The Disc cuts through the air with blinding speed, trailing not just stardust, but a combination of blue and yellow magic—ice, water, and air.
It strikes her in the heart, and her normally empty eyes widen as cracks spread across her form, light spilling from within. She staggers, reaching toward me with one hand, and then sheshattersinto obsidian dust that scatters across the platform, flecks of it blowing into the magma below.
My platform stabilizes, the edges solidifying as the magma recedes.
Glimmercut returns to my hand, humming with satisfied energy.
“I know who I am,” I whisper to my deadly, gleaming weapon. “I’m Princess Sapphire Hayes Fairmont Solandriel Draevor of the Summer and Winter Courts, the New York Vampire Clan, and the chosen Star Touched warrior of Celeste—and I choose my own destiny.”
RIVEN
My stomach lurchesas my platform rises, separating me from Sapphire and Thalia.
When it stops, I’m facing an obsidian throne covered in frost that shouldn’t be possible in this infernal heat. Sitting upon it, watching me with silver eyes so like my own, is the Lonely King from the vision in the Cosmic Tides.
But here, in this chamber, his face is lined with cruelty rather than emptiness. His eyes are flat and dead, holding cold calculation and absolute power. And his crown isn’t one of ice. Instead, it’s made of sharp, obsidian daggers that gleam like death in the fiery chamber around us.
In his hand, he holds a blade the same size as mine. Dark blood drips from its edge, sizzling as it falls to thestone, and shadows dance along its length like living things.
“Is this supposed to scare me?” I ask, ice crawling over my own blade. “Some twisted reflection to make me doubt myself?”
The Lonely King doesn’t respond. He simply stands, his movements unnaturally fluid, and steps down from his throne.
Magic surges through me, and I charge forward, Frostbite aimed at his heart. My strike is perfect—the culmination of decades of Winter Court training—but he parries it effortlessly, his corrupted blade meeting mine with a sound like breaking glass.
“Too predictable,” he finally speaks, his voice a hollow echo of my own. “You always were.”
His tone, his words… it’s like hearing my father speak to me, before the potion stabilized his mind.
But I won’t let him derail me. I can’t. I was victorious against my father in the Frost Arena, and I can be victorious against the Lonely King, too.
So, I press the attack, channeling more ice into my strikes, turning the air around us frigid despite the volcanic heat.
Each blow is met with equal force, each strategy countered before I can execute it. It’s like fighting my own shadow—one that knows my every move before Imake it. Because hedoesknow my every move. He’s made of every decision I’ve made. Every silent calculation. Every deadly blow.
And the more power I pour into my attacks, the stronger he grows.
“You can’t win through strength,” the Lonely King says, deflecting another attack with contemptuous ease. “I’m everything you were trained to be. Everything you still could be, if you abandon your biggest weakness.”
He glances at Sapphire, who’s fighting her shadow self with her starlit beauty that I love with my entire soul.
As if he can read my mind, he laughs—a cold, empty sound that shakes me to the core.
“I’m your future, Riven,” he says. “The only possible outcome for a Winter Prince who thought he could defy nature. You may have stopped time, but you didn’t stopme.”
Stopped time.
Executed my guards while they were frozen.
Didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Didn’t feel anything more than my undying need to save her—my Starlight, the only thing that matters anymore. The only thing I won’t let myself lose.
“You’re wrong,” I growl, and I lunge again, channeling water and ice together in a technique Sapphire and I developed after our souls fused.
Surprise flickers across the Lonely King’s face, and his parry comes a fraction too late, Frostbite slicing across his forearm.
Darkness spills from the wound, returning to solid form almost immediately.
His expression hardens.