Chapter Twenty-Nine
A silence follows the trial—one so thick and heavy it feels like we’re wading through water instead of woodland. Even the trees seem to hold their shape, their branches frozen as though afraid to rustle and shatter the fragile nothingness between us.
Ryder hasn’t said a word to me since I kissed River.
I don’t blame him.
How could I?
Especially when River’s lips had lingered on mine a moment too long.
Not in shock. Not in confusion. But in something dangerously close to longing—as if the kiss pulled him out of the Hollow, out of the trial, and into some imagined world where I had chosen him freely.
His breath had caught. His hands had almost lifted.
And then reality snapped back around us like a trap.
Now he walks ahead of me, shoulders squared in a way that isn’t entirely natural, like he’s fighting a grin.
A faint, shimmering brightness lives in his eyes—not the dull, quiet kindness he usually carries, but something sharper, hungrier.
A small smirk ghosts along his lips, tugging as though he keeps stopping himself from speaking.
From saying something reckless. Something raw.
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
Opens it again.
Nothing comes out, but the words are already there behind his teeth—balancing on the edge, ready to tumble. A confession. A declaration. Something that would undo us all.
The trial distorted him—twisted his fear and turned it into ammunition.
Because fear in the Hollow isn’t just a weakness; it’s a weapon.
A loaded gun.
And the rift it carved between us—between the three of us—is wide enough that I can see the drop beneath. Jagged, treacherous, and waiting for one wrong step.
I think, deep down, River knows I will always choose Ryder.
He’s known it since the beginning.
But hope—his hope—is a living thing, and the Hollow had reached inside him, taken that fragile spark, and fed it until it burned bright enough to blind.
Hope is dangerous here.
Hope is flint.
Hope is bullets.
And now the forest feels different around us… charged. Waiting. As if the Hollow itself is watching to see what happens when the dust settles… and who breaks first.
“Ryder… can we just talk?”
The words spill out before I can second-guess them, threading through the heavy silence that has settled over us like a damp, suffocating fog.
It’s the kind of silence that presses against the skull, filling the spaces where thoughts should be, making it almost uncomfortable to breathe.
I speak anyway, because if I don’t, I think this distance between us will swallow me whole.
He exhales, a strained huff that sounds less like irritation and more like someone trying to steady a wound that keeps reopening, and drops down beside me. Not close enough to touch, not close enough to pretend we’re fine, but still within reach, which somehow makes the ache in my chest worse.
“You’ve said all you needed to,” he murmurs, voice thin and frayed around the edges.
He doesn’t look at me. Not even a flicker of an attempt.
His gaze stays glued to some far-off patch of forest floor as if my face itself is the thing hurting him, as if meeting my eyes would confirm every fear he’s tried so hard to bury—fears that the trial dragged out into the open and held up like a mirror neither of us wanted to see.
I swallow, trying to find words that don’t feel like stepping on broken glass.
“Before… all this,” I begin cautiously, choosing each word as if the wrong one might shatter him, “if I’d been asked that question, the answer—without hesitation—would’ve been you. It always would’ve been you.”
For half a breath, he stills. Not visibly, not dramatically, but something in him tightens—like a pulled thread beneath the skin.
His eyes remain fixed on the ground, yet I can feel the way he’s listening to me, almost against his will.
It hurts to watch him fight so hard to remain untouched by what I’m saying, even though I know my words are landing exactly where they’re supposed to.
“But that doesn’t matter now, does it?” he finally says, and his voice is quieter than before, more fragile, as if he’s afraid it might break in his hands. “You kissed him, Asha. Him.”
Guilt surges through me like something alive and clawing. “I didn’t want to. I had to. Ziek was going to die.” My throat tightens, and I hate how defensive I sound, like I’m scrambling for some version of the truth that could soothe him.
Ryder finally turns his head just enough to look at me, and it feels like the world narrows to the expression in his eyes. There’s hurt there; raw, unmasked, and unsoftened by bravado or anger.
“I don’t care that you had to,” he whispers. “I care that you did. I care that I was right. That you don’t trust me. And maybe you never will.”
The words land with a weight that almost knocks the air out of me. He’s not shouting, not accusing; he’s simply stating the truth as he sees it, and that makes it cut even deeper.
“It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” I say, voice trembling despite my best efforts to stay composed. My palms feel damp. My chest feels too tight. I want to crawl out of my own skin.
“It shouldn’t have been hard,” he replies, almost to himself, almost as though he’s trying to understand it too. “It shouldn’t… Gods, Asha, it shouldn’t be hard.” He looks away again. “Not if you trusted me.”
And he’s right. I know he’s right. I’ve known it since the moment hesitation took root in my heart.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment things shifted between us—maybe it was the serum, maybe it was the Hollow, maybe it was something older and more fragile than either of us realised—but the ease we once had feels like a distant, unreachable memory.
“I know,” I admit softly. “And I would’ve chosen you above anyone else. I still would. But River… he’s always there for me.”
“—and I’m not?” Ryder cuts in sharply, eyes flashing with disbelief and wounded pride.
