Aelira’s words echoed against the stone.Two halves of a whole. Sword and shield.I had spent my life believing I was half-human—a dangerous anomaly Eamon had to hide and my mother sacrificed her life for. In reality, I was simply an open circuit. The missing piece was a weapon forged by the very monster who murdered my father. It was a sick joke. Yet, during the sparring session, the chaotic flood of my magic only stabilised when it struck his shadow.
A shadow fell across the threshold. I didn’t reach for my magic; my skin hummed with recognition.
Riven stood in the doorway. He wore a fresh black t-shirt, his hair damp and dark against his collar. He looked like part of the darkness, only solid.
“You’re loud,” he said softly.
“I haven’t said a word.”
“You don’t have to.” He stepped into the room, the movement soundless. “Your magic is pacing the floor. It’s keeping me awake.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, turning onto my side to face him. “I can’t… I can’t turn it off tonight.”
He stopped at the edge of the bed. “Move over.”
I scooted back against the stone wall, making space on the narrow mattress. Riven sat down on the edge, resting his elbows on his knees, his head bowed.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of our breathing.
“You did well today,” he said, his voice low. “You controlled it.”
The praise hollowed me out. The adrenaline of the training faded, leaving me exposed to the grief I had been outrunning fordays. My throat tightened, a sharp ache that made it hard to breathe. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to force the memory of that day back down—the relentless hiss of the sprinklers, the cold spray coating the glass—but the image persisted.
“I never said goodbye,” I whispered.
The words tore out of me before I could stop them. The training had distracted me, but the stillness brought it back—the image of the glass cube, the water, the look in his eyes.
“To Eamon,” I choked out, dropping my hands. Tears spilled over, hot and fast. “In the lab… I focused everything on breaking the glass. On saving him. He looked right at me, Riven. And I just watched him die.”
Riven shifted, turning his body towards me. In the dim light, his eyes held a dark, steady gravity.
He reached out and covered my hand with his. His skin felt cool, dry, and calloused.
“He understood,” Riven said firmly. “He needed only to know you were there. He saw you fighting for him, Selene. That was the goodbye.”
He intertwined his fingers with mine.
The contact sent a jolt through me—a circuit closing. The restless prickle under my skin met the cool, grounding weight of his shadow. It brought a sudden balance. The noise in my head bled away.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yes,” I breathed.
He lay down then, stretching out beside me. The bed was too small for two people, but we fit together as if we were carved from the same stone. We were inches apart, sharing the same pocket of air.
I studied his face in the shadows. The hard line of his jaw, the exhaustion bruising the skin under his eyes.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“Good,” Riven murmured. He reached up, his thumb brushing my cheekbone, tracing the line of my jaw. “Fear keeps you sharp. Arrogance gets you killed.”
“Are you scared?”
He was silent for a long moment. His gaze searched mine, intense and stripped of all his usual walls.
“I have spent over twenty years waiting to die,” he whispered. “I thought I had nothing left to lose. I thought I was just a weapon waiting to be broken.”
His thumb stilled on my cheek.
