Page 24 of Stolen Star

His fingers lift, hovering near my cheek, his eyes so torn that I can’t help myself from leaning forward.

“If I touch you, I won’t be able to stop.” He pulls away, and he blinks once, something shuttering behind his eyes. A door closing on whatever vulnerability I’d glimpsed there moments before.

Then, without a word, he turns away from me. His movements are slow and deliberate, as if each requires immense concentration, and frost trails in his wake,spreading across the floor with each step he takes toward the door.

He doesn’t look back.

The moment he’s gone, the chill in the air vanishes. But while my body is physically warming, the cold is bone deep. It settles in my chest, right where my heart continues to beat. Steady, human, andmortal.

As I look around at the frost melting in the room—beautiful and deadly like Aerix himself—I wonder if I’ve finally gone too far. If this is the beginning of the end, or perhaps, the end of the beginning.

I don’t know.

But either way, there’s no going back now.

SAPPHIRE

She—theother me—stands above Riven and Zoey’s broken bodies, dagger in hand, burning torch in the other. Blood darkens her dress, turning it from sapphire blue to a sickening black. Her eyes remain hollow, devoid of remorse or humanity.

“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, tiltingher 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—myeyes—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 withoutwarning. 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 notletting you go. Not to fate. Not to visions. Not toanything.”

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