, even though this god just trapped us in a prison of magic, the aura rolling off him is alluring. Ancient. Divine.

---