Luna
The sun’s long since dropped below the treeline, but it doesn’t matter out here. Light bends strangely around the pillar, like it’s trying to remember what the world’s supposed to look like but keeps slipping. The grass beneath me hums, ancient and bruised. It remembers too.
Riven doesn’t look at me when I sit beside him. Doesn’t shift, doesn’t flinch, just stares down the pillar like if he glares long enough, it’ll implode. Or maybe he will. The bond between us coils, erratic. His fury’s buried so deep it sings in the marrow of me.
He’s got a six-pack crumpled beside his boot. Two bottles already shattered—glass like jagged starlight around the base of the pillar. One more in his hand, half-gone. I reach for the untouched one, because that’s what people do when they don’t know what to say. They drink. They distract.
It’s not a twist-off. Of course it’s not.
I grit my teeth and dig my fingers into the cap, twist harder, then harder again. My palm stings. It won’t budge. My pride—my very stupid, very stubborn pride—screams don’t you dare ask him for help.
He sighs. Not loudly, but enough. Just enough to make me want to hurl the bottle across the field and storm away like the dramatic disaster I am.
“Give it,”
he mutters.
It’s not a question.
I hesitate, just long enough to feel petty about it, then pass it over. He takes it, flips a knife from his boot with the kind of ease that should not be this attractive, and pops the cap like it’s nothing. Hands it back without looking at me.
“You don’t have to sit here,”
he says after a long pause, voice rough with something older than exhaustion.
“I don’t need company.”
“I’m not company,”
I murmur, staring ahead.
“I’m a parasite. Ask anyone.”
A flicker of something moves across his face, too fast to name.
I take a drink. The beer is warm. Bitter. Exactly right.
We sit in silence. But not the kind that stretches. This silence coils. Knots. Fuses heat to bone.
“You trying to fix it?”
I ask, finally.
“The pillar.”
He takes another pull from his bottle, the muscles in his jaw clenching.
“I’m trying not to kill it,”
he says flatly.
“Or maybe I am. I don’t know.”
My gaze trails up the obsidian stone. The runes still shimmer faintly, pulsing in no rhythm I recognize. The last time we touched it, it took us to hell. Or close enough.
“It’s not the pillar’s fault,”
I say softly.
“It’s just a doorway. A key. It does what it’s told.”
“No,”
he growls.
“It chooses. It let her bring us back. But it won’t open now. Not for us. Not for me. And it sure as shit won’t let me back in to get Orin or Lucien.”
I turn toward him slowly.
“You think it’s punishing you?”
“I think it knows what I am.”
I inch closer, barely a breath.
“I know what you are too, Riven. And I’m still here.”
He flinches like I struck him.
“Don’t say shit like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t mean it. You’re just—”
he swallows.
“You’re the fucking Binder. You’re supposed to say things like that.”
I set my beer down. Carefully. Deliberately.
And then I reach out and press my hand to his, just over the beer bottle, just long enough to feel the heat of him, the thunderstorm in his veins.
“I don’t say anything I don’t mean,”
I whisper.
“Not to you.”
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t look at me.
But the bond between us stutters.
And then steadies.
He drinks again, but slower this time. Riven doesn’t do vulnerability. Doesn’t even look it in the eye. But he’s letting me sit here, letting me feel the full weight of what it means to be hollowed out by loss and still trying to be angry enough to survive it.
He thinks I don’t notice the way he’s breathing harder now. Not from rage. From holding it in. From not letting the grief claw its way to the surface where I could see it. Where it might make him human instead of the weapon he keeps trying to be.
And I get it. Gods, I do.
He lost them.
Lucien. Orin. The only two he ever let close. The only ones who didn’t try to mold him into something quieter. Easier. Lucien was the chaos under control, and Orin was the silence Riven could scream into. They're gone—and they didn’t even say goodbye.
And now he's here. With me. With a six-pack and too much silence and a rage he doesn’t know where to put.
So I say the worst possible thing.
“Well,”
I mutter, tilting my beer bottle toward the pillar.
“at least they didn’t ghost you over text.”
Riven’s head jerks toward me so fast I almost choke on the sip I was taking. His brow furrows like he’s trying to figure out if I just lost my mind or if I’m trying to pick a fight.
I glance sideways. Give him my most innocent look.
“Too soon?”
He blinks. Stares. And then—then—his mouth twitches. Not a smile. Not really. But close enough that it punches something deep in my chest.
“You’re the worst,”
he mutters, dragging his hand over his face, but the edge in his voice has dulled.
“You really are.”
“You’re not the first person to say that today,”
I say with a sigh.
“You’re probably not even top three.”
He makes a low sound, almost like a laugh but smothered beneath years of growling through his emotions instead of expressing them. His hand brushes mine again, deliberately this time.
“Ghosted over text,”
he says, shaking his head.
“Gods, you’re annoying.”
“But effective,”
I grin, and for a second, it feels like the weight around us lessens.
Only a little.
But still.
