Chapter 62
Riven waited until the last trace of footsteps faded down the corridor before moving.
The silence that followed was thick and final, like the door had sealed a coffin.
He stumbled to it anyway, instincts screaming for action even when logic told him there was no escape.
His fingers curled around the handle—cold, unmoving—and he yanked.
Nothing.
Of course not.
He hit it once, then again, the noise sharp and hollow in the cramped cell. Desperation twisted into his gut like a blade. He slammed his shoulder into the metal, palms, fists, anything. The lock didn’t budge.
“Come on,” he growled, voice rough with the weight of exhaustion and fury. “Come on—open—”
The door didn’t yield.
Behind him, Thane hadn’t moved. Still slumped against the wall, blood dried in a black trail down his arm. His face was blank, but not numb—just too full. Like a dam about to split.
Riven turned toward him. “Are you just going to sit there?”
No response.
“Thane.” He moved closer. “We need to move. We need to find a way out. He said he’s getting into the estate. He said by dawn. We don’t have time to sit here feeling—whatever the hell this is.”
Thane lifted his eyes. Slowly. Something flickered in them—pain, old and endless.
“I remember the night I killed his family,” he said.
Riven blinked, caught off guard by the stillness in his voice. It wasn’t regretful. Not exactly. Just heavy.
“I was seventeen. Freshly bound to the House. My father had just been murdered, throat opened in the garden like he was nothing. Hollow Hand made it look like a robbery, but we knew. They left a message.”
Thane looked away, his gaze fixed on some distant memory beyond the stone wall.
“They wanted to send a warning. They wanted to show us we weren’t untouchable.” A pause. “So we showed them we were.”
Riven’s chest felt tight.
“They traced the funding to House Mecari. Small enough to be overlooked. Rich enough to bankroll everything from Soulglass trafficking to ritual assassinations. The Matriarch gave the order, and we burned them from the inside out.”
Riven said nothing. He didn’t move.
“They were asleep when we came,” Thane continued. “Parents. Servants. Children. We didn’t leave anyone breathing. Not because they all deserved it. Because it was war. Because fear is a sharper blade than steel.”
He exhaled, a sound like something he’d been holding in for ten years.
“I remember a boy—half my size, screaming over someone already dead. He fought. Gods, he fought. He clawed at me. I thought we killed him.”
Riven’s voice came low. “Yerin.”
Thane nodded once.
“I don’t regret what we did,” he said. “The Hollow Hand collapsed after Mecari fell. We bought the city a decade of peace. But I regret him. I regret not making sure he died. Because this—” his voice cracked just slightly “—this is what happens when you don’t finish the job.”
He looked up at Riven, and for a moment he didn’t look like the heir of a Great House. He just looked tired. Worn down to the bone.
“I failed. And now you’re hurt. The estate will fall. All because I couldn’t see the ghost walking beside me in plain sight.”
“No,” Riven said. Sharper than he meant to, but it cut through the gloom like a knife. “No, you don’t get to do this.”
Thane frowned. “Do what?”
“Sit there like you’re already dead. Like all that matters is what you did wrong. You want to carry guilt? Fine. But do something with it.”
He stalked toward him, dropping to a crouch so they were eye-level.
“You want to make up for your failure? Then get up,” Riven said. “Get up, and fight. Because he’s not finished. And if we don’t stop him, the blood won’t end with your past. He’ll drag the whole damn city into it.”
Thane’s eyes searched his, and for a moment, Riven didn’t know if he’d reached him. Then, slowly, Thane pushed himself off the wall.
It wasn’t graceful. But he rose. Thane limped toward the door and placed his palm flat against it. His expression tensed. “It’s bound,” he said quietly. “Magic lock. Subtle, but deep. Woven straight into the frame.”
Riven stepped beside him. “Can you break it?”
“Yerin’s magic is strong,” Thane muttered, examining the doorframe with a grim look. “But not that strong.”
“And?”
“And I can’t do anything while I have this sigil.” He turned to Riven. “I need your help. I can’t see it well enough to dismantle it. But if you trace it, line for line, exactly how it looks, I might be able to work through it.”
Riven didn’t hesitate. “You think you can break it?”
“If I can study the full design? Maybe. I’ve taken apart worse.” He paused. “But this is precise work. I can’t afford mistakes. You have to show me exactly what he carved.”
Riven crouched beside him and took Thane’s bloodied arm.
He reached down to the floor, using his fingers as a brush to sketch the sigil in crimson across the concrete.
