Then Thane’s jaw clenched again.
“I owe half of who I am to him,” he said, the warmth draining from his voice. “Everything good in me—everything that’s loyal, disciplined, dangerous—that’s him.”
“And the other half?” Riven asked, even though he thought he knew the answer.
Thane’s voice went sharp. Cold.
“That’s the Hollow Hand. For what they took from me.”
The temperature in the car seemed to drop.
“They didn’t just kill him,” Thane said. “They made an example of him. Left what was left of his body at the gate of the estate for the staff to find. It took three days before I was allowed to see what they’d done. My mother didn’t want me to, but I needed to. And I swore on what was left of him that they would never touch me or mine again.”
Riven swallowed hard, throat tight. “Thane…”
“That mural,” Thane said, jaw locked. “That unicorn with the cracked horn, that was his. His family crest. He used to say it was a symbol of strength through imperfection. I never saw it again after his death. Never knew it was still out there.”
The pain in his voice was a blade in the dark, jagged and barely concealed.
Riven reached out slowly, cautiously, and let his fingers graze Thane’s forearm where it rested on the console. He expected to be shaken off. But Thane didn’t move.
“I’m sorry,” Riven said softly. “I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t either.” Thane murmured. “But now I do. And that changes everything.”
Chapter 56
The car crunched to a stop on the gravel that barely passed for a driveway. No real tracks marked the ground—no fresh tire prints, no hint of recent passage. It was as if the earth itself had swallowed every trace of whoever had taken Riven.
The house loomed ahead in the fading light, a sprawling estate of weathered stone and ivy-choked walls. Riven might have called it beautiful once, in a somber sort of way. Now it felt hollow. Abandoned. Forgotten.
Thane stepped out of the car with a quiet that made Riven hesitate. No sharp command followed, no brisk order to move. He just stood there, shoulders rigid—but not with the usual readiness for violence. This was something else, an older grief.
“This place…” Riven said softly, drawing up beside him. “Is this where you grew up?”
Thane didn’t answer right away. His gaze swept the grounds, taking in the long-dead hedges, the creeping vines, the stillness that clung to the air like ash. No signs of life. No wards. No hum of magic. Just silence.
“I didn’t grow up here,” he murmured. “But my father did. He brought me here sometimes, when he needed to think, or disappear. Said the silence helped him remember who he was.”
Riven glanced toward the house again. The silence was absolute. Not even birdsong lingered in the trees. The breeze stirred nothing. The whole property felt like it was holding its breath.
“Do you want a moment?” Riven asked.
Thane exhaled, a dry, bitter sound. “A moment wouldn’t be enough.”
Then, with that familiar precision Riven had come to expect from him, Thane pushed it down—the memory, the emotion, the weight of the past—and walked toward the front doors like none of it had ever touched him. But Riven had seen that flicker of sadness in his eyes. He followed without a word.
Inside, the house was dry and cold, the air thick with the scent of dust and stone. The power had long since been shut off. Layers of dust blanketed the floors, but something about the atmosphere felt off. The air carried the uncanny weight of something recently disturbed, like the echo of a breath that had just been drawn.
The bones of the estate were still striking—arched hallways, vaulted ceilings, an elegant echo that swallowed even the quietest footfalls. But beneath the beauty was something wrong. Riven felt it in his skin, a crawling tension, like a memory just out of reach trying to claw its way back.
“This feels…wrong,” he said under his breath. “Familiar. But wrong.”
Thane’s head turned slightly. “Be careful. Just because it’s quiet doesn’t mean we’re alone.”
They moved as one, deeper into the house. Riven’s boots left shallow impressions in the dust beside Thane’s more deliberate steps, but it was the stairs that stopped him cold.
He froze. The sight of them hit him like a punch.
