Chapter 4
The Beast—Thane, Riven reminded himself, though the title still fit better—didn’t press closer. Didn’t grab, didn’t threaten, didn’t gloat.
He just watched him.
Riven felt painfully exposed under that gaze. It wasn’t just because Thane was half-naked. It was because Riven could tell the man was cataloguing him. Noticing things, filing them away.
It made him feel like prey. And not in the way he enjoyed.
“So,” Riven said, forcing sarcasm, “you drag me into your lair and strip off your shirt for what? A show of dominance?”
“I was hot,” Thane said flatly.
Riven stared.
Riven scoffed, but it was too sharp, more bark than laugh. “Right. The infamous Knife of House Virellien gets warm.”
Thane turned his back to him without answering. His body was just as unreadable from behind—broad shoulders, spine like a drawn line of tension. Even his scars seemed purposeful, and stars, there were a lot of them. Pale lines and jagged ridges, crisscrossing skin that looked carved from marble.
Riven hated how his gaze caught there. On the dip at the base of Thane’s spine, the subtle flex of muscle as he reached for a black shirt draped over a dresser.
Thane moved like a man who didn’t care if you were watching—but knew you would.
“You can sleep here tonight,” he said. “The door locks from both sides. You won’t be disturbed.”
Riven’s eyes flicked to the heavy obsidian door. “Except by you, I guess.”
“I won’t touch you until you ask.”
Not a threat. Not quite a promise, either.
Just…certainty. Thane pulled the shirt over his head in one fluid motion, the fabric dragging over the thick line of his chest. Riven looked away too fast and too late.
His mind clung to the way those muscles moved, the shadows between collarbone and pectoral, the faint sheen of sweat catching against inked skin.
He clenched his jaw. He’d seen beautiful bodies before. He’d stolen from some. Shared beds with a few. This was nothing.
But his chest was tight. His hands were fists.
Thane was calm, unreadable, every inch of him in control. It made Riven feel like he was the only one floundering.
“Tomorrow morning, you’ll be briefed. There’s work waiting.”
“Work?” Riven asked warily. “You think I’m just going to fall into line?”
“Yes,” Thane said. “You are here by our acquiescence in place of your sister. Should your services prove…unsatisfactory, we will cancel the agreement and take her instead.”
There was no heat in his words, and that made it worse. He wasn’t trying to scare Riven. He was just telling the truth.
“Sleep,” Thane said, as if it were a command. “You’ll need it.”
He walked out and shut the door behind him, leaving Riven alone with a half-finished room, his own heartbeat in his ears, and a thousand questions buzzing like static in his skull.
And of course, he didn’t sleep.
The bed was too soft, the silence too deep, and his thoughts were violent, gnawing inside his skull. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw the shape of Thane’s back, the cold calculation in his eyes, the mark still stinging on his skin.
I won’t touch you until you ask.
Until? Until he asked, as if it were an inevitability. Gods, the arrogance of that elf.
By morning, his head throbbed and his throat was dry. A knock came at the door, sharp and efficient. Riven cracked it open to find a young woman waiting—a sleek elf in tailored black with a tablet in one hand and a gun holstered at her hip.
She looked him over like she’d expected worse.
“You’re Riven Kestrien,” she said, scrolling. “You belong to House Virellien now. Congratulations.”
“I didn’t exactly—”
“Not relevant. Come with me.” The snapping pace of her rapid-fire words caught Riven off guard, as if she was constantly racing a clock, and he followed. It was either that or be dragged.
They moved through a corridor lined with glass and stone, obsidian and sea-glass filtering watery light.
“What do you want from me?” he asked as they descended a curving staircase lit from below. “Or what does the House want, anyway?”
“You’re a thief,” she said, eyes still on her tablet. “A good one.”
“Not good enough, apparently.”
“You robbed several Houses without being caught.” Her gaze flicked up at him, unreadable. “That says you don’t lack skill.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why does this feel like a setup?”
“We needed you.”
That stopped him cold. Not a denial, then. Had the House truly called in his sister’s debt in order to secure him?
“For what?”
She tapped her tablet. The screen spun into a 3D map, a clean, high-resolution overlay of Atlantis’s underbelly. One zone glowed red—the deepest reaches of the Seam. The crumbling faultline where the oldest magics still whispered.
“We have a leak,” she said, “a big one. Someone’s moving dangerous drugs through the Seam. Drugs that will kill people.”
Riven’s spine stiffened. “You want me to find them.”
“You have access. Skills. And a face no one thinks twice about.”
“I’m not your errand boy.”
“No,” she agreed. “You’re House Virellien’s errand boy.”
Riven wanted to snarl. Instead, he looked at the Seam map again, the red pulse of danger.
“How big are we talking?”
The woman met his eyes. “Big enough that the Knife of House Virellien is worried. And he doesn’t worry for nothing.”
Thane Virellien’s reputation preceded him in any circle, and Riven knew that anything that would worry him was trouble.