“To the echo.”
He turned to look at me. In the gloom of the cavern, his eyes were deep pools, the silver swirls spinning with agitated speed. He looked haunted.
“In the atrium,” he said. “Dane’s question.”
I shifted closer, bridging the distance between us. “You kept the truth from him.”
“I couldn’t speak freely,” Riven said, his eyes moving to the people gathered nearby. “I refused to do it in front of them.” He looked back at the black water, his jaw working as he forced the words out.
“That Vessel, back at the Highspire lobby. He spoke to me, Selene. Before the police breached the doors. He looked right at me, smiled, and spoke directly into my mind.” Riven’s voice dropped to a whisper that chilled the air between us. “He called me his son.”
My stomach tightened. Telepathy. The sheer power required to breach a mind so effortlessly was staggering. “His son?”
Riven nodded. He touched his chest, his hand hovering over the scar hidden beneath his shirt—the mark of where Korenth had tried to hollow him out all those years ago.
“He meant it literally, Selene. When he looked at me… I felt it. A resonance. Different than the connection I share with you. Cold and oppressive.”
He looked back at the water, drawing a slow, fractured breath.
“I spent my life believing I was a mistake. I thought I was a specimen grown in a jar and discarded with no history.” He swallowed hard. “But that thing… that entity Korenth pulled through the Veil… it recognised me. It knew me. It knew my magic.”
He looked at me again, and the fear in his eyes was naked and terrifying.
“I believed I was an orphan. Now I know I am the son of the thing we are trying to kill. I am one of them.”
I reached out. I placed my hand flat against his chest, right over the scar, right over the heart that beat in sync with mine. I felt the bond settle—steady, unbreakable, true.
“That’s not true,” I said.
Riven blinked. “Selene, if I am?—“
“It doesn’t matter,” I repeated, fiercer this time. “I don’t care whose blood is in your veins, or who made you. I care who you are. The others will feel the same way—they stand with the man who fought beside them. Tell them when you’re ready.”
I closed the gap, forcing him to look at me, to see the gold burning in my eyes. “You are the man who saved me. You are the man who stood against them. You are the Shadow that holds the Light.”
I reached out, resting my hand over his heart. The warmth was there, steady and quiet now—a soft assurance that felt like a promise kept.
“Aelira says we are two halves of a whole,” I said softly. “But Idon’t care about prophecies, Riven. I’m not standing with you because an ancient text told me to.”
I held his gaze. A dark weight anchored his silver eyes. Another truth lay buried there—a terrifying depth he actively guarded. He was carrying something else, a secret he simply wasn’t ready to name.
He looked down at my hand, then at me.
“I know what we are,” he told me.
“Good,” I told him. “Because we are a choice. Now, and every day, from here on. I choose to see you, even when you try to disappear.”
He covered my hand with his, and the air between us settled.
I met his stare, holding it until the turmoil in his eyes stilled.
“We write the rest,” I promised.
EPILOGUE
Selene
The Cistern existed apart from the city above, marked only by the light of the glow-stones and the steady cadence of water in the deep tunnels.
