He doesn’t acknowledge Waylen, instead keeping his gaze locked on mine.
I feel the weight of last night lingering in the moment. The bond forged in trust, blood, and flesh.
Kresselia rises, her silhouette unfolding with impeccable elegance.
The wind catches the hem of her gown, black velvet pooling around her feet as she steps to the front of the ledge. Her voice is sharp, cutting through the murmuring crowd.
“Waylen of the Crimson Nest has invoked his right to challenge the crown,” she says, gaze sweeping the arena. “Riven, our reigning king, has accepted.”
A low murmur rolls through the benches, but it dies quickly.
“This duel is sanctioned under our ancient laws. It will not end in submission. There will be no retreat, no surrender, and no interference.” Her chin lifts slightly. “This ends in death, as it always has.”
She doesn’t look to either of them for confirmation or voice that it’s begun, she simply retreats to sit next to me once more. The tension crackles through the room as every pair of eyes trains on the duo.
Waylen rolls his shoulders, shaking out his arms, that cocky grin stretching across his face like he doesn’t know he’s already been written into history as another corpse-to-be.
Riven takes one slow step forward. Just a single, quiet movement that settles him near the center of the circle.
Waylen takes the bait and lunges without grace, all brutal intent and flexing muscles. The slap of his feet against the stone echoes loudly as he moves in a blur too fast for me to track. I see glimpses of extended claws aimed straight for Riven’s throat as he suddenly stops and bends his knees.
In the next blink, the heel of his palm crashes against Waylen’s sternum.
Waylen stumbles backward, the force of the blow reverberating through the circle, and the crowd hushes all at once. He snarls, blood glistening now on his lower lip, though I have no clue when Riven landed the blow that caused that injury.
Waylen rushes forward once more, and suddenly Riven is in the air, his body rising like he’s untethered from gravity. For a breathless second, he lingers there, suspended in the light from the large glass window.
Kresselia’s breath hitches from beside me.
“I’ve never seen him do that,” she whispers, shock clear in her words “No vampire should be able to hold in the air like that.”
Waylen turns as Riven descends slowly, his body jerking forward, claws sweeping through the air in a desperate attempt to prove he has a chance in this battle. But Riven doesn't so much as blink before he’s at Waylen’s side with his fingers around the other vampire’s jaw in a grip that makes my chest squeeze.
I know this is the end.
The sound that follows is sharp and wet, and in the blink of a breathless moment, Waylen’s body falls to the stone like it was never built to stand tall in the first place. Riven drops his hand to his side, and Waylen’s head rolls away in a lazy arc, smearing blood over the stone as it goes.
Relief crashes through me in a single, staggering wave, and I clutch the edge of the stone bench beneath me, holding myself together as the weight of it settles deep into my bones–the truth that Riven is still alive. That nothing Waylen did was enough to take him from me.
For a moment, I forget how to breathe.
Not because of the gore, or the violence, or the way Riven still stands in the center of the circle with blood spattered across his jaw. But because he looks at me through the roar of the thunderous crowd, like none of them exist.
There is no gloating in his expression and no flash of pride as the crowd chants his name with rising fervor. There is only that steady, quiet question in his gaze, the one he doesn’t speak aloud but is clear from our talk this morning.
Do you still want me, now that you’ve seen this side of me?
He warned me it would be brutal and told me to look away if I couldn’t stomach it. He begged me tostay at his home if this would change my perception of him.
What I see when I look at him now isn’t a monster cloaked in blood. Instead, I see the man who kissed every part of me like I was already his, even if he never said the words aloud. The man who asked for nothing, but gave me everything when he waited for me to choose him.
The nest may chant his name like he’s a legend to them, but to me, Riven is simply mine.
Chapter 28
Wren
The next morning, my blurred vision snaps into vivid clarity as Riven comes to a halt, cradling me in his arms. For one suspended breath, we take in the vast stretch of land laid out before us. We crossed the land from Louisiana to this convergence point chosen in South Carolina a lot quicker than I’d expected, and while I was curious what would be waiting for us here, the reality somehow steals my breath.
