Chapter Twenty-Seven
POPPY
The entrance to the sacred spring opens like a quiet secret.
One moment, the island is all canons and distant cries and the lingering echo of madness, and the next, I step between two towering slabs of warm stone and the world softens.
Steam drifts lazily through the air, catching on the late evening light.
The hot spring sits nestled in the hollow of the rocks, and the water within is clear and glowing, rippling gently where it spills over smooth edges.
Ferns and trailing vines spill down the side, their leaves glossy with mist, littered with pale tropical flowers.
The air smells of minerals and salt, and something faintly sweet, and the water breathes out a steady warmth that loosens the tightness still coiled in my chest.
Magic hums here. I can sense it. Soft and ancient. Moirai magic. The kind meant for intimacy and peace.
The Moirai sealed this place so that only those invited may enter, and once inside, the world falls blessedly quiet. No battle cries from the intruders, no screams carried on the wind. Even the ocean feels distant, reduced to the faintest whisper beyond the cliffs.
And for the first time since the attack, I can breathe.
“What do we do now?” I ask, breathing steadier but still on edge. How in the seven hells did pirates get to this island? Past the kraken? And without the Moirai knowing no less.
“Survive the night.” Riven’s voice is even, more of that soldier’s breathwork, no doubt. “I can start a fire. Or you can sit on my lap until we get one from friction.” His eyebrows wiggle, his old flirtatious self emerging with shocking speed after our near-death experience.
“We need to call for help,” I argue. “There are other people here who don’t have shadow-wielding soldiers as their match. Like Aoife and Noah! They need our help!”
“Noah is a warlock. He’s fine.” Riven’s hand waves dismissively in the air.
“He is a history professor, not a soldier.” I can see him now, throwing books at the pirates and using his body as a shield to protect Aoife.
“Well, she is fae like me. That helps.” He’s stacking wood in his arms now, getting ready to prepare a fire by means other than friction as he had suggested earlier.
“She is a light fae, not a shadow fae.” What is he not understanding? “Riven, listen to me!” My voice pitches loudly, blowing his eyes wide with shock.
He drops the wood without pretense, rolling his arms down and then stepping over the logs to get to me. His hands cup my face, like he’s about to kiss me, but instead, he says, “Poppy, I told you, if it’s between you and everyone else, I’d pick you every time.”
My breath catches in my chest, eyes passing between his and the smoldering earnestness in them. He means it.
“But we have to help them,” I whisper.
“Use your magic to send a message to the Moirai.” For a moment, I only stare at him, my mind still ringing from the chaos of steel and shouting and blood.
Fate. Of course. I must still be in shock to not have thought of using my magic to help.
What was I going to do? Fight them with my bare hands?
“And we will stay here until morning,” he adds more quietly, glancing at the jagged stone walls surrounding the spring.
Steam curls up into the darkening sky, the water glowing faintly with torchlight.
“The Moirai sealed it. Means we’re the only two people on this island who can get in. ”
Only two.
The words land somewhere low in my stomach.
“Fine,” I mutter, pulling out of his hold before my body memorizes how good it felt there. I kneel near the edge of the spring and draw a breath, letting the familiar thrum of magic gather beneath my skin. “Get back to making a fire. It gets cold out here at night.”
A pause.
Then Riven laughs softly behind me. “Are you seriously giving me orders?” I glance over my shoulder just in time to see that swaggering smirk spreading across his mouth. “Hot.”
My kneecaps threaten to dissolve.
I turn away immediately before he can see the effect he has on me. If I look at him too long—if I let myself remember last night, the way the silence fell after I told him I wanted him—I’ll lose every ounce of composure I have left.
So I focus on the magic. The incantation leaves my lips in a quiet whisper, the air around my fingers shimmering as the message slips free and vanishes into the night, bound for the Moirai.
Done.
Too soon.
Now there is nothing left to do but exist here with him.
I rise slowly and begin pacing the smooth stones bordering the spring, my mind a tangled storm. Riven’s voice from last night echoes through my head. Raw and unguarded in a way I’ve almost never heard.
The memory twists somewhere painful inside my chest.
Then there was the attack.
The way he moved. The way he put himself between me and every blade without hesitation, shadows snapping through the air like living weapons. The way his hand kept finding mine in the chaos as if he needed to know I was still there.
