Riven glanced at him. “You watching me for him?”
“Watching you forme,” Leron corrected bluntly. “If you crack, it’ll be my job to pick up the pieces.”
Riven stopped in front of a window overlooking the lower training yards. Below, two figures sparred. Blood marked one’sshirt. They moved like wind and shadow, a seamless dance of mirrored violence. Strong limbs sliced the air in perfect synchrony, their silver hair whipping like streamers behind them, catching the filtered daylight. Blades flashed—short, curved knives held in reverse grips that shimmered with a sheen of venom—and when steel met steel, it was with a sound more musical than martial. Like they were playing an instrument only the two of them understood.
“Who are they?”
Leron looked outside. “Ah, the twins. Street-born half-elves. Thane trained them himself. They’d kill for him. They have. As I said before, you’re not the first stray Thane collected.”
Then, without a word, one of them lunged high while the other swept low, and in an instant, they traded places midair. The motion was so smooth, it took Riven a beat to realize they’d flipped stances entirely, disarming and rearming themselves in one graceful arc. One knife slid across a throat that wasn’t there—dodged by a breath. The other carved a line so close to skin that hair drifted in its wake.
Riven said nothing, but his throat tightened.
“You think this house is dangerous,” Leron said quietly, “but you don’t really know yet. It’s not the walls that kill you.”
Riven looked down again, but his reflection stared back at him in the glass. Not quite the same as yesterday, more tired, more entangled.
“I’m not afraid of bleeding,” he said.
“Then you’ll fit right in.”
Leron didn’t press further. Just patted Riven’s shoulder once—too familiar, but not unkind—and disappeared back down the hall.
Riven stood there for a while, watching the twins train. It was like watching a pair of ghosts remember how to kill, and sent cold shivers down his spine.
He’d fought with killers, trained with them, survived them, but this was different. This wasn’t bloodlust. It was intimacy, choreographed, controlled, almost reverent. Like the kind of love only born from being shaped into weapons together.
He wondered if they spoke in words when no one was listening. Or if this was it—violence in place of language, edge in place of expression.
As the bout drew to a halt, their blades stopped in perfect opposition—one at the throat, one at the heart. Not touching. Just hovering.
A standoff no one won. No one lost.
And then one of them looked up at Riven. Eyes golden, flashing a smile like a blade.
He looked away.
By the time he made it back to his room, the lights had dimmed, the house settling into a deeper kind of quiet. Riven peeled off his shirt, let it drop, ran a hand through his still-damp hair.
But it didn’t help. His mind still looped.
Not just the debrief. Not the Soulglass.
Thane’s voice.You don’t get to pretend you didn’t enjoy it. And I won’t pretend I’m done with you.
Riven sat on the edge of the bed, stared at his hands.What are you becoming here?
But no one answered.
Chapter 12
The morning came too fast.
Riven woke to the taste of copper and sweat in his mouth, muscles stiff from yesterday’s mission—and maybe from the other thing he wasn’t thinking about. He dressed in silence, jaw tight, refusing to let his mind wander. Refusing to see the flash of heat in Thane’s eyes. The curl of his fingers around that glass wall.
The estate was quieter than he expected for mid-morning. There were people moving about the place occasionally, but they moved with a quiet efficiency, focused on their tasks.
He was halfway to nowhere in particular when a sharp whistle sliced the silence. He turned to find one of the twins leaning against a doorframe like he’d been waiting for him.
