CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
"Solstice has spoken to Maddy," Aether's voice rumbled through the bond, heavy with the weight of the night. "She is waiting in Ryven's dorm. The bath is drawn."
My heart clenched. Gods. It had to be past midnight, the hour when the veil between worlds was thinnest.
The Academy was cloaked in a deceptive peace, its towers casting long, skeletal shadows across the courtyard.
We hugged the stone arches and melted into the corners until we reached the base of the Ventus Tower.
Its silver spires spiraled upward, aglow with a faint, mocking aetherlight, but we didn't stop to admire the elegance. Asher's grip tightened around Ryven's limp form, and we bolted up the winding stone staircase.
He didn't knock. He just kicked the door open.
Maddy was there, a small, broken figure wrapped in a blanket on the floor. "Ryv!" she screamed, the sound tearing from her throat as she scrambled to her feet.
Asher laid him gently on the bed, the mattress dipping under his terrifyingly light weight. I shut the door behind us, throwing the bolt to lock the world away.
Maddy collapsed over him, her sobs fracturing the silence of the room. "Gods," she choked, her hands hovering over his face, afraid to touch the poison. "Please—please no—Ryv, come back to me!"
He was breathing. Barely. A wet, rattling sound that made my own lungs ache.
Then, Asher froze. His eyes widened, reflecting the dim light of the room.
The veins were back.
They weren't just crawling anymore; they were thick, ropey, and obsidian, pulsing under Ryven's skin like liquid shadow. Maddy reeled back with a gasp, stumbling to the floor, her hand pressed hard over her mouth to stifle a wail.
"No," she sobbed. I dropped beside her, hauling her into my arms, feeling her body shake with a violence that terrified me.
Ryven was unraveling right before our eyes.
The Eclipsa had left him a hollowed-out shell, his eyes shadowed as if he hadn't slept in years, his jaw clenched in a permanent mask of agony. His body buckled under cravings that weren't just mental—they were biological. The drug was rewriting him.
"Gods," Maddy sobbed into my shoulder, her fingers digging into my sleeves. "The drug is destroying him. How do we stop it? Ava, how do we make it stop?"
I didn't have an answer. My throat was too tight to speak.
Ryven groaned, his skin turning a sickly translucent white as sweat glistened at his temples. The veins pulsed dark again, a rhythmic, hungry throb that crawled higher, inching toward his temple like a death sentence.
"I've seen what Eclipsa does when the addiction runs this deep," Asher's voice came low. It was flat. Final. He looked haunted, the silver in his eyes dimmed by a memory that looked like it had been carved into his very marrow with a dull blade.
Maddy stiffened, her breath hitching. "It's going to kill him," she whispered, her voice devoid of hope. "It's already killing him."
The room grew heavy with a suffocating silence, broken only by the rhythmic rattle of Ryven's breath and Maddy's muffled, broken weeping. I swallowed hard, my pulse thudding a frantic rhythm in my ears.
The truth was a physical weight in my chest: none of us had a solution.
None of us knew how to fight a war that was being waged inside a man's own blood.
All we could do was stay in the dark and watch him fight a poison he had once invited in.
We stayed until Ryven's fever finally broke, the air in the small dorm room thick with the metallic scent of old magic and sickness.
It had been hours of agonizing uncertainty.
At one point, he vomited so violently that the fluid came up black and oily, staining the basin.
Asher didn't flinch; he held him through it, his large hands steady against Ryven's shaking frame.
As the toxins left his system, the horrific violet veins began to recede—fading back into the translucent pallor of his skin until they were gone.
But the image of them was burned into my retinas, a neon warning I couldn't unsee.
I paced the edges of the room, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass. I needed Jax's journal. I needed to decode whatever cursed truths my brother had buried in those pages. He had tried to save Ryven once—maybe he'd found a way.
Asher stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door with a soft click. He looked haggard, his expression taut with a bone-deep exhaustion, but the manic edge of the forest had smoothed out.
"How is he?" I asked, my voice trembling.
