RIVEN
Sapphire flinches.
It’s slight, almost imperceptible, but I see it. Like she wasn’t expecting the question. Like she doesn’t know how to answer it.
For a moment, I think she won’t.
I think she’ll turn away. That she’ll let the silence be my answer, and let me drown in it the way I deserve.
But then?—
She looks at me. And she’s beautiful. Not just in the way she’s always been—the impossible symmetry of her features, the way her blonde hair catches the celestial light of the Tides, and the way her skin glows beneath the shifting magic surrounding us.
It’s the way she’s still standing here, fighting for something neither of us fully understand, holding onto something neither of us can name.
And when she speaks, it wrecks me.
“The Riven I saw in those visions—the boy who couldn’t hide his tears, who found companionship when he was most alone—deserves better than that emptiness. And because?—”
Her magic flickers, the water trembling between her fingers, as if she’s struggling to hold it together.
I step closer, my body coiled tight, waiting for the rest of her answer.
“Because what?” I push, my voice dropping lower.
I need her to finish. I need her tosayit.
She swallows hard, and when she looks at me, it’s like she’s seeing something I don’t. Like she’s looking at someone worth saving, even though I’msofar past saving.
“Because I’ve seen what you’re like when you drop the ice prince act and are justyou,”she whispers, her voice trembling with something too fragile to name. “And that Riven is worth fighting for, even if he’s buried so deep I can barely find him anymore.”
The words hit me like a slow, brutal ache sinking into my chest.
She still sees me.
Even after I took that deal with the dryad, even after I lost my love for her, and even after her love got twisted into an endless wave of fury directed straight at me. Even after she’s spent days looking at me with pain and disgust, like I’m a mistake she wishes she could erase. Like I’m just a cold, apathetic, insufferable winter prince she wants to throw overboard and let drown in the deepest part of the ocean.
Even after all of that, she still sees me.
A bitter, broken chuckle escapes my lips. It’s not real amusement—it’s never real anymore. It’s just something sharp and jagged clawing up my throat, something that might be grief, resignation, or the sheer, unbearable weight of everything pressing down on us.
“Maybe he was never real,” I murmur, and I hate the way my voice sounds—hollow and distant, like I’m already that version of myself sitting on the cold throne, waiting for my soul to freeze over completely.
I reach out without thinking, my fingers barely brushing her cheek, cold but careful. She’s so warm. So impossibly, painfully warm. And I don’t know how to accept what she’s offering. I don’t know how to let myself believe in something that might disappear the moment we emerge from these Tides.
“Maybe he was just another illusion you wanted to believe in,” I continue, and I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince her, or me. “One that will melt away the moment we leave this place.”
Her breath catches.
Magic hums between us, warm against my ice, stubborn against my resistance.
“He was real,” she insists, and there’s something in her voice that makes me painfully aware of what I erased—of the emptiness that took its place.“Youare real. And you’re not going to melt away. I won’t let you.”
I let out a slow, uneven breath, my throat tightening, the hand that’s still by my side clenching into a fist.
“You really believe that?” I whisper, although I don’t know who I’m asking. Her? Myself? The gods who abandoned me decades ago?
“I have to believe it,” she murmurs, and then—gently, carefully—her fingers trace my arm.
