Chapter 61
The room was the same. Cold concrete floor, overhead lights that buzzed faintly, one of them flickering with that sickly strobe that made Riven’s head pound. The same chair bolted to the center of the space, with dark stains in the floor beneath it that he tried not to look at.
Lareth stood near the far wall, gloved hands clasped loosely behind his back, posture easy. Like this was a meeting he’d scheduled weeks ago, and now they’d finally arrived.
Riven’s stomach turned.
The guards maneuvered them forward. Thane didn’t resist, but Riven saw the way his eyes swept the space—calculating, already searching for weaknesses. It gave him a strange, bitter comfort. Even now, Thane’s mind never stopped working.
They were shoved into the chairs. Thane winced as he lowered himself, the movement tugging at the freshly carved warding on his arm. Riven instinctively shifted toward him before the guard stepped between them.
“Now, now,” Lareth said, smiling as he stepped forward. “Let’s not ruin the reunion.”
Thane’s gaze sharpened. “I wasn’t aware we’d met.”
That earned a grin from Lareth, wide and gleaming. “That’s the thing, Thane. I’ve been waiting for you to say something. A look of recognition, maybe. A flicker of guilt. But you haven’t given me a damn thing.” He tilted his head. “Starting to think you don’t recognize me at all.”
Thane’s mouth twisted, unimpressed. “I don’t make a habit of remembering low-life nobodies.”
The smile faltered, just a fraction. Enough to let the crack show. Lareth gave a soft, brittle laugh—thin and dry and almost childlike in how it trembled at the edges.
“Nobody,” he repeated, eyes narrowing, voice scraping low. “Is that all you think I am?”
“What else would you be?” Thane asked coldly.
There was a pause. A single breath where even the flickering light above seemed to go silent.
Then Lareth said, quiet and vicious, “A ghost.”
Riven’s skin prickled.
Lareth’s hand lifted, fingers flexing in a subtle, practiced motion. The air shifted. Magic slid through the room like oil over glass.
Then the spells holding Lareth’s appearance in place began to flicker.
It was small at first. A shimmer around the edges of his face. Then the contours blurred, skin warping as if heat rippled beneath it. The illusion faltered—hair darkening, mouth reshaping, one eye clouding over to a glassy, ruined thing.
And slowly, like a mask being peeled away, the man who’d called himself Lareth began to melt into someone else entirely.
Riven stared, breath caught in his throat, dread pouring into his chest like cold water.
He didn’t know who he was looking at yet.
But Thane did.
And the look on his face as recognition finally dawned was not fear.
It was something worse. “Yerin,” he said.
Yerin’s laugh rang out in the narrow room, sharp and joyless, a brittle rasp scraped raw by years of hatred. “It feels so good to finally be myself again,” he murmured, his voice low and brimming with venom.
Thane’s hand twitched, instinctively ready to strike, but Yerin raised a single finger.
Instantly, the air snapped taut. Magic coiled through the room like wire drawn to tension, static buzzing across Riven’s skin.
He could feel the sigils woven into the walls, buried in the stone.
Ancient spells, humming with the kind of power you couldn’t see but could taste—metallic and fatal.
“Don’t be stupid,” Yerin said, tone almost bored. “This room is layered with wards. You so much as think about lunging, and they’ll light you up from the inside out. I made sure of it.”
He turned, slow and deliberate, until his eyes landed on Riven. “Do you understand what’s happening here?”
Riven said nothing. His jaw was locked too tight to speak.
Yerin gave a disappointed sigh. “I should’ve expected as much. Half-breed.”
Thane snarled, but Yerin barely glanced his way. He paced with easy calm across the bloodstained floor, as though the chains and dried streaks on the walls were decoration.
“There was once a boy,” he began, voice level and distant. “Sixteen. The heir to a respectable House. Not one of the Greats, but not a nobody either. House Mecari. Wealthy. Clever. With a talent for pulling strings from the shadows.”
He glanced back, lips curling into something that might have once been a smile. “We backed the Hollow Hand before anyone realized what they were becoming. We funded ideas—radical, beautiful ones—meant to change this city. But that made us dangerous, didn’t it?”
He stopped pacing. His eyes fixed on Thane. “And then one night, you came. You and your fucking war band.”
Riven could see Thane’s expression harden.
Yerin stepped forward, the rhythm of his words rising with heat. “You broke in before dawn. Killed the guards. Slaughtered the servants. You moved through my house like a plague. I saw you, Thane Virellien. I saw you cut down my father. I heard my mother scream.”
His voice cracked, just barely.
“And when you came for my little brother,” Yerin hissed, “I fought. I tried. But you broke me. I was still breathing when you carved him open and left his body beside mine.”
The silence that followed was dense and suffocating.
Thane’s voice came low, bitter. “House Mecari funded terrorists. You kept the Hollow Hand alive. Killing you was necessary.”
Yerin’s composure fractured. He lunged a step forward, eyes blazing. “Necessary?” he shouted. “What did he do? He was eight! He had a stuffed bear in one hand and a storybook in the other!”
Riven flinched. The air trembled with residual magic, alive with fury.
Yerin’s breathing came fast and shallow. “What crime did he commit, Thane? Being born in the wrong House?”
For a moment, no one spoke. The lights flickered slightly overhead, cheap fluorescents struggling to hold steady.
Riven’s heart pounded. He didn’t want to feel anything for this man—but for a flicker of a moment, he did. Not for the one in front of him, but for the boy he had once been.
It wasn’t enough.
The boy was gone. Burned away. All that remained was this.
Yerin straightened, smoothing the front of his coat. When he next spoke, his voice was cool again. Detached.
“I’ve spent ten years planning this. Ten years building trust, infiltrating your people, watching your House rot behind its gilded walls.”
He smiled, all teeth.
“And now, I have a way in. The gate will open from within. The wards will fail. Your defenses will collapse like paper in the rain. By dawn, House Virellien will be nothing but ash.”
Thane didn’t move.
Yerin’s eyes glittered with satisfaction. “Your guards won’t stop me. Your family won’t survive. The Matriarch, wherever she’s hiding—she won’t even see it coming.”
He turned toward Riven again. “And you. You’ll get to sit here and think about the role you played in this. About how all your little sacrifices were wasted. You picked the wrong House.”
Then he began to walk.
Riven tensed, expecting another order, another blow—but Yerin simply reached the door. He paused with his hand on the frame, his back to them, still as a shadow.
“I’m feeling generous tonight,” he said softly.
His voice barely carried.
“So I’ll give you a parting gift.”
He turned his head just enough for them to see the edge of that ruined face, a cruel curve of his mouth.
“I’ll let you die alone.”
And then he stepped out.
The door shut behind him with a hiss of hydraulics. The locks engaged with a soft click. The overhead lights buzzed faintly.
Riven exhaled through clenched teeth, chest heaving. His wrists ached. His stomach churned.
Thane said nothing.