“No.” His voice doesn’t rise. “I think you’re what comes after.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, Lux.” He stands slowly and walks toward the fire. “An apocalypse ends things. You’ll begin something else.”
I stare at him, heart in my throat. “I never asked for this.”
“I know.”
“Then why the fuck did you make it worse?”
He turns to face me, and for once, he doesn’t look like a god, or a monster, or a man. He looks like someone drowning in the flood he set loose. “Because I wanted you before I knew what you were.” My breath catches. “And even once I knew,” he continues, “I didn’t care.”
The firelight dances across his scars, the old ones—raised and ragged along his ribs—and the newer ones, blooming along his neck like warnings.
I walk to him. Slow. Controlled. “You wanted me?”
“Yes.”
“Still do?” He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. I stop a foot away. Let the heat from the flames lick up between us like a question mark neither of us knows how to answer. “Then tell me what happens when all four of you…take me.”
He closes his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“You do.”
He nods once. “Everything reshapes. The veil breaks. The world bends.”
“To me?”
“To what you choose to become.”
I step closer, slow and sure, the air charged between us like a storm just waiting for the scream of thunder. The flames in the hearth behind him cast long shadows, but I don’t look at the fire. I look athim, the shape of War made flesh, rage wrapped in restraint, watching me with a silence that says he already knows he’s about to lose.
“I’m not theirs,” I say, voice sharp, grounded. “And I’m not yours either.”
His throat works around a word he doesn’t say. His eyes drop to my mouth, then drag back up, slowly. “I know,” he murmurs.
I press a hand to his chest, like an anchor. His pulse is thunder under my palm, ancient and unyielding. It doesn’t beat like a man’s. It drums like a war cry, steady, inhuman, relentless.
“I’m done,” I say, each syllable heavier than the last. “Done being told what I am. What I’m for.” His body tenses, but he doesn’t stop me or argue. He just takes it. All of it. Like he knows he deserves every jagged edge. “I’m not a prophecy. I’m not your delay tactic. I’m not here to be kept in a box until the world ends.” I lean in close, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “I’m here tobreakit.”
The room feels different now. It’s not the fire burning lower or the shadows pulling longer across the walls…it’s me. I’m not the same woman who stepped into this night. Something in what I’ve learned, or maybe just the weight of knowing at all, has settled into my bones and made me…more.
I stand in the middle of the room, bare feet on stone, the warmth from the fire brushing the backs of my thighs. My blood still hums from what we did hours ago, from what we said, what we didn’t. It’s more than that now. It’s deeper.
It’s the feeling you get when something ancient wakes up inside you and realizes it doesn’t want to sleep again.
Riven hasn’t moved. He stands a few feet away, back straight, shoulders drawn like a man ready to fight. He’s watching me the way a king watches a blade he once kept chained, now rising, gleaming, unbound. “You sure about this?” he asks, voice low.
“I’ve never been sure of anything,” I say. “But I know what I’mdonewith.”
“And what’s that?”
I look him in the eyes, voice sharp, direct. “Being fucking used.” The words don’t explode. They settle into the walls, the floor, the marrow of my spine.
He nods once, walks to the desk at the edge of the room, and opens a drawer. He pulls something out, a small, polished box. The box is small. It feels heavy when Riven sets it down. Not the kind of heavy that comesfrom physical weight. It’s the kind that presses at the edges of the room, quiet and humming, like the moment before a lightning strike.
It’s carved from dark, likely ancient wood, almost black, the surface covered in symbols that shimmer faintly when the firelight hits them. Something that looks like it was meant to be hidden. He places it between us on the stone ledge beside the fire. “Don’t touch it,” he says quietly, as if speaking too loudly might wake something.
