Chapter 33 Riven #3
“That’s because it is. That’s why in Amick’s game plan, this one was going to be last in your lessons. Someone grew a little impatient.”
“Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. I’m still happy to have a basic understanding of it. I may be a touch confused, but I’m also intrigued. I bet I can get Amick to teach me how to do a contract.”
“Why does he have to teach you?”
“I assumed since this is under his Designation he’d want to. Are you offering?”
“Hell yeah. I’ll make a contract with you right now.”
“Really?” She smiles a brilliant smile, like this isn’t an awfully dangerous idea.
I guess I didn’t explain that part.
I’ll touch on it afterwards.
“Absolutely. So for a contract to be bound under the power of Accord, first, both of us have to be fully truthful and there must be complete consent on both sides. If not, it’ll break.”
“Okay, well, what kind of contract are we going to make? It can’t be anything dangerous or fucking crazy, Riven.”
Fun sucker.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head about that. What I want us to put in a contract is easily agreeable for both of us.”
“Very well then. Tell me what to do.”
I smirk as she does her nervous little dance where she shakes everything out. She stops all that gyrating when I press my finger to her forehead.
“Find your power, little burden.”
“It’s in my mind?”
“Yep. Accord is knowledgeable and logical, remember?”
She nods and lets her lids drift shut.
I giddily bounce on my toes.
“Found it.”
Yeah, you did.
“I’m going to speak my agreement, then you’re going to agree with me. Push your power out toward me and after you repeat what I say, wrap it around us like a hug.”
“Okay.”
I tap my fingers chaotically against my lips.
This is so exciting.
“I, Riven, God of Duality, agree wholeheartedly to spend the rest of my life with Thayla Godrun.”
Her eyes fly open and collide with mine. They’re shining so bright, it’s like staring through our windows right when the sun rises.
“I, Thayla Godrun, agree wholeheartedly to spend the rest of my life with Riven, God of Duality.”
It takes every drop of power in me not to let my giggle slip free.
Valories, this is perfect.
Time to kiss your bride.
My lips seal to hers as her power wraps around us. I tangle my fingers in her hair, deepening the embrace while her power embeds itself within us.
My brothers are going to be pissed.
Too bad they aren’t here.
I wish they were and we could do it together.
I sense the threads of the contract growing closer. Once they reach all the way around us and touch, it’ll be complete.
The air gets knocked out of my lungs as my ass gets blasted away from her. I tumble and roll the second my back hits the ground. Eventually, my momentum halts, leaving me laid out, groaning.
“Riven!”
She skids to a stop on her knees and hovers over me as she pats me down.
“What the fuck? What did I do wrong? Are you okay?”
Stupid ass self-conscious.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I couch, pushing myself up. “The contract wasn’t completely truthful.”
Her eyes narrow in anger, confusion, and hurt.
“What does that mean? You don’t want to…” She immediately trails off. I thrash my head back and forth and rush to explain.
“That’s not it, don’t even think like that. That contract was like the equivalent of a marriage and at the last second, my stupid emotions surfaced and I may or may not have thought about that fact I didn’t want to do this without my stupid triplets.”
I really want to lick the wrinkles that form on her forehead.
“Let me get this straight. You were just trying to marry me but then felt bad ’cause your brothers weren’t here to witness it or marry me as well?”
“Well, I guess I’m fine with them marrying you too. I kind of just wanted them to be here, though.”
She attempts to choke down her snort, but that fails and she falls right into a fit of laughter.
“You fucking psycho.” She carries on while I cross my arms and sneer at her. “Why don’t you just ask like a normal damn person?”
Where’s the fun in that?
Also, I don’t miss the fact that she isn’t denying my proposal.
She’s stuck with me forever anyways, so it doesn’t matter. But I want it official.
“Whatever, you little cackling Binder. Just remember, you already agreed.”
I push myself up to my feet, pulling her with me as I stand. She continues to fall into my side, allowing me to carry her weight since her laughing apparently hinders her ability to walk on her own.
Granted, having her so close to me drives me wild in the best kind of way.
“Enough of that. We’re here.”
She straightens herself out and stares ahead at the path we’ve got to go down.
“Holy shit. I completely forgot we were actually out here for something.”
“Good to know my role means so little to you. Which means it doesn’t need explaining.”
“Yeah, nice try, but that won’t work. You’ve kept me distracted, is all.”
I roll my eyes and pout. That pleases her to no end.
She’s bubbly with excitement as we make our way down the beaten path. I suck up her emotions, then will them to seep into my soul as a wash of vulnerability that I despise creeps up.
