Chapter 25 Riven #3
And she mutters three names.
Not mine.
Chaos detonates inside me, not as power, but as panic. Need. Rage.
The desperate, burning panic of a man who fears losing the one thing he cannot bear to lose.
The fear fades, leaving me smothered in darkness. My skin shakes and my wrists bleed against the shackles still holding me hostage.
Darkness infiltrates my mind, my soul, and my power. It dredges up everything I bury and never mourn over.
Chaos flaps in my belly and my Harmony cocoons it.
Obsidian takes a single step back from me.
It’s only him and me.
He’s all I see.
His darkness.
“My. You’ve gone from fearing one woman to another. Both of which have the power to break you. That’s your truth. You fear losing your sweet angel. She may choose them over you. Your father may take her.”
His voice, his laughter, continue to engulf me. The words sink into my soul and try their damnedest to plant roots.
“You may even be the cause. You’re afraid of scaring her away. You don’t believe she’s really chosen you. One wrong mood and she’ll be gone. She’ll run from you.”
I’ll chase her.
I’ll follow her to the end of the realm.
“You fear you will never be enough. Two halves may make a whole, but not when one side is broken. Isn’t that right, little contradiction?”
My vision blurs behind my power.
“Say it,” he whispers. “Admit it. Break, God of Duality.”
There it is.
I giggle.
Stillness falls around us as I let my warning ring free.
Break…
Very well then.
“I don’t fear losing her, her leaving me, or choosing them over me.” I toss my head back and let clarity slip away. “She can’t leave me now. I’m hers and she’s mine, forever and ever, amen. Do you want to know what it is I really fear, God of Shadows?”
“Riven,” Kyzen pants from somewhere behind me. His labored breath is concerning, but I smile at dear ol’ Obsidian.
“I fear what I’ll do to the realm if someone takes her from me. Currently, the little room you encouraged—relished—in the making of, has taken her from me. I need her back.”
His chains loosen from around me the second he realizes what’s happening, but I snatch them back and blow him a kiss.
“You want to see the Empowerer really break? No problem. I’ll break for her, over and over again. Feed, God of Shadows. Enjoy your last feast.”
The thing about Chaos is, it doesn’t break into pieces.
It explodes. I’ve never allowed it to fully go boom. I’ve been too fearful of what that may look like.
I was hopeful tonight. Now, I know I was right.
Risky-risky. Worth it.
My Harmony snaps out of me first, weaving throughout his power.
The chains react, panicking, tightening as they try to smother the surge. The darkness surrounding us rushes to their owner, pleading, searching for a place to hide from my soothing embrace.
My Chaos flares like a shooting star.
Uncontained, unrestrained, beautifully wrong in all the right ways.
Its counterpart—the half I’ve always hated but am coming to a strange understanding with—catches the Chaos, folds it inward, and condenses the explosion into something lethal.
The restraints on my bloody wrists swallow the power and snatch me to the ground in a fight to get free. They tug hard enough that my arms stretch out toward the god who created them and bound them to me.
He follows me down, withering as his power goes crazy around him.
“You…” he breathes. “You should not be able to do that.”
I giggle again, then sigh.
“Story of my life.”
My power floods his.
Chaos sweeps through him, unraveling him from the inside. Harmony cocoons and convinces him this is exactly what should happen.
His scream is silent, swallowed by his own collapsing void.
The waves of shadows roll into a tight, floating black ball, and my power continues to embed and weave around it.
The sound of my name being shouted is drowned out by the bellow that breaks from my throat.
I can’t release him.
My power won’t let go.
It builds, pours out of me, then repeats that process until the pressure has my skin feeling like it’s about to rip from my body.
“Just die already you fuc—”
I crash into Kyzen as the explosion sends us both flailing through the air.
The forest becomes a fog of black and force. Branches snap, leaves shred, and the ground vanishes beneath us as the shockwave hurls our asses backward like we’re twigs, not gods.
Kyzen’s strong body breaks my fall, but the impact punches the breath from my lungs.
I lay sprawled out across my brother as above me, the night tears apart into shredded threads. The shadows dissolve into dust then into…nothing.
I blink, staring at the clear night sky full of stars.
Silence.
There’s no more hum.
“Are you alive?” Kyzen groans underneath me.
“Yeah,” I exhale.
“Then get the hell off me.”
I wiggle my body over until I collapse on the dirt beside him.
“Well…I did not see that coming. Thank goodness nothing in my backpack exploded.” I gasp, reaching between my legs. I exhale when I feel everything intact. “My waist bags would’ve left me dickless. That would’ve been tragic. I just learned how glorious sex feels.”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“Not at all. I don’t think the healers could regrow a—”
“For fuck’s sake, Riven. How the hell did you do that? What was that?”
I sigh.
“My Harmony embedded and subdued his power, then my Chaos went in with it and made it go boom. Thank fuck they cooperated.”
He sits up, glaring down at me in confusion and fury.
“You didn’t have the first idea if that would…” His gorgeous glowing eyes trail down my body.
“What? Is there something on me?”
I sling myself into a sitting position as I frantically pat my body down. He hops up and races across the path where my ol’ indestructible—well, as long as Thayla doesn’t touch it—torch lamp is lying on its side.
The flame flickers to life as he skids to his knees beside me and snatches my hand.
A cold dread and fiery anger burn through me.
“Fuck, Riven. I don’t think—”
I snatch my hand away from his soft, careful strokes. My fists ball, clenching tighter as I rotate both wrists around. There isn’t a hint of blood from the chains.
It was never blood.
“That motherfucker.”
