Page 54 of The Scars of War
“They don’t have to be.”
The silence stretches. I press my hand to my chest. My heart’s still racing. Still trying to outrun what’s inside me now. “I thought this bond, what we did, it was ours.”
“It is,” he says. “The second you gave yourself to me, you became visible to the others. The door opened. And now they see you.”
“I didn’t invite them in.”
“You don’t have to.”
I swallow hard. Riven leans forward, elbows on the table, voice low, quiet, and made of smoke. “You think you’re being haunted. This isn’t haunting, Lux. This is hunger. This is what it means to be seen by the Horsemen. You’re not prey. You’re a beacon. And now they want to know if you’ll burn for them, too.”
I can’t look at him. I stare at my hands instead—scarred, pink, trembling.
“What if I say no?”
He doesn’t hesitate.
“Then you’ll tear yourself in half.”
My laugh is bitter. Ugly.
“So those are my choices? Be claimed. Or be destroyed.”
Riven’s gaze sharpens.
“No. Your choice is whether you do it piece by piece…or whether you take the whole fire into your chest and make it your fucking throne.”
Something twists in my gut. It’s not rage or fear. It’s want.
Dark, slow, and settling. The kind of want that doesn’t feel like a decision. It feels like inevitability.
My voice drops. “What happens when I bond to the next one?”
“You’ll feel him,” Riven says. “Inside your blood. Just like you felt me.”
“And if I fight it?”
“Then you’ll bleed,” he says. “But not in the way you think.”
“And if I don’t fight?”
He smiles. “Then you’ll begin to understand what you are.”
21
The Veil Breaks
The estate is too quiet. It’s the kind of silence that suggests everything important has already been said, and none of it was good.
I’ve been walking for what feels like hours, barefoot across cold marble and ancient rugs, tracing hallways I don’t recognize. Riven’s mansion is massive, unnaturally so, like the bones of it shift behind your back when you’re not looking. It doesn’t feel like a house; it feels like a mausoleum built for gods who never showed up.
I told him I needed space. And for once, he listened.
He didn’t even argue when I slid off the bed this morning and walked away, body still wrecked, skin marked from the night before. He just watched me go with that look, like he knew I wouldn’t stay gone for long. Like he trusted me to come back when I was ready.
I don’tknow if I will.
Because something’s wrong. And it’s not just me. It’s in me.