It came slowly—an intricate lattice of curves and angular strokes, the design at once brutal and elegant, humming faintly with restrained power.
Riven worked silently, glancing from arm to floor, methodically recreating the pattern.
Thane watched it take shape with growing intensity. “That’s it,” he murmured. “Good. Keep going.”
As the rune neared completion, a vibration rolled through the air.
Then the floor shuddered beneath them. The lights above them flickered violently, and somewhere deep in the bones of the estate, a groan echoed through stone and steel.
“What the hell was that?” Riven jerked back, wiping his bloodied hands on his shirt.
Thane didn’t answer immediately. He stepped closer, eyes scanning the now-visible binding mark. His face had gone paler.
“Well?” Riven prompted, heart still hammering.
Thane exhaled. “Estates built for the Houses—old ones, like Virellien—have protections laced into the foundation. Failsafes. Containment systems. Magical traps built into the stone itself, meant to be triggered only in absolute emergencies.”
He straightened slowly. “Yerin didn’t just set a lock. He found a way to use the estate’s own defenses. And he’s activated them.”
Riven swallowed hard. “Meaning?”
“Meaning this place is rigged to become our tomb.” Thane looked back at the blood-lit rune, the lines still glowing faintly on the concrete. “He doesn’t need to kill us himself. He’s going to let the House do it for him.”
Riven stared at the mark, pulse thrumming in his throat. “Then we’d better figure out how to beat it.”
“We don’t have time to break it properly,” Thane said, voice low and clipped. He was still crouched over the sigil Riven had drawn in his blood, but the flickering lights and the rumbling in the walls had made his tone sharper, harder. “I can’t analyze this line by line. The estate’s waking up.”
Riven stared at him. “So what do we do?”
“We destroy the sigil. That should be enough to sever the effect.” Thane stood, face pale but steady. “We break it.”
“How?” Riven asked.
Thane didn’t answer—just grabbed one of the old chairs pushed against the wall and slammed it against the concrete floor.
The wood splintered on impact, the sound sharp and violent in the enclosed space.
Riven flinched despite himself, not from fear but from the sheer force of it.
For one stupid second, he caught himself staring—not at the chair, but at Thane.
The effortless power in his body, the way the muscles in his arms flexed as he tossed aside the ruined frame.
Focus, idiot.
Thane bent and picked up one of the larger splinters. It was jagged and splintered, sharp enough to break skin, dark with varnish and age. He held it out.
“You’re going to use this.”
Riven didn’t move.
“You have to cut through the sigil. On my arm. Diagonally, deep enough to break the design’s integrity.”
“No,” Riven said at once. “I can’t—”
“You have to. I can’t do it myself—not at the right angle, not deep enough. It’s the only way.”
Riven stared at the makeshift weapon, bile rising in his throat. “I’m not— I’m not cutting you open like that.”
“Riven.”
He looked up. Thane’s face wasn’t cold, or even stern. It was open. Honest. “This is the only way I get my power back. And without it, we both die down here. You know that.”
Riven’s hands closed around the shard of wood before he even realized he was reaching for it. It felt too light for what it was about to do. He looked down at Thane’s arm, at the sigil carved across his skin. The lines of blood were drying now, but the magic still pulsed faintly through them.
He hesitated.
“Funny,” he muttered. “When I first came to House Virellien, I used to fantasize about this. Getting a weapon in my hand. Catching you off guard. Making you bleed.”
Thane said nothing.
Riven forced a bitter smile. “Guess fate has a twisted sense of humor.”
Then, carefully, he brought the jagged edge of the wood down to Thane’s arm.
He didn’t hesitate because he wanted to be cruel. He hesitated because he didn’t.
The shard dug into skin, biting deep. Thane didn’t cry out, but Riven saw the tightness in his jaw, the way his breath hitched through his teeth.
Riven’s own stomach turned as he dragged the splintered wood down in a hard diagonal slash across the sigil, splitting the carefully carved lines apart.
Blood welled instantly, red and vivid and too much.
Thane’s hand clenched into a fist, but he didn’t move. Didn’t stop him.
The building trembled again. Dust fell from the ceiling. The failsafe, whatever it was, was coming closer to its final act.
Riven pulled the wood away, his own hand shaking now, and stepped back. “Is that enough?”
Thane flexed his fingers. Magic stirred at his skin, like a breath catching fire.
He looked at Riven, eyes dark and focused.
“Let’s find out.”