He ran a hand through his damp, dark hair. "He's stable. Awake, but he doesn't remember much. Just confused. The veins are gone... for now."
I let out a long, shaky exhale, the first full breath I'd taken in hours.
"Maddy's staying with him; she's bathing him now," Asher added, his voice low. "She won't let him out of her sight."
I nodded, but the panic didn't leave me. It just transformed—swelling into something tight and hot in the center of my chest. My hands started to shake, a fine, uncontrollable tremor.
"What the fuck is going on, Asher?" I whispered. "That's Ryven. My brother's best friend. He's—he's family. He's like my brother, too."
Tears welled, hot and stinging, before finally spilling over. My vision blurred, the room tilting. "He has to be okay," I said, my voice finally cracking. "He has to."
Asher crossed the space in two long strides, taking my face gently in his hands.
His palms were warm, a stark contrast to the chilled night air. "Hey," he said softly, forcing me to look at him. "I know. I promise you, I won't let anything happen to him."
His voice wrapped around me like a tether, pulling me back from the edge of a breakdown. Through the bond, I felt it—his quiet, iron-clad determination. For all his cockiness and shadows, there was a core of genuine care there that he rarely let anyone see.
I didn't even think. I just leaned forward and hugged him.
For the first time, it wasn't about heat or a deal or a distraction. I just needed to be held.
He wrapped his arms around me without a second of hesitation, pulling me flush against his chest. His chin rested gently on the crown of my head, and for a moment, the world stopped screaming. He was warm. He was solid. He was safe.
"Breathe, Ava," he murmured into my hair, his voice a low hush. "Everything's going to be fine."
I nodded against his chest, letting myself believe the lie just for a single heartbeat. Then he pulled back, his thumb catching a stray tear on my cheek.
"We'll come back in the morning," he said gently. "Give him some time to rest. Give Maddy time to breathe."
I followed him out of the room; my fingers intertwined with his. The magic between us sparked faintly, a familiar hum of electricity that flowed softly under my skin, grounding me as we walked in silence back toward House Ignis.
The Academy was a ghost of itself, the torches dimmed and the stone corridors sleeping beneath the heavy weight of the moon. But as we walked, I felt the shift.
Asher hadn't spoken a word since we left Ryven's door.
His strides were rigid, his body taut beneath his vest. His jaw was flexed so tight I could see the muscle leaping, and his eyes were distant—so far away I wasn't sure he even realized I was still there.
We climbed the winding stairs to my dorm in a suffocating quiet. The clock in the hall read just past 2 a.m.
I was aching in places I didn't know could hurt. My soul felt bruised.
I pushed open the door.
Aether and Zya slipped past me immediately, their paws silent as they padded onto the balcony to curl up together in the moonlight—a pair of silent, protective sentinels.
A small, weary smile tugged at my lips.
But when I turned back, Asher was still standing at the threshold.
He was frozen.
He made no move toward the room, just stood there with that same empty, haunted expression. His walls were up—higher than I'd ever felt them—like iron gates slamming shut in my face. The bond between us went quiet. Cold.
I needed him. Gods, I needed him tonight more than any other. He had saved me from the Burrowwyrm. He had carried Ryven. He held me when I broke. And gods, I wanted him close. Needed him close. His body against mine, solid and real, while everything else slipped through my fingers.
"Come inside," I whispered, my heart thundering against my ribs.
He looked at me then. He stared straight into me—into the very depths of my soul. And then I felt the snap.
The bond went completely dead. He leaned in, brushing a ghost-soft kiss against my lips. It lingered for a heartbeat, tasting of salt and shadows, and then he pulled away.
"Get some rest, princess," he murmured. His voice was gentle, but it was the gentleness of a stranger.
Detached.
I stood there, blinking in the dark, as the bond finally echoed with a sharp, stinging hurt—my own.
From him, there was nothing. Just a hollow void where his emotions had been only hours ago...
He turned and walked away down the hall, his silhouette swallowed by the shadows of the corridor.
He left me standing in the doorway, my heart splitting clean in two in the silence of the night.