38. Sapphire
Sapphire
Eros draws both arrows—one gold, one lead—and he holds them up, side by side.
The metallic tips gleam under the golden light of the dome, and my heart pounds as I stare at them.
I reach for Riven’s hand, but he shrugs me off.
“What are our options?” he asks calmly, as if we’re standing in the center of court and he’s ready to enter negotiations.
Given that our options are to either negotiate with this god or to fight him, I can’t fully blame him.
“It’s simple,” Eros says with a cruel smile, directing his attention to me. “I’ll either shoot you with gold, intensifying your love until it consumes you completely. Or...” His gaze shifts to Riven. “I’ll shoot him with lead, driving what remains of his capacity to love you so far away that all that’s left is hatred.”
“No.” I step back, staring at the arrows in horror.
Eros continues as if I hadn’t spoken.
“Choose wisely.” He nocks a golden arrow to his bow, but he doesn’t draw it. Not yet. “Although I must say, both options are rather poetic. Either he’ll hate you with the same intensity he once loved you, or your love will grow until it drives you mad, knowing he’ll never feel the same.”
“This is ridiculous—” Riven says, but Eros cuts him off.
“This is justice. You both agreed to trade away something sacred. Now you’ll both suffer the consequences of that choice. The only question is... how?”
The wind howls around me, but I barely feel it. All I feel is the weight of the choice hanging before me and the threat of the arrows gleaming in the golden light.
“The answer is obvious,” Riven says, cold and precise. “Because if I hate her, I’ll likely kill her. And that would be rather counterproductive to our mission.”
The casual way he says it—like he’s discussing trade negotiations instead of our hearts—makes me want to scream. As it is, the stream surges toward my feet, water licking at my ankles as if it wants to drag me under.
Eros glances at it, but he seems unbothered.
“Always so calculating, Winter Prince,” Eros muses, studying Riven, as if he can see into his heart. Which, fairly, he likely can. “Even now, you reduce everything to strategy and gain. Tell me, does it not bother you at all? Using her feelings against her like this?”
“She and I can each handle ourselves.” Riven shrugs. “Protecting her feelings isn’t my responsibility.”
I look to him, searching his eyes for some flicker of the Riven I know. The one who pulled me against him when the cold got too harsh, who let me break down in his arms when I thought I lost Zoey forever.
If he’s still in there, he’s doing a heartbreakingly good job at hiding it.
“You wouldn’t kill me,” I finally say, the words barely audible over the roar of my pounding heart. “Even if you hated me, you wouldn’t do it.”
His jaw clenches, but his gaze remains impassive. “Don’t be so sure.”
Eros chuckles, the sound rich with amusement as he twirls the golden arrow between his fingers. “You speak of killing her as if discussing the weather,” he says. “Do you truly believe you could do it? Take her life so easily?”
“If I hated her?” Riven’s voice is like ice. “It would be rather motivating. But I’m growing restless. So, if we’re done with this display, I believe you were about to shoot her with that golden arrow.”
Eros smirks at Riven, then turns back to me, looking eager to hear my response .
“We can’t risk him hating me,” I say, needing to tread carefully. “Especially since I already love him.”
I glance at Riven, hoping for support, or gratitude, or pride that I’m potentially agreeing to take this hit.
Surprisingly, he takes a step closer to me.
“You’ll be okay.” His voice is low but firm, cutting through my nerves like steel.
“I know I will,” I reply, and this time when I reach for his hand, he doesn’t pull back.
His grip is firm. Solid. And even though it’s not warm—because nothing about Riven has ever been warm—it’s steady.
That’s what keeps me standing here, my chin lifted, my gaze locked on Eros’s.
“Do it,” I tell the god, bracing myself for the strike.
Eros tilts his head, studying me, as if deciding if he wants to follow through. “Are you sure?” he finally asks. “Because I don’t think you fully understand what you’re committing yourself to.” He taps the golden tip against his lip, pretending to consider explaining further. “Let’s go over it, shall we?”
I bristle. “There’s nothing to?—”
“Oh, but there is.” His eyes darken, the playfulness draining from them like ink spreading over a page. “You think this will be bearable? That because you already love him, a little push in that direction won’t make much of a difference? ”
The air shifts, the space between us thickening like honey.
Riven’s grip on my hand tightens.
His other hand inches toward the hilt of his sword.
Eros steps closer, his voice smooth as silk, but as sharp as a blade. “You won’t just love him,” he tells me, enjoying this far more than he should. “You will only love him. He’ll be the sun in your sky, the stars in your night, and the air in your lungs. You won’t care if you live, if you die, or if you break, as long as it means you can be near him. You won’t love anyone other than him. You won’t even love yourself. And when he chooses another? The pain will be so intense that you’d rather die than live with knowing he wanted someone who wasn’t you.”
A cold rush sweeps through me, and I’m not sure if it’s from fear, or if Riven’s ice magic is reacting to whatever emotions he still has left for me. Because his grip on my hand is tight. Too tight. And when I look at him, his eyes are stormy with something I can’t quite place.
Not love. Not yet.
But at least it’s not ambivalence.
