Chapter Twenty-Three
RIVEN
The Moirai must have been really bored when they came up with this challenge.
Why else would they come up with a challenge that is borderline torture for most of us?
Tension hangs heavy like fog over the sea early in the morning.
A few people look pleased, almost moony-eyed over their ex-lovers, but most of us look like we're being asked to chew and swallow glass.
Angora’s voice, shrill and rapid, prods my eardrum with violent intention. How did I ever tolerate this? And why, in Fate’s name, did I think joining the Festival just to progress our physical relationship was a good idea? Right now, that feels like a lifetime ago.
“And so, I told Erik that I think summering in his parents’ southern estate would be amazing.
Think of the clothes I could buy there! I mean, they practically invented silk.
Wouldn’t I look fabulous draped in silk?
” I’m so distracted that I barely remember that this estate probably doesn’t exist, and the caring part of me that wanted to tell her is distracted by watching over Poppy. Why’d they have to sit her so far away?
“Absolutely fabulous.” My voice is so flat you could balance a ball on it. She continues on, but I tune it out when an angelic laugh cuts through the tension permeating the space around me.
My eyes snap to the table on the opposite side of the room.
Poppy’s laughing with him. Her head is tossed back with carefree abandon I’ve scarcely seen since we entered the competition.
Why is she laughing like that? Has this whole thing suppressed her so much that Rodrick is bringing her joy?
I know how much she hates him. He broke her heart and is one of the reasons she decided to come to Fate’s Fortune in the first place.
Did he just touch her hand?
My fingers tighten around the dainty salad fork beside my plate.
Don’t stab him. Don’t stab him. Don’t stab him.
The Moirai should know she deserves someone better.
A heavy sigh heaves my chest. Well, they did put her with me twice, so maybe their matching skills aren’t as good as I want them to be.
Rodrick turns his hand over, an act I’ve done a million times.
A smile, a wink, and an offer to hold my date’s hand.
It’s a classic move. And he’s not going to pull any moves on Poppy.
“Careful, friend,” I call out across the club to Poppy’s table. Rodrick looks up, a smug look on his punchable face. “She smiles like that just being nice, but it seems to give men ideas above their station.”
“Including you?” he quips back instantly.
I smirk darkly, playing the role the Moirai would expect a love-drunk fool to when another man tries pushing in on his territory. “Especially me.”
Angora, shockingly, is austere and silent when I finally pull my eyes back to the table. “So, how long have you been in love with Poppy?”
“What?” I laugh incredulously.
“You’re acting so jealous.” Her voice is gentle, as if she’s speaking to a frightened child instead of a grown warrior.
“That prick is pushing it. I’m protecting her.
” Besides, I’ve never seen real love to even know where to begin.
I knew that from the moment I met Poppy.
She wanted love, true love, and a fae from a toxic home with more battlefield experience than domestic warmth was not the one to give it to her.
In my family, love ruins things, and the last thing I wanted to ruin was her.
I knew then that the friendship we formed in those few weeks wasn’t worth risking.
“It’s okay if you like her,” Angora says, a giggle hidden behind her manicured hand. “I have Erik now.”
“I don’t—” I stop short. I’m not allowed to say it, not without blowing up everything Poppy and I have been faking. Plus, that statement wouldn’t be true, and I can’t bring myself to say it. Of course I like Poppy. She’s my best friend.
“I don’t blame you. She’s kind and stunning.
” Angora looks over her shoulder, catching Poppy in a stream of island sunlight shining on her face.
Angora looks back, a grin on her face that looks like a cat that’s eaten a canary.
She thinks she’s got me. That she’s right.
But it’s not like that. I just can’t deny that she is both kind and stunning.
“Angora, I—”
She cuts me. “Whatever you say,” Angora sings before diving into another soliloquy about silk.
From the corner of my eye, I see Rodrick move closer. Too close.
Poppy smiles politely, the kind she uses on difficult customers and overly confident men who think history entitles them to something.
I breathe a sigh of relief. She doesn’t look dazzled. She doesn’t look undone. She looks… bored.
Good. That’s good.
Across the table, Angora is still speaking. I nod at what I consider appropriate moments and say something clever enough to keep her entertained. My voice works. My charm works. My body is positioned just right. Open, relaxed, and unaffected after my brief moment of fluster.