Before I can answer, before I can stop anything from spiralling even further out of control, River speaks.
“Hey, at least I never tried to kill her.”
And that is the ignition point.
Ryder moves before thought can intervene—a blur of instinct and fury—and the next second he’s slamming into River, sending them both crashing to the ground. The violence is sudden and explosive, almost feral. I lunge forward, panic clawing up my throat.
“Stop it!” I shout, but my voice barely seems to penetrate the storm they’ve erupted into.
Ryder’s fist cracks against River’s jaw with a sickening thud. “You enjoyed it,” he snarls through clenched teeth. “I felt it.” Another punch lands, harder. “The butterflies you get around her—you think I don’t feel them too?”
River grunts, twisting, and manages to flip them, fury gnarling his features into something unrecognisable.
“She deserves better than you,” he spits, landing his own vicious blow.
“River stop.” I cry, but the Hollow just swallows my plea.
Each word feels like it’s stabbing straight through me, leaving thin, stinging lines in the air between us.
Before I can intervene, before Ziek can even move, Ryder roars—an unearthly, guttural sound—and something in the world shifts.
River lifts off the ground.
Not thrown by Ryder’s hands.
Thrown by something else.
He slams into a tree with a violent crack that echoes through the forest, sliding down to the base with a groan.
Ziek and I freeze, horror rooting our feet to the ground.
Ryder stands over the flattened leaves, chest heaving, eyes blown wide in shock. He looks from River to his own trembling hands, then finally to me.
And in that moment—
in the stunned silence that follows—
I can see it in his eyes:
He doesn’t know what he just did.
He doesn’t know how he did it.
And he is terrified of himself.
Terrified that the thing he fears becoming…
might already be here.
“What the fuck,” River breathes out, voice rasped and uneven, the disbelief in it almost thick enough to touch. He braces a hand against the tree trunk and pushes himself upright, wincing with every inch gained. Leaves cling to his hair, and his jaw is already swelling.
I rush toward Ryder on instinct, but he jerks away from me as if my presence is a threat—no, as if he believes he is. His eyes are fixed on his own trembling hands, fingers splayed, as though he’s expecting some monster to peel itself out from beneath his skin.
The lilac rings—those cursed, warning rings—don’t touch his irises.
“Get away from me…” His voice cracks, raw and trembling. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Something inside me twists. Something protective. Something that refuses to let him fall apart alone.
“Ryder,” I murmur, soft but firm, stepping toward him in small, careful increments. I feel River tense beside me like I’m walking straight into a snake’s nest. “Whatever that was… I don’t think it was the serum.”
He shakes his head violently, stepping backwards until his heel catches on a root and he has to steady himself against a tree. His chest heaves like he can’t pull the air in fast enough.
“Asha, be careful,” River warns through clenched teeth, limping to my side, one hand pressed to his ribs. “You didn’t see—he threw me without touching me. I could’ve—” He cuts himself off with a groan.
“I saw,” I whisper, eyes still locked on Ryder. “And his eyes didn’t change.”
Not even a flicker. No lilac. No sign of the serum’s takeover.
I take another step. Ryder doesn’t flee this time, but his whole body coils tight.
“I think…” The words taste unreal even as I say them. “I think he channelled your energy, River.”
River’s breath hitches, confusion, denial and panic all warring behind his eyes.
Ziek lifts his head sharply, as if hearing something the rest of us can’t. “I hear the voices. We’re definitely in a weak spot.” He lowers his voice. “But how did he—”
“Twins,” I whisper—barely a breath, barely a sound. But the word hangs in the air like a crack of lightning, splitting the space between us wide open.
Ziek’s eyebrows shoot up. “Whoa. That explains the sibling rivalry.”
A crooked smirk tugs at his lips, too small to soften the tension that still hangs over us like a storm cloud.
Ryder looks like he’s been gut-punched by the truth. His throat bobs in a hard swallow. “So you’re telling me I used a Sun power?”
The last two words twist out of him like something foul—like the idea itself tastes wrong in his mouth.
“I think so,” I admit. A breathless laugh escapes me—not out of humour, but astonishment. “Whether you like it or not… You two are connected.”
My voice softens as the truth settles deeper into my bones.
The Hollow tears us open to expose what we refuse to see.
The forest is silent again—the unnerving, watchful kind of silence that feels like eyes peering out from every shadow.
My gaze pulls from Ryder to River, then back again. “Don’t you see? This is what the Hollow wanted all along.”
Ryder’s eyes flicker, searching my face for the meaning beneath the words.
“It wants to break us apart,” I say, the truth settling cold and certain in my stomach. “Because it knows it can beat us this way… when we’re fractured, when we’re doubting each other, when we’re too busy fighting ourselves to see the real danger.”
A breath shudders out of me, and I step closer to them both, letting the weight of everything we’ve survived press into my voice.
“Because it knows we’re stronger together.”
The words don’t echo, but they feel like they should—like the forest itself hears them, weighs them, tests them against its twisted nature. And for the first time since the trial began, something in me steadies.
Because I believe it.
And I think, somewhere deep beneath the bruises and hurt feelings and unresolved pain—they do too.