Page 29 of The Scars of War
I can't sleep. Riven is, or pretending to be anyway, stretched across the far side of the bed like he’s not still vibrating with everything we just did. I stare at the ceiling. The spirals carved into the black wood twist every time I blink. I see them when my eyes are closed, etched behind my lids like sigils I was born knowing but never taught.
The air feels different now. Not heavy and charged, but as if it’s thin. Like something’s stretching too far, trying to hold back what comes next, and failing.
I get up and pick up the shirt he gave me that’s puddled on the floor. My skin is still humming from the heat of him, from the scrape of his teeth, from the fire that never really left. I want the cold now. The sting. I want to feel my own goddamn heartbeat.
The hall is dark when I step out, but I don’t need the light. I know the way. My bare feet find marble, then stone, then something older. Older than him. Older than me. The air shifts as I move through it, like it’s watching. Like the mansion itself remembers what I’ve done. What I’ve become.
I don’t stop until I’m back in the hallway of glass. The cases don’t glow like they used to. They throb. Every artifact feels alive. Angry. The crown is still broken. The blade is still waiting. I walk past them all like they don’t scare me anymore. Because they don’t. What scares me is how familiar they feel.
Riven appears behind me like he was never gone. “Couldn’t sleep?” he murmurs, voice hoarse from fucking, and fury, and something he’s not naming yet. I don’t turn around. I stare into the cracked glass of the nearest display, a shattered crown under cold light. My reflection twists around the edges like it doesn’t belong to me anymore.
“I don’t want to hear that this is normal,” I say.
Riven’s voice comes low and careful. “It’s not.”
“Good.” I turn to face him. “Because I feel like I’m becoming something I don’t recognize.”
“You are.”
“And you’re still here.”
“Because I recognize it.”
“You think I’m afraid of Elias getting into my head?” I ask.
“He didn’t put something in there. He awoke what was already there.” Riven’s jaw flexes. I walk past him. Into the room. His war room. His reliquary of ruin.
“I don’t want comfort,” I say. “I don’t want caution. I want truth. And if that means you break me…” His voice cuts through the dark.
“Then I’ll make sure you survive it.” I stop walking. My pulse spikes, because for the first time, I believe him because he’s brutal enough to hold me together when I fall apart.
Riven doesn’t ask if I’m ready. He doesn’t need to. He just walks to the far wall of the room, presses his palm to a panel carved with a symbol I haven’t drawn yet but already know, and the door behind him clicks open. He steps inside, waiting. I walk past him without a word.Down into the dark. The staircase coils deep, cut from stone that feels older than time. The walls close in around us, lit only by the flicker of torches that shouldn’t exist in a place this modern.
“Welcome to the part of the mansion I don’t show anyone,” he says, following just behind me.
“You mean the dungeon?” I deadpan.
“I mean the place where the lies stop.” he replies, annoyance in his tone.
The air is cold. Something is off. It feels wrong. It buzzes at the edges like a phone about to ring, or a siren just out of earshot. Like something’s coming. Like something’s always been coming. When we reach the bottom, it hits me. The pressure, like gravity just doubled.
The room is circular. Black stone floor. Walls lined with mirrors, not reflecting what’s in front of them, but what’s just behind. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. My heartbeat stutters in my throat. “What the fuck is this place?”
“The archive.”
“Of what?”
“Everything that was. Everything that might be.”
The center of the room holds a pedestal, and on it, one thick ancient book, bound in cracked leather, sealed with iron clasps etched in runes I recognize but can’t read.
“You brought me to look at bedtime stories?” I mutter.
He moves to the book and unfastens the clasp with a single press of his hand. The air shifts again. The mirrors groan and the pages flutter open like they’ve been waiting for me.
I step forward, and the words change. Right there on the page. Letters I couldn’t read a second ago reshape. Refract. Twist until they make sense.
She who binds War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death shall unmake the End.
