Chapter Twenty-Five
RIVEN
The deck is quiet again.
Too quiet.
Quiet enough that I can hear the thoughts I’ve spent years trying to silence. Thoughts that a simple truth potion pulled out of me with ease.
Poppy is close enough that I can feel the warmth of her through the thin linen of her clothes between us. If I move an inch, we would fit together the way we did during the first trial when her barely clothed, dripping wet body clung to mine. My bottom lip pinches between my teeth at the thought.
Her breathing has evened out, but I know she isn’t asleep. I know the rhythm of her too well now to be tricked by her too-still body and shallow breaths.
I exhale fully, the night air eating up the vapors in the blink of an eye.
The truth serum is fully gone. I felt it leave before I told her about my darkness.
The pressure behind my ribs eased; the compulsion to confess dissolved into something far scarier—choice.
I wanted to tell her all of that because, out of everyone in this universe, I trust her the most.
And, shockingly, I’m not regretting it.
I turn onto my back and stare at the sky; the hand that’s not under Poppy folds over my chest like I’m bracing for impact. Or recovering from one.
Her words are replaying in my head like the tide hitting shore. Over and over again.
I want you.
I want you.
I want you.
Fate.
My first instinct was heat. It was sharp and immediate, a jolt that went straight through my chest and settled somewhere low in my core. The kind of instinctive reaction I’ve spent most of the last three years pretending not to have when it comes to her.
Because of course I want her.
I’ve wanted her longer than I’m willing to admit, even to myself for a long time, but the truth serum made it unavoidable.
Since the first trial, I’ve had this innate drive to protect her.
And I can’t ignore the way my chest feels when she laughs at something she finds actually amusing instead of that pretend laugh she gives customers.
The same laugh she’s given me a couple of times since being here.
I like the way the sun reflects the gold in her eyes and how one of her teeth is a little crooked, but you can only tell when she’s close and full-on smiling.
Admittedly, I like the way her usual work attire hugs her curves and how she feels in my arms. I even like the stubborn tilt of her chin when she thinks she’s right and I’m wrong.
It would be easy to fall into bed with her.
Too easy.
We’re here. Alone. The island is practically built to make people fall into each other’s arms. One step closer, one hand in her hair, and the tension between us would snap like a rope pulled too tight. Especially after she just said she wants me.
If she means it like that—just the physical pull, just the island’s stupid games messing with her head, just something she needs to get out of her system—then I could say yes.
I could reach across our shared bed, hook my fingers into the front of her thin night shirt, and kiss her until the ocean disappears and the lanterns burn out beside us.
And not a fake performative kiss like we’ve done in front of the Moirai, a real one unburdened with an audience or expectations.
I could. I would in a heartbeat.
But the image that follows that thought isn’t the kiss or the body sharing that may come after.
It’s the next morning.
Poppy sitting across from me at breakfast with that careful, polite distance people keep after they’ve made a mistake they don’t want to talk about.
Or worse—Poppy deciding the easiest way to fix it is to leave Fate’s Fortune and never see me again. My jaw tightens slightly. Our friendship is the one thing in my life that has never been fragile. Never been temporary. I can’t lose that.
And, let’s be honest, I know myself. Well, I do ever since the truth potion made me acknowledge it.
If I let myself have her—even once, even if it’s only what she thinks she means—I won’t be able to go back to pretending it doesn’t matter.
The problem isn’t wanting her. That part has never been the problem, not even three years ago in our first Festival.
The problem is that wanting her has always meant wanting more.
More than I can offer. More than I have any right to ask for.
So now, I stay still in the quiet, hands loose against my knees, forcing myself not to look at her again.
Because if I do—if I see even the smallest hint that she would give in to her desires—I’m not entirely sure I’ll have the self-control to pretend I don’t want her just as much.
I exhale slowly through my nose, staring out at the dark water beyond the railing.
She said she wanted me, but she also said we shouldn’t.
Which means she already regrets it, before it even happened. That’s a first. I’ve had a lot of women regret me, but none before I’ve even tasted them.
Poppy is just my friend. My best friend, whom I’ve—more than one time—thought about pushing up against the wall in the dark back room of my bar and kissing until we both forget our names. Another truth the potion forced me to face.
The one thing I’d never tell Poppy is the real reason I put aside all feelings for her during our first Festival.
She came into my life like a tornado of sunshine, and it hit my dark, damaged heart like an arrow.
The chemistry was electric. Hot and heady and clouding my mind like a spell she didn’t know she was casting.
It only took a week of the constant thrumming of my heart before I became a coward.
I was terrified that if I told her how I felt, she’d wake up the next day and realize I wasn’t worth choosing.
Wasn’t worth keeping for more than a few nights of fun.
That I’m too sharp.
Too damaged.
Too built for war and not enough for softness.
Afraid that if she looked at me with clarity instead of heat—if she saw all of me and decided against it—it would confirm every quiet suspicion I’ve carried since I was a boy standing in a house that never felt like home.
That she would never want me. Wouldn’t miss me if I were gone.
Like my parents. Like my family in Ombra that never reached out after I left.
Like every woman I’d ever met before her.
It would make me broken in all the ways I’ve always thought I am. So I pushed it down and became her friend and bedded any maiden who looked twice at me until I forgot I had ever felt this way about her at all. That was, until I took that potion and was forced to face the truth.
My hand drifts across her skin before I can stop it. Her fingers brush mine, and neither of us pulls away, but neither of us crosses the final distance either. The space between us is narrow. A barrier thin enough to break if I wanted.
I could turn into her.
I could say it.
I could risk it.
Instead, I let my hand rest there, barely touching hers.
Just to know she’s still here.
Far enough to pretend I’m still in control.
Her thumb shifts against my knuckle. A question, perhaps, but I won’t answer it.
The ocean wind moves over us, cool against the heat pooling low in my stomach, against the ache in my chest that has nothing to do with desire.
She exhales softly, still not asleep.
Waiting.
And maybe, so am I.
We lie here in the same chaise, separated by a breath’s distance and a hundred unspoken things.
And for the first time in years—I am more afraid of love than I ever was of war.
Afraid of a soft smile that hits me like a spell she doesn’t know she’s casting. Of every laugh we share behind the bar at work that hits me straight in my ribs. Of every reminder that she’s the only woman whose happiness still actually means something to me.
It’s the reason I never pursued her after our first match.
The kind of joy she has doesn’t match my darkness.
I would suffocate her. Her magic lights the room brighter than lanterns ever could, and it would only be snuffed out by my shadows.
Her heart is too pure for me. I knew it the first time I saw the soft crease between her brows when she was worried about me.
I pretended I didn’t notice, but Fate, I did.
No one had cared about me in so long, and there was a witch I’d just met, distraught that I’d cut my hand open on a broken glass behind the bar, tending to the wound like it was fatal.
All of that combined with the way she looks in the light of the moons right now makes me want to turn over and kiss her.
But just one taste would never be enough, and her ruination is a price I’d never pay.