“He marked you.”
“Yeah, no shit. I got two beautiful eyes that can see just fine, Kyzen.”
My gaze wills the new chain links that wrap around my wrists away. The dark black impressions don’t go any-fucking-where.
They glare back at me, reminding me.
My brother grips my shoulder, and I want more than anything to shrug him off, but he tightens his hold.
“There’s always a price to pay when you disrupt the order of the gods. You know it. We all know it. This was your price and it was one worth paying.”
I snatch my arm back as he slides his grip down to my forearm.
“His room will never do to anyone what it did to us. To her. We’ll make sure the next to fall in line takes care of that. You got us payback. For so many people. You rid the realm of a god who took pleasure in feeding off of people’s fears and traumas.”
My breathing becomes heavy as my hum tries to drown his voice out.
I have chains.
Permanent chains.
They’ll always be there.
He forcefully flips my arms over, palms facing up as he shakes them.
“Look at it, Riven. Not at the chains. At your mark. Our Valtrue mark. Look at how his shadows couldn’t block it out. That’s because we can’t be restrained. We will never restrain you. She won’t restrain you.”
She.
My angel who’s lost her wings.
She’s restrained herself.
She needs me to break her free.
“It was worth it. And as mad as I am at you, I’m so fucking proud of you.”
My gaze flicks up to his.
“Are you only saying that to placate my emotions right now?”
He snorts, giving me one of his big, beautiful smiles.
“No, I’m not. I mean it wholeheartedly.”
I snatch him into a tight hug and laugh as he groans. I don’t know whether it’s from my affection or he’s in pain. Regardless, I soak up his sweet words and allow them to settle inside of me.
“Enough. We’re going to squash your waist bags.”
“Oh fuck, don’t do that. Can you imagine how mad Thayla would be if I blow both our dicks up?”
He chuckles once before his face falls slightly. He attempts to give me a smirk, but I see through his sudden melancholy.
Have no fear, my deadly, gorgeous, sweet brother. I’m going to get our Binder back on track.
“We got to go. I have another plan to execute tonight. How long has it been since you opened your eyes and looked at me in your bed?”
“About an hour and a half.”
“What? There’s no damn way.”
His features grow far more serious than they were a moment ago. He stands, holding his hand out to me, and I graciously allow him to pull me up. The deep sigh he releases as he steps behind me and puts my torch lamp away has a frown pulling my lips down.
“You have no fucking idea how long I had to move around the globe of shadows that covered your whole body. For every one I sliced off you, another two appeared.”
Gods, the way that asshole’s power worked is a mind fuck.
I never would’ve assumed more than maybe ten, fifteen minutes had passed.
“Thank you for not cutting me by accident.”
He scoffs and rolls his eyes when he steps to my side.
“Straight home?”
“Yep.”
He disappears in a flash and I exhale.
I’m very disappointed to admit—to myself—my power is slow moving as I call it forward. That took a fuck ton more out of me than I thought it would.
Good thing my plans for the rest of the night only require a tiny touch of Chaos.
That’s all I got left.
As soon as my starshoot releases me, the sound of a sunsetter chimes in my ears and I spin around, smirking.
Only to come face-to-face with two pretty pissy glares.
“His understanding of the plan was to bake fucking cookies?”
My mouth opens and closes. I pucker my lips at them.
“What the hell did you do?” Creed asks as he expertly pulls out two trays of sweet deliciousness like I asked of him.
“Do you seriously not know where we were or what we did?”
My head swivels as I whistle and rock on my feet, looking everywhere but at them.
Creed, the unknowing traitor, tells Kyzen what I told him before we left.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Kyzen runs his hands down his face. “What did you tell Amick?”
“Oh. Not a thing. Can you two finish your conversation privately, then worry about telling Amick later for me? Thanks bunches.”
They both scowl at me and I shoo them off as I come around the counter so I can reach my trap—I mean the cookies.
“Those need to cool for at least ten minutes.”
Yeah, okay. I’ll give them two. Max.
“Perfect. You both run off now.”
I ignore their mutters while still watching them out of the corner of my eye as they disappear behind Creed’s door.
Depending on how quickly Kyzen tattles on me, I may not have two minutes.
A hiss slips through my lips when I grab one of the trays.
He could’ve told me it was going to be hot as fire.
Like the blossoming cook I am, I scrape the cookies onto a plate. I’m not sure if he cooked them long enough, though, because some keep falling apart.
Oh well.
They may not be the prettiest, but they sure smell divine.
Plate and plan ready in my mind, I slip down Thayla’s hallway and tiptoe toward her room.
I crouch, fanning the scrumptious scent through the inch gap between the floor and the bottom of her door. My hand waves back and forth frantically but freezes when I hear the quietest of creaks from the other side.
My heart races in my chest as I place the plate a few feet away, then stand rapidly with my back to the wall.
I call my Chaos forward and hold my breath.
I’m damn near on the verge of suffocating when her door finally peels open a smidge.
It takes everything in me not to gasp when she steps out of the threshold.
Fuck, two days too long.
Like a damn baby Spyvie creeping through the night, she snatches her treat up and hauls ass back into her room.
She heads straight to her bed that I’m positive she’s barely left in two days.
Her deep inhale echoes around the room and her lids drift shut. I track the slow, torturous, lone tear that slides down her cheek as her fingers mindlessly trace the rim of the plate.
She falls into a stillness that soon morphs into full-body tremors.
The kind that she’d only dare let break free while she’s alone.
Unbeknownst to her, though, she isn’t alone.
“Oh, my little burden.”