Chapter 71
Riven hadn’t expected it to hit him this hard.
The estate was falling apart around them—stone and sigil, blood and legacy.
The House he’d once considered a gilded prison had become something more in the weeks since his arrival.
He had walked these corridors in borrowed silence and hard-edged pride, expecting nothing, bracing for judgment.
Now, with each fallen warrior, each broken wall, each flickering sigil that once pulsed steady with Virellien magic, he felt the shape of something cracking inside him.
He’d come here shackled. He had stayed by choice.
He hadn’t realized he was mourning it until now.
A sharp noise echoed behind them—a shattering boom of arcane force followed by booted feet pounding marble.
They turned as one. A mass of Hollow Hand soldiers swarmed into view at the far end of the hallway, weapons raised, armor black and sharp with mirrored masks catching the light like grinning skulls. Their movements were efficient, almost mechanical. Precision and hatred in every step.
Riven’s breath caught.
Luca and Cassian didn’t hesitate. They exchanged a look and stepped forward together, falling into mirrored combat stances.
Cassian drew a gleaming silver pistol in one hand, a long, wicked knife in the other.
Luca’s hands moved through the air, pulling shadow magic to his fingertips, his eyes gone flat with focus.
Luca looked back once. “Go. We’ll hold them off.”
Riven surged forward. “No, wait—”
Thane caught him by the wrist, his grip unyielding, dragging him back down the hall. “Move, Riven.”
“They’ll be outnumbered!”
“They know.”
He tore his wrist free, turning on Thane. “We have to help them!”
Thane’s jaw was set like iron. “Their duty is here. Ours is ahead.”
“That’s bullshit. You’d tear the world apart for them!”
Thane didn’t flinch. “And I will. But not at the expense of the Matriarch. Not at the cost of everything this House is built on.”
Riven’s voice cracked. “They could die.”
“So could she.” Thane stepped closer, voice low but forceful. “I’m her Knife. Her son. My duty is to protect her first. And Luca and Cassian’s duty is to make sure I can do that.”
It was cruel. It was true.
Behind them, the hallway lit with the flare of combat magic.
Gunfire cracked through the air. Riven caught a glimpse of Cassian lunging forward, blade catching the light as he carved through a Hollow Hand attacker.
Luca was already in motion beside him, conjuring barriers, siphoning power from the shadows.
A surge of movement pulled Riven back—Thane again, hand on his arm, guiding him forward with a grip that brokered no argument this time.
Riven turned his head just once, heart caught somewhere between awe and agony, as the twins met the oncoming tide.
Then he ran.
He didn’t know how far they went, only that the corridors blurred around him. They passed signs of more skirmishes—burned sigils on the walls, collapsed doorways, bodies in black armor and House violet alike. The estate was bleeding out one hall at a time.
Riven’s breath rasped in his throat. The pain in his side from earlier throbbed dully, but he barely registered it.
He could still see Cassian’s expression—calm and committed, like he’d known all along this moment might come. Like it was already written.
It burned.
Thane didn’t speak as they ran, but Riven could feel the tension radiating off him like heat from a blade pulled fresh from the forge. Not fear. Purpose. Wrath. Whatever lay ahead, he would meet it with that same lethal grace.
Riven pushed himself faster.
If this was the end, then it wouldn’t be for nothing.
The deeper they pushed into the estate, the quieter it became.
No more bodies here—only the hush of abandoned hallways and the distant echoes of chaos elsewhere.
The lighting was dim in this wing, an automatic energy-saving measure triggered by inactivity, and the sleek wall sconces cast long shadows that shifted as they moved.
This part of the manor was reserved for the family’s private quarters.
Riven recognized a turn in the corridor from his earliest, most nerve-wracking days in the House—where he’d followed Thane in silence, uncertain if he was about to be punished or protected.
They rounded the corner—and gunfire exploded.
Thane reacted instantly, grabbing Riven and shoving him behind a towering, gilded cabinet that shook as bullets thudded into it. Plaster cracked. Wood splintered.
Riven barely had time to register the near miss before a familiar voice called out from the shadows:
“Does it sound familiar, Riven? That gun? I bet your leg remembers.”
Kieran.
Riven’s blood iced. He hadn’t heard that voice since the mission, but the sound of it brought back the taste of blood and steel, the helplessness of being sprawled in the motel parking lot while pain overtook everything else.
