“Those stories,” he said with low voice, gesturing to the cloth-wrapped volume. “They’re… well-crafted.”
“My mother had a gift,” I said. “She wrote for pleasure. Soft, but sharp. Like she knew more than she put on the page.”
“She wrote well,” he murmured.
“She did. But this one is different.” I hesitated. If I said the word Aetherkind, I risked sounding like a child chasing fairy tales. Or worse, I risked confirming a suspicion he might already have. “She filled it with old stories. Folklore. Things people forgot.”
He went very still. “What kind of stories?”
“Legends of an old world,” I said. “Lost magic. I tried studying them earlier, but they read like pure folklore. I suspect a real history is buried in the text; I just haven’t learned how to translate the metaphors yet.”
His eyes lingered on the book a second too long. And there—there it was again: that glimmer. He knew the stories. Or maybe he knew the name.
The quiet settled again, dense and strange. Rain tapped against the windows, sealing us in.
He set his mug down with a soft click and rose.
He stepped towards me, the air thinning as he walked directly into my space.
“Riven?” I breathed.
He stopped inches from me. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then back to my eyes. The swirls in his irises spun fast, hypnotic and dangerous.
“I should go,” he said, but he made no move to leave.
“Do you want to?”
“No.” The admission was low, almost angry. “I don’t.”
My hand moved without my permission. I reached out, fingers hovering near the dark ink curling over his forearm, drawn to his grounding, magnetic tether.
Stop, I told myself. He is Highspire. He is the lock on the cage.
I tried to step back, to shake my head, but my body refused to listen. Gravity shifted, tilting the room towards him.
Before my skin could graze his, a spark—literal and electric—snapped between us. Golden light arced across the inch of space, loud as a cracking twig.
We both flinched.
Riven jerked back from the burn. His jaw clenched tight, a muscle feathering in his cheek. He looked at me with something closer to shock than hunger.
He looked like a man who had just realised he was standing on a landmine.
“Tomorrow,” he said, the word clipped, breathless. “Same time.”
He turned and walked out the door.
My mouth parted to call him back. My magic dragged at my ribs, desperate to anchor him in the room, but I clamped my jaw shut. He was my skeleton key to Highspire. Crossing that physical boundary would destroy the only tactical advantage I possessed.
I listened to his footsteps fading down the hall, fast and heavy. Istayed at the table, clutching my own hand where the phantom heat of the spark still tingled.
I shook my head, trying to clear the static from my mind. I needed to get a grip—to control this, whatever it was.
Two empty mugs. Two books on the kitchen table. Despite the logic, heat still curled beneath my ribs. Something inside me had shifted, and I couldn't pretend otherwise.
EIGHTEEN
Riven
