RIVEN
She’s gone.
I feel it—not just in the unnatural stillness of her body, but in something deeper. Something soul-crushingly empty.
It’s the absence of her. The suffocating, unbearable void where she’s supposed to be.
My arms tighten around her, my body curling around hers like I can shield her from the cosmic forces that claimed her soul.
“Sapphire.” I shake her, harder this time, unwilling to give up. “Come back.”
There’s nothing.
The Tides took her from me. They ripped her projection away, swallowing her soul right when she was supposed to return. They stole her and left this pale imitation behind, taunting me with her lifelessness. She physically healed at the same time I did—after she killed Cetus—but the life that’s always radiated out of her isn’t there anymore.
“Don’t leave me,” I whisper, burying my face in her hair, inhaling her sweet scent of summer rain, torturing myself with the memory of her warmth. “Not like this. Notever.”
Still nothing. Just the shallow rise and fall of her chest and the pallor of death creeping across her smooth skin.
Ice cracks through the cosmic sand—my magic surging, uncontrolled and unchecked. Unraveling. Because how the hell am I supposed to control myself when she’s not here to anchor me?
I trace every detail of her face—every feature I’ve loved from the first moment I saw her. The delicate arch of her eyebrows. The gentle slope of her nose. The soft curve of her lips—lips that should be smiling or screaming or kissing me senseless, not still and lifeless like this.
I don’t know if I’m memorizing her or worshipping her.
I don’t know if there’s a difference.
“You’re the only thing holding me together. If you leave me, I’ll never come back from it,” I tell her, and then I press my forehead to hers, not trying to hold it in anymore. All the tears, all the heartbreak—all of it—comes rushing out at once.
It’s too much. It’s shredding every piece of me. And I welcome the ruin, because it’s what I deserve.
So, I slam my fist down onto the ocean floor, barely feeling the bones crack, relishing the blinding pain, the explosion of ice around me.
It’s not enough.
It will never be enough.
“I can’t go back to the Winter Court and lead our army without you next to me,” I say to her, even though she can’t hear me. “I can’t save Zoey when the only reason I gave a damn about any of this was because youmademe care. I can’t even?—”
My throat closes around the next words, locking them inside me like a secret too painful to say aloud.
“I can’t even save myself.”
I clutch her tighter, desperately, as if holding on hard enough can fuse us together and anchor her to this world. She looksso pale, like even though her wounds healed, her blood never returned…
Blood.
She’s run out of her own. And gods know, she’s always wanted mine. Every time I’ve bled in front of her, she’s looked at me like she’s starving.
It’s the only thing I have left to give.
Her dagger is right next to her, the blade stained with Cetus’s blood. So, without hesitation, I grab it, pressing the cold steel against my wrist, and carve. Deep, swift, and merciless.
The pain is instant and scorching, a beautiful agony racing through my veins. And I welcome it. Crave it. Anything to give meaning to this endless, empty ache that’s been haunting me since the deal with the dryad. Actually, for far longer than that—since the day I stood in front of my mother’s icy coffin, and my father told me to bury every emotion that could make its way into my heart.
With shaking hands, I lift Sapphire’s head, cradling her even as blood pours from my wound, and press my wrist to her lips.
“Drink,” I tell her, forcing my blood into her mouth.