Because that’s the thing with Riven. You don’t get declarations. You don’t get softness wrapped in bows. You get cracked bottles and glances that burn more than they should. You get pain buried beneath sarcasm. You get the way he doesn’t move when I stay close.
And that’s enough. It has to be.
A breeze stirs the grass around the pillar, that weird warp of magic still humming in the background like a warning bell we haven’t learned how to hear yet. But it’s distant now. Drowned beneath the hum of two people sitting close and pretending they’re not broken in the exact same places.
“Thanks,”
I say, voice softer now, the humor fading into something rawer.
He doesn’t ask what for.
But I feel it in the bond anyway—his answer.
You don’t have to thank me for staying.
I don’t push him.
I’ve learned better.
With Riven, pressure is a trap. A trigger. You corner him, he bolts. You dig, he buries deeper. The bond between us doesn’t change that. If anything, it makes the stakes sharper—because I can feel the storm always brimming under his skin, and if I’m not careful, I’ll be the one it breaks on.
So instead, I lean back on my elbows, let the silence stretch, and toss the grenade I’ve been sitting on all day.
“You know,”
I say casually.
“I walked in on Silas and Elias flexing at each other shirtless this morning.”
Riven chokes mid-sip, sputters, glares at me like I’ve just spoken an unspeakable horror into the world.
I keep my face neutral, but inside I’m already laughing.
“In the mirror. Bathroom. Full-on competition. I think Elias was winning until Silas started whispering compliments to himself.”
Riven blinks. And blinks again.
Then, like the sun cutting through the Void, he huffs out a single laugh. Just one. Sharp. Dry. But real.
“I hate that that doesn’t surprise me.”
“Oh, it gets better.”
I turn to face him now, curling one leg under me.
“Elias panicked when I knocked. Couldn’t find his shirt. Silas opened the door like he was auditioning for a romance cover. I swear Elias flexed harder just to keep up.”
Riven exhales slowly, the edges of his mouth twitching.
“You’re making this up.”
“You wish I was.”
He finally looks at me, really looks, and I feel it—the fracture in his armor. The way he wants so badly not to care, not to feel. But something about the idea of Elias panicking half-naked is pulling the corners of his mouth into something dangerously close to a smile.
“You’re lucky I didn’t walk in,”
he mutters.
“I would’ve left.”
“And missed the show?”
I say sweetly.
“You’d never forgive yourself.”
“I wouldn’t forgive them.”
“You say that like they’d care.”
He grunts.
“They wouldn’t.”
We fall quiet again, but it’s softer now. Warmer.
He doesn’t pull away when my shoulder brushes his. Doesn’t snap when I lean the tiniest bit closer. The bond between us pulses once, a low thrum, and for a moment, I wonder if he even realizes his body’s begun to mirror mine—elbow propped, head tilted, that one storm-wracked hand still cradling the beer he hasn’t touched in minutes.
“You think they’re okay?”
I ask eventually. Not about Elias or Silas. He knows it. I know it.
Lucien. Orin.
His jaw flexes. He doesn’t answer right away, but I don’t fill the silence. I wait.
“No,”
he says at last. Quiet. Flat. Honest.
“But they will be.”
And somehow, that’s worse than if he’d said no, and I’m scared shitless.
Because Riven doesn’t do hope. Doesn’t make promises unless he knows he can keep them. So if he says they will be—it means he’s already planning the cost.
And that thought?
It terrifies me.
But for now, I just lean my head on his shoulder. Let the bond stretch, thrum, settle.
“I want to keep training,”
I murmur, watching the faint shimmer of the pillar’s runes in the dimming light.
“With you.”
His body stills beside me—not in rejection, not quite—but like he’s checking himself before something rises too fast. Too hard.
I keep my voice low. Even. Like it’s not a big deal. Like the bond between us isn’t thrumming like a livewire through my ribs.
“You’re good at it,”
I continue, brushing imaginary dust from my knee.
“The fighting. The power. You don’t just use it, you understand it. And I think... I think that’s what I need. To understand.”
His knee brushes mine. Not accidental.
“Wrath doesn’t ask for understanding,”
he says, voice low, roughened like gravel over glass.
“It takes. Destroys. That’s its language.”
“Maybe,”
I say.
“But I speak a few of those languages now.”
That gets him. He turns, finally, and I meet his gaze. Red eyes lit from within, anger always simmering beneath—but I see something else, too. Wariness. Wonder. A reluctant want.
“You’re not scared of it,” he says.
“I’m not scared of you.”
His lips twitch—half a smirk, half disbelief.
“You should be.”
“Probably,”
I say, and smile like I mean it.
And then he nods. Just once. But it’s all I need.
“We’ll start tomorrow,”
he says. “Early.”
“How early?”
He shrugs.
“Whenever I feel like watching you fall on your ass.”
“You mean, like how I saw you trip over your own rage shadow yesterday?”
His eyes narrow.
“That was tactical retreat.”
“Into a tree?”
“You’re really asking to get your ass handed to you, aren’t you?”
I grin.