Thane surged from cover like a thunderclap, his arm raised, magic already burning into existence around his knuckles.
A pressure wave rippled through the air as he unleashed it—explosive force that struck the far wall and left cracks radiating like a spiderweb in the concrete.
Shattered decorative glass rained down from a display case.
Bullets tore through the air, and Riven flinched hard, watching one graze the floor inches from Thane’s boot. But the elf didn’t slow. He advanced like a predator unleashed, all elegance burned away into fury.
Riven could’ve stayed down. Should have, maybe. But the sight of Thane exposed, throwing himself into the line of fire for him, jarred something loose. He wasn’t the same person Kieran had shot. He wasn’t helpless anymore.
He ducked out from behind the cabinet, heart in his throat, and scanned the corridor. A flash of movement—there. Kieran crouched half-concealed in the recess of a doorway, pistol raised again, lining up another shot.
Riven lunged, sprinting low. Kieran saw him too late and pivoted, firing—but Riven was already colliding with him, slamming them both into the wall. The shot went wild. They crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs.
Riven clawed for the pistol, his hands slipping against Kieran’s wrist. Kieran cursed, elbowed him hard, and they rolled—Kieran briefly gaining the upper hand before Riven slammed his knee into the other man’s ribs.
Kieran gasped, and Riven twisted the gun from his hand, flinging it across the floor.
Then it was fists.
Kieran struck him across the jaw. Pain burst white across Riven’s vision, but he refused to let go. He landed a punch of his own, catching Kieran under the chin. They grappled, each trying to pin the other down, teeth bared, hatred thick in the air.
But then—Thane was there.
He seized Kieran by the back of the neck and tore him off Riven like he weighed nothing, hurling him against the wall. Kieran hit it with a sickening crunch and crumpled, dazed.
Thane advanced on him with deadly calm, dragging him up by the collar and slamming him into the wall again. And again. And again.
“You’re the one,” Thane said, low and cold. “You shot him. You left him bleeding in the dirt.”
Kieran gasped, struggling, trying to throw a punch—but Thane caught the strike mid-air with one hand. “You’ve had this coming.”
He lifted Kieran by the throat. Riven had seen Thane angry before, but not like this. This was quiet, focused, controlled. The eye of a storm made flesh.
“I told myself,” Thane continued, eyes locked on Kieran’s, “that if I ever saw you again, I’d make sure I was the last thing you saw.”
Riven approached slowly, not sure whether to intervene. Kieran thrashed—but Thane didn’t flinch. He looked back at Riven.
“The gun,” he said.
Riven hesitated only a second, then retrieved it. He handed it to Thane without a word.
Thane took it and leveled it at Kieran’s leg.
Kieran, finally realizing what was about to happen, began to beg. “Wait, no—listen—”
The first shot was loud in the corridor.
Kieran screamed, his leg collapsing underneath him. Thane let him fall, but didn’t stop. He shot the other leg, and Kieran writhed on the floor, clutching at his thighs.
Riven stood there, rooted to the spot, breath shallow.
Then—two more shots. One arm, then the other.
Kieran howled in agony.
Thane ejected the magazine with a snap and tossed the pistol to the floor beside Kieran’s broken body. The silence afterward was deafening, broken only by Kieran’s ragged sobs.
Riven looked at Thane—and remembered the first time he’d seen him really fight. The icy precision, the ruthlessness. The way he moved like violence was second nature. No. Not second nature.
First.
This was what Thane had been made into. What the Hollow Hand had carved into him. A weapon in the shape of a prince.
And yet, disturbingly, Riven wasn’t repulsed. He wasn’t afraid. He was—
Relieved.
Relieved that Thane had found Kieran before Kieran could hurt anyone else. Relieved that the bullet that should have gone through Thane’s chest had missed. Relieved that he’d fought alongside him, not behind him. That they’d done it together.
That he was still standing.
Thane looked at him then, face unreadable. Not gloating. Not even triumphant. Just steady.
“You good?” he asked, voice low.
Riven nodded, even though his jaw ached and his hands were trembling slightly. “Yeah.”
Thane gave Kieran one final look, as if memorizing the pain etched across his face.
Then he turned and continued down the corridor.
Riven followed, casting one last glance behind. Kieran lay in a mess of blood and defeat, arms twitching. Riven had expected to feel something more—vindicated, maybe. But instead there was only a hollow weight in his chest, as though some longstanding ledger had just been marked settled.