Chapter 38 #2
Eamon had taught me how to make paper boats when I was six. We used to float them in the puddles outside the house after a rainstorm.
I shaped the hull. I creased the sail. A paper boat for a fisherman of secrets.
I stepped to the water’s edge.
The usual comforts of the dead—the burial, the headstone—remained out of reach. I held the only truth he’d left behind: a fragile piece of the story he had protected with his life.
I crouched down.
“You told me to trust him,” I whispered to the dark water. “To trust the connection.”
I looked back at Riven. He was standing apart from the others, watching me from the distance, simply waiting.
“I’m going to finish this, Dad,” I said, my voice thick. “Just like you taught me. I'm going to fight.”
I placed the boat on the surface of the water.
It bobbed for a moment, white against the black current. Then, the river caught it.
I placed my hand on the water and summoned the gentle warmth of a daughter’s love.
A tiny sphere of golden light drifted from my palm. It settled in the centre of the paper boat, shining like a lantern.
The current carried it away.
We watched in silence as the little boat drifted downstream, a single point of defiance in the encroaching dark, carrying the light towards the sea.
“Goodbye, Eamon,” Dane said softly from behind me.
“Rest well,” Goran rumbled.
I watched until the light was just a speck, and then nothing at all.
I stood up. The cavern’s chill seeped into my bones, but for the first time in days, the crushing weight in my chest felt lighter.
He was gone. But the course remained.
And I wasn’t walking the path alone.
Riven stepped away from the group, retreating further into the gloom at the edge of the subterranean river.
He stood looking down into the black water as if searching for a reflection that wasn’t there.
His shoulders were rigid, the tension returning to his frame now that the immediate crisis of the battle was over.
I followed him, leaving the rest of the team behind. The others stayed back—Dane speaking in low tones to Una, the twins standing shoulder to shoulder by the tunnel entrance, their heads bowed in silent respect. They gave us the space we needed.
“You’re quiet,” I said.
I had felt the distance in him since I woke up back at the Cistern.
He was present, lethal, and protective, but beneath the surface I could feel his unease.
I hadn’t pressed him. I felt the internal war he was fighting, and I knew he would only drop his guard when the burden became too great to hold alone.
“I am listening,” he replied, his voice low.
“To what?”
“To the echo.”
He turned to look at me. In the gloom of the cavern, his eyes were deep pools, the silver swirls spinning with agitated speed. He looked haunted.
“In the atrium,” he said. “Dane’s question.”
I shifted closer, bridging the distance between us. “You kept the truth from him.”
“I couldn’t speak freely,” Riven said, his eyes moving to the people gathered nearby. “I refused to do it in front of them.” He looked back at the black water, his jaw working as he forced the words out.
“That Vessel, back at the Highspire lobby. He spoke to me, Selene. Before the police breached the doors. He looked right at me, smiled, and spoke directly into my mind.” Riven’s voice dropped to a whisper that chilled the air between us. “He called me his son.”
My stomach tightened. Telepathy. The sheer power required to breach a mind so effortlessly was staggering. “His son?”
Riven nodded. He touched his chest, his hand hovering over the scar hidden beneath his shirt—the mark of where Korenth had tried to hollow him out all those years ago.
“He meant it literally, Selene. When he looked at me… I felt it. A resonance. Different than the connection I share with you. Cold and oppressive.”
He looked back at the water, drawing a slow, fractured breath.
“I spent my life believing I was a mistake. I thought I was a specimen grown in a jar and discarded with no history.” He swallowed hard. “But that thing… that entity Korenth pulled through the Veil… it recognised me. It knew me. It knew my magic.”
He looked at me again, and the fear in his eyes was naked and terrifying.
“I believed I was an orphan. Now I know I am the son of the thing we are trying to kill. I am one of them.”
I reached out. I placed my hand flat against his chest, right over the scar, right over the heart that beat in sync with mine. I felt the bond settle—steady, unbreakable, true.
“That’s not true,” I said.
Riven blinked. “Selene, if I am—“
“It doesn’t matter,” I repeated, fiercer this time. “I don’t care whose blood is in your veins, or who made you. I care who you are. The others will feel the same way—they stand with the man who fought beside them. Tell them when you’re ready.”
I closed the gap, forcing him to look at me, to see the gold burning in my eyes. “You are the man who saved me. You are the man who stood against them. You are the Shadow that holds the Light.”
I reached out, resting my hand over his heart. The warmth was there, steady and quiet now—a soft assurance that felt like a promise kept.
“Aelira says we are two halves of a whole,” I said softly. “But I don’t care about prophecies, Riven. I’m not standing with you because an ancient text told me to.”
I held his gaze. A dark weight anchored his silver eyes. Another truth lay buried there—a terrifying depth he actively guarded. He was carrying something else, a secret he simply wasn’t ready to name.
He looked down at my hand, then at me.
“I know what we are,” he told me.
“Good,” I told him. “Because we are a choice. Now, and every day, from here on. I choose to see you, even when you try to disappear.”
He covered my hand with his, and the air between us settled.
I met his stare, holding it until the turmoil in his eyes stilled.
“We write the rest,” I promised.