“Someone’s got to humble you.”
He doesn’t reply to that—but he doesn’t deny it either. The bond flickers between us, heat and static, and I feel it settle like a promise in my chest. Not an oath, not from Riven. But something rawer. Realer.
When I stand, the grass crunches faintly beneath my boots. Riven rises with me, slow and unhurried like he’s trying not to startle the moment into fleeing. The beer bottle in his hand swings low at his side, forgotten, the label peeled half off by his thumb.
Then I see them—his eyes.
Not red. Not burning.
Gray.
Soft, storm-washed gray. Still sharp. Still unflinching. But calmer. Human, almost. And it's... it’s disarming in a way that feels unfair. Unarmed Riven is more dangerous than war-bound Riven. Because I don’t know where to aim.
“You’re doing that on purpose,”
I blurt, the words slipping before I can wrestle them down.
He frowns slightly.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me with those stupid, pretty eyes.”
A slow blink. Then his mouth tips up, just a little—like it doesn't know how to smile but it’s willing to try for me.
“You think they’re pretty?”
he says, low and dry, but there’s something almost soft beneath the sarcasm. Like he’s unsure how to hold the compliment.
I mean to respond with a joke. Something light, something casual. But the words don’t come. Because they are—his eyes. Beautiful. Unsettling in a different way. Like a dusk that never ends. And it throws me. Throws him, too.
He shifts his weight. Glances to the side.
“It’s the bond. It messes with them sometimes.”
“That doesn’t make them less sexy,”
I say. And my voice cracks right at the end like I’m seventeen and hopeless, and not standing in front of a wrath-bound ancient god who just made me feel something I shouldn’t have said aloud.
His breath hitches. Actually hitches. And then—he blushes.
Riven fucking Kain blushes.
It’s faint, just the barest shift in the shadows under his cheekbones. But I see it. And he sees that I see it. And for the first time, there’s no rage shielding him. No sharp edge to hide behind. Just him. Quiet. Raw. A little wrecked.
And breathtaking.
“You’re messing with me,”
he says eventually, voice lower now.
“Trying to bait me.”
“I don’t need to bait you,”
I murmur.
“You’re already hooked.”
That knocks the air out of him like a physical hit. He exhales and looks away, and I see his hand twitch at his side—like he wants to reach for me, but doesn’t know how.
And then... he smiles. Really smiles. Not the twisted thing he gives everyone else. Not the hard, smug tilt of the mouth he uses like a weapon. No—this one’s crooked. Small. Honest. Like it doesn’t quite belong on his face but grew there anyway, just for me.
“I don’t flirt,”
he says quietly.
I step closer.
“I’ve noticed.”
“I’m not charming.”
“No, you’re lethal.”
His eyes drop to my mouth.
“You should walk away.”
“I should,”
I whisper, stepping closer still.
“But I won’t.”
His hand brushes mine. Not on purpose. But he doesn’t pull away.
“I don’t do sweet,” he rasps.
I lean in, brushing my lips against his jaw—just once.
“Then don’t.”
The breath leaves him like it’s stolen. And for once, Riven doesn’t storm off. Doesn’t snap. Doesn’t shut me down.
He just watches me.
And stays.
And then he kisses me like I dared him not to.
There’s no war in it. No firestorm of teeth and hunger. Just the slow drag of his mouth against mine—intentional, aching, real. Like he’s pouring something into me that he’s never given anyone else, something buried so deep beneath the fury and guilt and grief, it doesn’t have a name yet.
But I feel it.
Gods, I feel him.
His hand cups the back of my neck, fingers tangling in my hair like he’s scared I’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold on. I press closer, one hand braced on his chest, the other curled into the collar of his shirt like an anchor.
He sighs into me—barely audible—but I drink it in like it’s sacred. Like I’ve earned it. The way his lips soften. The way he breathes me in. The way he doesn’t shove this down or shove me away.
When we finally break apart, my forehead rests against his, and he’s staring at me like I’ve just rewired something inside him.
And maybe I have.
Then, with zero warning, he lifts me.
I yelp—a startled, breathless sound that ends in a laugh—and instinctively lock my legs around his waist. His hands are strong beneath me, one gripping my thigh, the other splayed wide across my lower back like he needs me there.
He doesn’t speak. His expression says everything—half disbelief, half reverence, all heat. Like he can’t stand the thought of not touching me but doesn’t know how to be gentle with anything, and he’s trying anyway.
The path back to the house is short, but it feels eternal.
Every step he takes, I feel the weight of this shift. The ache of it. The sweetness. The hope braided into a man like Riven who’s known only ruin.
I bury my face in his neck, breathing him in—stone and fire and something uniquely him. I don’t want to unravel him. I want to keep him whole.
When we reach the porch, he pauses. The wind stirs around us, lifting strands of my hair like a promise. His eyes flick up to mine again, still gray. Still open.
And when he finally pushes open the door with his shoulder, stepping inside with me wrapped around him, there’s nothing left of the man who only knew how to fight.
Only this.
Only us.