He hesitates. “Some guy said you were talking to yourself.”
“Some guy should mind his own business,” I snap.
Benny raises both hands in surrender. “Fair. But don’t disappear again, okay? You left the bar running skeleton crew.”
I nod again. Slower this time. “Got it.” He walks back inside. I don’t follow. Not yet. Something is crawling under my skin. A warning. A whisper. It's not just Riven watching.
The note said he wasn’t the only one, and the more I try to rationalize, the more I realize I’m surrounded by people playing games I don’t understand. I pick up the phone. I don’t unlock it. I don’t need to.
The symbol’s still there. Faint. Lingering. Like a fingerprint on myfucking soul.
The second I step back inside, the bar feels off. It’s almost like everything is sharper. Every sound slices too clean. Every shadow stretches too far. My boots feel heavy as they hit the floor, gravity trying to bring me back to reality. Riven hasn’t moved. Still sitting in that velvet VIP seat like the kingdom belongs to him. Like the throne rose up around him the second I walked away, and he let it.
I walk back toward him before I can talk myself out of it. Before the panic takes hold again and convinces me I imagined the whole thing. He doesn’t look surprised. Of course, he doesn’t.
I sit. This time, across from him. No pretense. No jokes. “What the fuck was that?” I ask, voice low and sharp.
He doesn’t blink. “You tell me.”
“No.” I lean forward. “You don’t get to give riddles. You don’t get to sit here like a goddamn prophet and drop traumatic visions in my lap like party favors.”
“You looked away,” he says calmly.
My jaw locks. “Because I’m not your trained dog.”
“You disobeyed,” he says, but there’s no heat in it. Just a kind of detached disappointment. It was as if he expected it. As if he counted on it.
“And that gives you the right to hijack my brain?”
He tilts his head slightly. “That wasn’t me, Lux.”
My heart stutters. “What?”
“You disobeyed. And you saw,” he says, lifting his glass again. “You opened that door.” My skin crawls.
“You’re telling me that wasn’t your doing? That I caused that?”
“I’m saying you’re not just some bartender with a sketchbook,” he replies.
My fists clench on the table. “Stop dancing around it.”
He studies me like I’m both a weapon and a wound. Then he sets his glass down and leans forward. “You’re waking up,” he says. “And it’s messy.”
I laugh once, bitter. “THAT is your explanation, waking up?”
“To what you are. What you’ve always been. What they’ve been keeping buried.”
They. That word cuts deeperthan it should.
“Who’s they?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “That symbol…have you drawn it again?” I don’t answer either. Not at first. The heat crawling up my neck gives me away.
“I don’t know what it is,” I admit. “It’s not in any book or online. It just…keeps showing up.” His eyes darken, just a flicker.
“You’re drawing from memory.”
My throat tightens. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“Not in this life.” The words strike me, and I freeze.