But worst of all—
The way I told him I wanted him.
Fate.
Heat crawls up my neck just thinking about it. And now, we’re alone in this quiet, sacred place, and that want is impossible to ignore.
Behind me, fabric tears.
I turn before I can stop myself. Riven is standing beside the half-built fire, ripping the ruined remains of his shirt over his head. The cloth falls away in one careless motion as he wipes sweat from his brow with his forearm.
My mouth goes dry.
The fading sunlight catches along the planes of his chest and shoulders, the faint scars I’ve never dared to ask about, the slow rise and fall of his chest as the adrenaline leaves his body.
He truly is Fate’s gift to humanity.
And, very likely, my greatest downfall.
Riven glances up then, catching me staring. His mouth curves.
Not mocking.
Not smug.
Something softer. Something akin to knowing.
I jerk my gaze away immediately and pretend to inspect the water. Behind me, his low chuckle slips through the steam like a secret. And somehow, that sound feels far more lethal than the pirates ever were.
He sits by the fire. “Come on, Poppy. You’ve done all you can. We need to rest here until morning and then regroup once everything has been resolved.”
Begrudgingly, I lay down, on the other side of the fire, hand behind my neck. Please let sleep come quickly. Maybe the Moirai will allow us to leave sans curse because of this attack, and I can quit pining and embarrassing myself in front of Riven.
“You can’t sleep over there,” Riven tsks. “What if something bites you?” He crawls over to me, and I fight to ignore the low thrumming in my core at the sight. “Here. I’ll protect you.”
Riven lies beside me and nestles tight against me. His arm drapes familiarly over my hip, and his chin rests atop my head. It’s kind of nice despite all the implications and the cost to my heart. It’s almost like—
“Ow!” I yip in surprise when a sharp, pinching fae incisor digs into my skin. “What the hells?” Riven just bit me.
“…What?” Even though I can’t see it, I can hear his impish grin. “I didn’t say it wouldn’t be me that bit you.”
“Be serious, Riven.” I can hear the detached annoyance in my voice.
“I am.” He tucks into me. He couldn’t get any closer at this point unless he was inside of me. My face heats at the thought. “We have to share body heat,” he continues. “It’s medically necessary. I researched it thoroughly in my mind just now.”
My eyes roll. He’s always so snarky. I try to settle into him but can’t find rest. Can’t sit still with the weight of his body pressing into me and his heat and shadows wrapping themselves around me like a familiar quilt.
Riven snorts. “If you keep wiggling that much, I’m going to embarrass both of us.” The heat in my face intensifies. Thank coven he can’t see it.
Once I school my features, I sit up and turn to him. He stays prone, propping his head up on his open hand. “How can you relax while everyone is in danger? How can you keep joking at a time like this?”
He releases a heavy sigh. The same kind he does when he tells me he’s just broken a bottle of rare liquor at work or when a party comes in he forgot to tell me about. A sigh for when he knows I won’t like what he is about to say. My muscles tense, bracing for it.
“I’m relaxed because everyone I care about is safe.
” My mouth drops open, words not coming out.
Not everyone he cares about here. Everyone he cares about—period.
He must take my silence as admonishment because he soon continues, “It’s not my sworn honor to protect anyone but you. And here you are safe.”
“It’s not right that we’re safe while others aren’t.” I understand where he is coming from, and honestly, I am mainly still talking about this so I can ignore the way his hand resting on my thigh is making my nervous system go haywire.
“Plus, I don’t know what else we can do.
We can’t leave the island without the Moirai since the kraken would sink any ship we tried to commandeer, and no one else can get in here with us, so there is nowhere to take them where the pirates can’t get in.
” He shrugs like death and injury are to be expected in this life, and he has already come to terms with it.
“We warned the Moirai; they will help them, and until morning, we will hide here where I know you will be safe.”
“Fine,” I grumble, lying down and letting his arm fall over my hip again.
I try to relax, listening intently to the lapping of the hot spring water on the rocks and counting the freckles and faint scars on his arms as a distraction.
It’s under this close examination that I see he’s bleeding.
My body coils like a spring. “Riven, you’re hurt.
” It’s not a death wound, thank Fate, but it definitely would benefit from a healing spell.
He looks at it and shrugs, like he’s observing a small papercut or a hangnail. “I’m fine. You’re what matters.”