Performance mode.
Despite it all, my attention keeps slipping back to Poppy.
Rodrick says something that makes her laugh again, and my jaw tightens.
It’s irrational. I know that.
She’s not angled toward him. Not really. Not the way she does when she’s invested. There’s distance in her shoulders. Space between their hands. So unlike the space we had during the first trial, or even last night.
Angora’s fingers trail lightly over my wrist, trying to get my attention.
I don’t react, because my shadows are pushing in, slipping in through my open mouth and nostrils, and—
Suddenly, all I can see in my mind’s eye is Poppy in the first trial—drenched, hair plastered to her skin, firelight catching in her eyes while she hung on with her legs wrapped around my waist. She was so annoyed in that moment, and impossibly alive.
That had been easy to categorize. I blamed it on adrenaline and proximity. The need to trick the Moirai and survive while being bitterly annoyed with the circumstances.
Breath steals from my lungs as my shadows push deeper. I’ve done this to others, forced words or images into a mind, but never have my shadows turned on me in such a way.
Without warning, I see her in my mind in another way, cross-legged on the bed last night, beating me at cards and gloating like she’d conquered a kingdom.
And then, her sprawled beside me this morning, sunlight catching in the hollow of her throat while she complained about having to “perform” again tonight.
Moments that were mundane, ordinary, and ours.
Suddenly, heat coils low in my stomach, and it has nothing to do with spectacle and everything to do with the way Poppy curls into me in her sleep without thinking. The way she trusts me.
Across the room, Rodrick smiles at her, eyes only for the witch across from him.
Something sharp pulls tight in my chest.
Angora laughs at something I’ve supposedly just said. I don’t remember saying it because the realization is hitting me like a blade sliding between ribs.
Because right now, watching her across the room, imagining her in my bed and wrapped around my body is doing something to me that no thoughts of a friend should elicit.
My pulse spikes. Heat floods my body. I shift in my chair subtly, steadying my breathing as desire floods my system.
This is…inconvenient.
Because wanting her when we’re putting on a show is manageable. Wanting her when she’s laughing over cards. When she’s half-asleep and defenseless. When she isn’t trying to be anything at all—
That’s lust.
That’s something with teeth.
And, scariest part, I don’t know when it started.
My hands tighten into fists and begin to shake below the table as my mind involuntarily wanders to thoughts of bending her over and—
No! This would ruin everything. I don’t want her. I can’t.
Also, what kind of asshole am I? I care about her, and she’s over there with a man who broke her heart, and I’m thinking about…sex? I should be locked in a cage.
Across the room, Poppy glances up.
Our eyes lock and my heart stutters.
Shit. I physically want her.
And for the first time since this ridiculous island festival began—
I don’t feel like I’m pretending.
Poppy
Rodrick takes a slow sip of champagne before launching into a story about getting stranded in the southern provinces after accidentally boarding the wrong caravan.
Somewhere along the way, it evolves into a tale involving a stubborn mule, a card game he swears he didn’t cheat at, and an elderly woman who threatened to curse him for insulting her stew. Against my better judgment, I laugh.
Really laugh.
Time has softened the sharp edges of him.
When we were younger, Rodrick tried so hard to be charming that he often forgot to simply be himself.
Every smile had been calculated, every grand gesture carefully crafted to impress.
But sitting across from him now, years and mistakes later, I realize that without the ego and performance, he’s genuinely easy to be around.
Funny, even. He made me feel things once.
Butterflies and anticipation and the dizzy hopefulness of first love.
But he wasn’t easy. He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t the person I could sit beside in comfortable silence while folding napkins at the tavern after closing.
“So then she chased me out of the village with a ladle,” he says, grinning. “Which, for the record, feels deeply excessive over a comment about seasoning.”
I laugh again before instinct has me glancing over his shoulder.
Across the terrace, Angora eyes Riven, one elegant hand with stacked iron rings resting lightly on his forearm as she says something I can’t hear.
Riven tips his head down to her to listen better before a laugh escapes him, warm and effortless beneath the lantern glow as he disregards his slowly burning skin.
How can he not see she was always wrong for him?
She is the least nurturing and considerate person I know.
Something unpleasant twists low in my stomach.