The words crack in my throat, sharp and meaningful.
And before I can think—before guilt can consume me—I pull his scarf down and crash my lips onto River’s.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A silence follows the trial—one so thick and heavy it feels like we’re wading through water instead of woodland. Even the trees seem to hold their shape, their branches frozen as though afraid to rustle and shatter the fragile nothingness between us.
Ryder hasn’t said a word to me since I kissed River.
I don’t blame him.
How could I?
Especially when River’s lips had lingered on mine a moment too long. Not in shock. Not in confusion. But in something dangerously close to longing—as if the kiss pulled him out of the Hollow, out of the trial, and into some imagined world where I had chosen him freely. His breath had caught. His hands had almost lifted. And then reality snapped back around us like a trap.
Now he walks ahead of me, shoulders squared in a way that isn’t entirely natural, like he’s fighting a grin. A faint, shimmering brightness lives in his eyes—not the dull, quiet kindness he usually carries, but something sharper, hungrier. A small smirk ghosts along his lips, tugging as though he keeps stopping himself from speaking. From saying something reckless. Something raw.
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
Opens it again.
Nothing comes out, but the words are already there behind his teeth—balancing on the edge, ready to tumble. A confession. A declaration. Something that would undo us all.
The trial distorted him—twisted his fear and turned it into ammunition.
Because fear in the Hollow isn’t just a weakness; it’s a weapon.
A loaded gun.
And the rift it carved between us—between the three of us—is wide enough that I can see the drop beneath. Jagged, treacherous, and waiting for one wrong step.
I think, deep down, River knows I will always choose Ryder.
He’s known it since the beginning.
But hope—hishope—is a living thing, and the Hollow had reached inside him, taken that fragile spark, and fed it until it burned bright enough to blind.
Hope is dangerous here.
Hope is flint.
Hope is bullets.
And now the forest feels different around us… charged. Waiting. As if the Hollow itself is watching to see what happens when the dust settles… and who breaks first.
“Ryder… can we just talk?”
The words spill out before I can second-guess them, threading through the heavy silence that has settled over us like a damp, suffocating fog. It’s the kind of silence that presses against the skull, filling the spaces where thoughts should be, making it almost uncomfortable to breathe. I speak anyway, because if I don’t, I think this distance between us will swallow me whole.
He exhales, a strained huff that sounds less like irritation and more like someone trying to steady a wound that keepsreopening, and drops down beside me. Not close enough to touch, not close enough to pretend we’re fine, but still within reach, which somehow makes the ache in my chest worse.
“You’ve said all you needed to,” he murmurs, voice thin and frayed around the edges.
He doesn’t look at me. Not even a flicker of an attempt. His gaze stays glued to some far-off patch of forest floor as if my face itself is the thing hurting him, as if meeting my eyes would confirm every fear he’s tried so hard to bury—fears that the trial dragged out into the open and held up like a mirror neither of us wanted to see.
I swallow, trying to find words that don’t feel like stepping on broken glass.
“Before… all this,” I begin cautiously, choosing each word as if the wrong one might shatter him, “if I’d been asked that question, the answer—without hesitation—would’ve been you. It always would’ve been you.”
