It was something worse. “Yerin,” he said.
Yerin’s laugh rang out in the narrow room, sharp and joyless, a brittle rasp scraped raw by years of hatred. “It feels so good to finally be myself again,” he murmured, his voice low and brimming with venom.
Thane’s hand twitched, instinctively ready to strike, but Yerin raised a single finger. Instantly, the air snapped taut. Magic coiled through the room like wire drawn to tension, static buzzing across Riven’s skin. He could feel the sigils woven into the walls, buried in the stone. Ancient spells, humming with the kind of power you couldn’t see but could taste—metallic and fatal.
“Don’t be stupid,” Yerin said, tone almost bored. “This room is layered with wards. You so much as think about lunging, and they’ll light you up from the inside out. I made sure of it.”
He turned, slow and deliberate, until his eyes landed on Riven. “Do you understand what’s happening here?”
Riven said nothing. His jaw was locked too tight to speak.
Yerin gave a disappointed sigh. “I should’ve expected as much. Half-breed.”
Thane snarled, but Yerin barely glanced his way. He paced with easy calm across the bloodstained floor, as though the chains and dried streaks on the walls were decoration.
“There was once a boy,” he began, voice level and distant. “Sixteen. The heir to a respectable House. Not one of the Greats, but not a nobody either. House Mecari. Wealthy. Clever. With a talent for pulling strings from the shadows.”
He glanced back, lips curling into something that might have once been a smile. “We backed the Hollow Hand before anyone realized what they were becoming. We funded ideas—radical, beautiful ones—meant to change this city. But that made us dangerous, didn’t it?”
He stopped pacing. His eyes fixed on Thane. “And then one night, you came. You and your fucking war band.”
Riven could see Thane’s expression harden.
Yerin stepped forward, the rhythm of his words rising with heat. “You broke in before dawn. Killed the guards. Slaughtered the servants. You moved through my house like a plague. I saw you, Thane Virellien. I saw you cut down my father. I heard my mother scream.”
His voice cracked, just barely.
“And when you came for my little brother,” Yerin hissed, “I fought. I tried. But you broke me. I was still breathing when you carved him open and left his body beside mine.”
The silence that followed was dense and suffocating.
Thane’s voice came low, bitter. “House Mecari funded terrorists. You kept the Hollow Hand alive. Killing you was necessary.”
Yerin’s composure fractured. He lunged a step forward, eyes blazing. “Necessary?” he shouted. “What did he do? He was eight! He had a stuffed bear in one hand and a storybook in the other!”
Riven flinched. The air trembled with residual magic, alive with fury.
Yerin’s breathing came fast and shallow. “What crime did he commit, Thane? Being born in the wrong House?”
For a moment, no one spoke. The lights flickered slightly overhead, cheap fluorescents struggling to hold steady.
Riven’s heart pounded. He didn’t want to feel anything for this man—but for a flicker of a moment, he did. Not for the one in front of him, but for the boy he had once been.
It wasn’t enough.
The boy was gone. Burned away. All that remained was this.
Yerin straightened, smoothing the front of his coat. When he next spoke, his voice was cool again. Detached.
“I’ve spent ten years planning this. Ten years building trust, infiltrating your people, watching your House rot behind its gilded walls.”
He smiled, all teeth.
“And now, I have a way in. The gate will open from within. The wards will fail. Your defenses will collapse like paper in the rain. By dawn, House Virellien will be nothing but ash.”
Thane didn’t move.
Yerin’s eyes glittered with satisfaction. “Your guards won’t stop me. Your family won’t survive. The Matriarch, wherever she’s hiding—she won’t even see it coming.”
