Chapter 6 Beyond the Ridge #3
Ahead, the trail began to climb. Rock gradually replaced forest as the trees thinned around them and a low ridge rose above the surrounding terrain.
Riven studied it for a moment.
"I'll check the pass."
One of the hunters rolled his eyes.
"Try not to get lost."
Riven answered without turning.
"Your faith in me is inspiring."
A few riders laughed as he urged his horse forward and began climbing toward the ridge.
The distance wasn't great—perhaps a few hundred yards—and the rest of the patrol slowed naturally while they waited.
Riven reached the crest first, disappearing beyond the rise while the rest of the patrol waited below.
No one paid the delay much attention. A horse tossed its head nearby, scattering snow from its mane, while one of the hunters remarked that if Riven managed to lose himself on a single hill, they ought to leave him there and spare themselves the trouble of listening to excuses all the way home.
The comment earned a ripple of laughter.
A few moments later, Riven appeared again.
His horse emerged onto the ridge first, followed by the familiar silhouette in the saddle. Even from a distance, Eira could see the beginning of a grin forming on his face, as though he had already prepared some response to send back down the slope.
She never learned what it was.
Something struck him.
At first, her mind refused to understand what she was seeing. The smile vanished, and Riven's body jolted sharply before going strangely still in the saddle. Confusion crossed his face as his gaze dropped toward his chest, where an arrow now protruded from beneath his cloak.
For a heartbeat, he simply stared at it.
Then he looked back toward the patrol below with the bewildered expression of someone trying to make sense of an impossible thing.
Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.
The hillside erupted almost immediately afterward.
Someone shouted. Horses reared. Wolves surged forward, reaching for weapons as orders collided across the snow. Yet even as movement exploded around her, Eira's attention remained fixed on the figure atop the ridge.
Riven was still looking down at the arrow.
As though he could not quite understand how it had gotten there.
Then he fell.
Eira never remembered dismounting.
One moment she was in the saddle, and the next she was running through snow that slipped beneath her boots as she climbed toward the ridge. Her pulse thundered in her ears so loudly that it drowned out almost everything else.
Riven hit the ground before she reached him.
The sound was horrible precisely because it wasn't dramatic. It was simply the weight of a body striking frozen earth, ordinary and final in a way that made her stomach lurch.
"No."
The word left her before she reached him.
"No."
She dropped to her knees beside him.
Blood had already begun spreading through the snow, staining the white surface beneath him in widening crimson streaks. One look was enough to understand the severity of the wound. The arrow had struck too close to his heart.
Far too close.
Yet understanding and acceptance were not the same thing.
Riven's eyes found hers immediately.
They were still clear.
Still aware.
For one impossible moment, hope surged through her with enough force to drown out reason.
He's alive.
He's alive.
We can fix this.
She pressed both hands against the wound.
Blood forced its way between her fingers almost immediately.
"No, no, no..."
The words tumbled from her without thought, driven by instinct rather than meaning. Around them, riders thundered past in pursuit of shadows hidden somewhere among the rocks, but the world had already narrowed to something smaller.
Around them, riders thundered past in pursuit of shadows hidden among the rocks, but the world had already narrowed to Riven, the blood spreading through the snow beneath him, and the terrible warmth covering her hands.
"Stay with me."
Her voice shook.
"Please."
The wound was too deep, and she knew it the moment she saw it.
The knowledge settled somewhere cold inside her almost instantly, yet her hands continued pressing against the wound as though determination alone might alter the outcome.
Blood spread quickly despite her efforts, soaking her sleeves and wrists before seeping into the fabric at her knees where she knelt in the snow. No matter how hard she pressed, it continued to slip through her fingers as though her hands had become meaningless against the scale of the injury.
Riven was trying to breathe.
Each breath seemed to cost him more than the last.
His gaze remained fixed on her face with the same bewildered expression he had worn from the moment the arrow struck. He did not look frightened. He looked confused, as though some part of him still expected the world to explain itself.
Only hours earlier he had been laughing beside her on the trail, accepting jokes about his command with the same easy confidence he seemed to carry everywhere.
The night before, he had sat beside a fire speaking about the sea as though it were something sacred, describing horizons that never ended and water stretching farther than the eye could follow.
None of those memories belonged beside this moment, yet somehow they existed together now, separated only by a handful of hours and a single arrow.
"Eira..."
His voice barely rose above a whisper.
She leaned closer immediately.
"I'm here."
Blood touched his lips when he tried to speak again.
Whatever words were meant to follow never came.
His eyes searched her face instead, looking for understanding, for reassurance, or perhaps simply for something familiar to hold onto while the rest of the world slipped away.
Tears blurred her vision.
"Don't."
The plea fractured as it left her.
"Please don't."
For a moment, his gaze drifted beyond her shoulder toward the pale winter sky overhead before slowly returning to her.
The faintest trace of a smile touched his mouth—not acceptance, and not peace, but something closer to disbelief.
It lingered there for only an instant, carrying the quiet astonishment of a man who still could not understand how a day that had begun with laughter could possibly end like this.
Then the expression faded, and with it the light behind his eyes.
Eira felt the change before she fully understood it.
Some invisible thread had broken.
She kept talking anyway.
Kept pressing her hands against the wound.
Kept waiting for him to blink.
To breathe.
To do anything at all.
Reality arrived slowly and with a cruelty that left no room for denial.
By the time someone touched her shoulder, she already knew.
Riven was gone.
The certainty tore through her with such force that it felt physical.
A sound escaped her throat, raw enough that she scarcely recognised it as her own, and the grief that followed left no room for reason or restraint.
It swept through her completely, carrying away everything except the crushing certainty that she would never hear his laugh again, never watch him grin before saying something ridiculous, never see him standing beside a fire arguing with half the patrol while pretending to be offended by the outcome.
Around her, voices continued to rise and fall as the others struggled to impose order on what had happened. Reports were exchanged. Orders were given. The wolves who had ridden in pursuit eventually returned with nothing except frustration and fresh snow on their cloaks.
Eira heard almost none of it.
The only thing that felt real was the weight of Riven's head against her lap and the terrible certainty that the warmth leaving his body would never return.
Riven, who had spoken about the sea.
Riven, who had wanted to see more of the world.
Riven, who had been alive less than an hour ago.
The thought came without invitation.
Yesterday, Soren had stood at Ironfang's gates and watched them leave.
If he had ridden with them, the morning might have unfolded differently.
She didn't know whether that was true.
Yet as grief hollowed out everything around her and Riven's blood cooled on her hands, she found herself thinking it anyway.