“What are you thinking?” I ask him, since this is the man I trusted with my heart. Whether or not he loves me back yet, I trust him to keep me safe.
“I’m thinking that I don’t know what the future holds,” he tells me, and there’s something almost pained in the way he says it—something that tugs at my soul. “But I don’t want to hate you. Because if you’re no longer here, and if it’s my fault, then I might hate myself forever, too.”
A sharp breath catches in my throat.
Because even though he doesn’t love me now, at least he doesn’t want me dead.
It’s a start.
“See?” I say to him softly. “You do care.”
“I care about the mission,” he corrects me, despite the flicker of uncertainty in his familiar silver eyes that wasn’t there before. “And about making strategic choices.”
“Is that all?” I challenge.
“Right now, I find you tolerable,” he adds, as if I should be grateful for even that. “I can trust you at my side. I believe that whatever’s coming next, we’ll keep each other safe. I don’t want that to change, and I’m going to make sure it doesn’t. For both of our sakes.”
“So, you do care.”
Despite everything, I can’t help smiling.
He exhales sharply. “I said I tolerate you. Not that I care.”
“Tolerate, trust, want around, don’t want to kill—it sounds dangerously close to care, if you ask me.”
His eyes narrow, but there’s no real bite to his glare. “ You’re pushing your luck, Star Navigator. Unless you’d prefer that I take the lead arrow instead?”
I inhale sharply, my teasing dropping away. “You wouldn’t.”
“It would be best for both of us if I didn’t,” he says, and his thumb brushes against my wrist—almost absently, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.
I swallow hard, my pulse pounding beneath the spot where he’s touching me.
“This is all very moving,” Eros breaks in. “But tell me, Star Navigator —do you really, truly understand the weight of what the gold arrow will do to you?”
“You already told me what it will do.” I lift my chin, refusing to let him intimidate me—even though as a god, he’s rather intimidating. “And Riven already loves me. At least, he will love me again, soon. I can handle the gold arrow.”
“Can you? Because I’d like to paint you a better picture of your future.” Eros’s smile is razor-sharp. “Every time he touches you, it will feel like drowning and burning at once. Every time he pulls away, you’ll feel like your heart is being ripped from your chest. You’ll lose yourself so completely in loving him that nothing else will matter—not your mission, not your friend, not your family, and not even your own survival. Your love will be a curse. A poison that devours everything you are, until only a shell remains. ”
The stream ripples at my feet, mirroring my unease.
Riven pulls me closer, and I lean into him, drawing comfort in the way his heart’s racing in his chest. It gives me hope. Because his steady presence is a promise of protection, even if that protection isn’t accompanied by love—yet.
“This won’t just be heartbreak,” Eros continues, and more lightning flashes across the dome, as if it’s angering him to see Riven and I standing so close. “It will be undying, unrequited, unbearable love. The type of love that will burn away at your soul and make you lose everything that makes you who you are and everything you could ever be.”
My breathing quickens, panic creeping into my thoughts.
“Are you ready?” Eros asks, drawing the golden arrow back in preparation to release.
Riven’s hand squeezes mine, and I look at him one more time, memorizing the planes of his face and the silver storm in his eyes. Because even though I’m about to risk everything, I want to know for certain that he’ll remain by my side, no matter what.
He gives me a small, encouraging nod.
Eros sighs impatiently. “I can always shoot him with the lead instead,” he says, glancing at Riven.
Riven’s focus, however, remains on me.
“Didn’t you take a hit for me once before?” he asks, looking so deeply into my eyes that it’s like he’s speaking to my soul. “Isn’t that how we escaped the shadows? Did you not bleed for me, from your shoulder to your heart, and say you’d do it a hundred times more? Because I might have bargained away my love for you, but I kept my memories. Which means I remember that night as well as you do. And despite everything, the words spoken then remain true. So, if you remember saying you’d take a hundred hits for me, I want you to prove it by taking this one arrow now. Make the right choice, and we’ll beat the odds and get through this—together.”
Each word falls into place as I string together each sentence, making sense of exactly what he’s asking of me.
Taking a hit.
Bleeding from the shoulder to the heart.
Swearing to do it a hundred times more.
And then, the challenge—the truth of what he’s asking. Of what he’s promising to do with me.
Prove that I remember saying all those things by taking the golden arrow now.
We’ll beat the odds and get through this together.
The smallest flicker of understanding passes between us, so subtle that if I wasn’t watching for it, I would have missed it. The barely-there shift in his expression, the way his fingers tighten ever so slightly around mine .
It lasts less than a heartbeat, but it’s enough.
“I understand,” I tell him. “And it’s what I want, too.”
Because right now, my love for Riven is strong, but it’s mine. It’s real. If Eros shoots me with that arrow, it won’t be mine anymore. It will be a curse, consuming me from the inside out until there’s nothing left but ashes. And I don’t want to become a hollow shell of devotion, incapable of feeling anything other than my love for Riven. I don’t want to lose Zoey, my family, my mission, my sense of self—my purpose.
I’m more than my love for Riven. I’m more than a choice between his hate and my ruin.
I’m star touched. Chosen by a goddess to help save the world.
And I’m not going to let this power-hungry god reduce me to nothing.