Page 59 of The Scars of War
I stare at it, unmoving. Until I feel the shift, it’s not the creak of the door or the press of footsteps, it’s the weight. The gravity in the room changes like a storm front rolling in. A presence I’d know even in the dark, Riven.
He steps into the room like it hurts to look at me. Like he’s afraid he’ll find something else in my place. His eyesscan the shadows. Land on me. And stop. His mouth doesn’t move. Not at first. Something shifts behind his eyes, a crack in the armor, a silent kind of grief. The kind reserved for things you can’t stop from dying. I don’t say his name. I don’t have to.
He moves slowly. Controlled. That feral energy is simmering just below the surface, but leashed. Like I’m something unholy and terrible now, and he’s unsure which side of me will speak first. “You screamed,” he says finally. His voice is lower than usual. Stripped down. There’s no fire in it—only ash.
I drag my knees up to my chest. Let the blanket fall from my shoulders. “Did I?”
He nods once, stepping farther into the room. “I felt it. From the other side of the house. It shook the foundation.”
“It wasn’t pain,” I murmur.
“No. It wasn’t.” He stops at the edge of the bed, like there’s a line there he’s not sure he’s allowed to cross. I tilt my head. Study him.
“Were you afraid I wouldn’t come back?”
“I was afraid you would.” He exhales sharply like the truth cost him something. Like it burned on the way out.
My throat is tight. The pull of something still clawing through me. Not Oblivion. Not yet. Just the echo of it. “I didn’t want this,” I say quietly.
“No,” he says, stepping closer. “You survived it. You don’t come back from that unchanged.”
“I don’t feel merely changed. I feel…rewritten.”
“That’s what power does.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s what knowing does.”
He moves then, slowly and surely, until he’s kneeling in front of the bed. I could cry if I had anything left to give. Tears would make this softer, and nothing about what’s left inside me is soft. He lifts one hand. Reaches toward mine. Hesitates. I offer it anyway. Palm up. Glowing.
His thumb brushes the center of the mark, slow and reverent. His brows draw together, and I watch as a flicker of fear…real, honest fear crosses his face. He doesn’t pull away. “What is it?” I ask, barely breathing.
He meets my gaze. “It’s not a sigil,” he murmurs. “It’s something older. It doesn’t mark you as one of us.”
“What does it mark me as, then?”
He’s quieted a beat too long. His words should unnerve me. They don’t.
Because the part of me that should be afraid isn’t in control anymore, it’s been devoured, not by him, not by the thing in the vault, but by me. Something ancient and bone-deep that’s finally opened its eyes.
I shift forward. Riven doesn’t move. Not when I place my hand flat against his chest. Not when I press him back against the edge of the bed frame. Not when I swing a leg over his lap and settle onto him with the slow certainty of a storm that doesn’t need to announce itself.
I sit there, straddling him, eyes locked on his, my hands planted on his chest. I feel the tight rise and fall of his breathing beneath my palms. Fast. Controlled. Barely. “You keep looking at me like I might disappear,” I say softly.
“I’m not afraid you’ll disappear,” he murmurs. “I’m afraid I already lost you.”
“You didn’t lose me.” I lean in until my mouth brushes the corner of his. “You just don’t get to keep me the same way anymore.”
His eyes flash. That possessive, barely caged violence is simmering just beneath the surface. He doesn’t speak or move. Because he knows what this is. Knows it’s mine now.
I kiss him. Slow at first. Then deeper. Tongue curling into his mouth, teeth dragging across his lower lip. I bite hard enough to leave heat behind and pull back just enough to watch him breathe. “You want me like this?” I ask.
He swallows hard. “I want all of you.”
“Even this version?”
“Especially this version.”
I grin, something feral and filthy. “Good.”