“Riven, if you really don’t want to explain this to me, you don’t have to.”
“Meddling goddess. Get off my soul.”
“Nope.”
I swear that’s a whole sentence with the tone she uses.
I don’t say anything as we approach a dry and dusty field. The wilting trees spread throughout the orchard should hum with life. Instead, the branches droop like tired, heavy arms and the brittle leaves curl like parchment.
“Oh,” she says low as she takes a small step ahead of me.
Our gazes roam over the rows of struggling trees.
“They’re dying. I’ve never seen an orchard just…die. I didn’t even know that was possible. Especially not here in the land of power.”
I smirk at her little dig she had to get in.
“Not dying. Just sleeping.”
“Sleeping?”
“Yep. It’s taken too long of a nap, and it needs to wake back up.”
“I have no clue what that means.”
I nod toward the start of the first row, and our footsteps crunch against the leaves that’ve fallen.
“Ellian’s received multiple requests about this field, so he came on out and gave it a good checking over.
Sometimes, what happens with fruit-bearing trees that come back naturally on their own yearly, is they’ll sort of put themselves into a sleep, so to speak, if the season prior they weren’t tended to enough. ”
“So the person who owns this orchard didn’t pick enough fruit last year?”
“Basically. Usually, if it’s a case of neglect on the god’s part, Ellian will deny their request because they shouldn’t be fucking slack. The god who owns this, though…”
“What?”
I sigh. “His son was an Obliraguard at the stronghold. Killed in the Abandon last year. They maintained this together. He’s not doing so well mentally this year. No need to punish him and leave him to figure it out on his own.”
My eyes stay facing the trees as I call my Harmony forward and lay my palm to the cracking bark.
“So what are you about to do?” she asks in a whisper as though her speaking may break something.
“Pretty much everything in Godsden has power and a pulse. My Harmony is going to travel through the root system and find that lethargic power. Then it’s going to coax it awake.”
My heart pounds as she looks at me in awe.
Not the reaction I was expecting, but I’ll take it.
I release my Harmony and command it through the soil to find the source it needs to wrap around.
Her and my shoulders relax with our exhales as my power cocoons us in a wave of calm. I don’t let the small tinge of annoyance show on my face.
I’m trying really freaking hard here to accept this side of me fully.
For her.
“Show time,” I say as soon as I sense the faint pulse of power buried deep in the roots.
My Harmony latches right onto it and spreads.
Thayla’s gasp pulls a smile to my lips when she takes a few steps forward and watches the branches twitch and shake off some leaves that are actually dead.
She whirls around, eyes widening at the sound of the water getting sucked out of the troughs placed around different areas of the field.
“Fuck. Are they drinking the water on their own?”
“There’s an irrigation system, angel. They’re pretty quenched.”
She barks out a surprised laugh that has the tension in my chest easing and my belly swirling.
I ignore the butterflies she gives me and focus on finishing the task at hand, except the swirling doesn’t stop.
A giggle slips through my lips as soon as I lay my palm against my stomach and she slowly pivots back around to face me.
“Riven…”
“Uh-oh.”
My Chaos rushes through my fingertips and I swear to fuck, my Harmony snaps the leash I wrap around my favored power. It’s as though those two little shits are working together. Against my command.
A shriek flies from Thayla’s lips when the branch above her bursts to life in bright-ass shades of green and large, plump fruit.
Row after row bound to life as both sides of myself spread like wildfire together through the orchard.
I’m pretty damn positive the fruit that’s blooming is not the fruit that was previously planted.
I jerk back, nearly hitting my ass when my power snaps back to me faster than I was prepared for. My hands grip my knees as I drag in deep breaths.
A crunch and a smack of lips have me tilting my head up.
“For fuck’s sake, Thayla, don’t eat that. I don’t know what that is.”
Her lips part and the half-chewed piece of fruit falls from her mouth.
“What do you mean you don’t know what it is? You just made it.”
“No, no, no. I can’t make or grow anything. I can only interfere with what’s already there.”
“So you didn’t do this on purpose?”
“No, fuck no. My Chaos wasn’t even supposed to come out.”
She examines me, snorts, then laughs her ass off at me and the confusion on my face.
“I’m about over these fits of laughter for the day.”
“I’m…sorry,” she wheezes. “I can’t help you’re like the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life. How does the most chaotic person I know get out-chaosed by his own chaos?”
She literally drops to the ground, chuckling her head off until tears are streaming down her cheeks. I’m sure she isn’t even aware I’m staring at her with my hands on my hips.
She’s yet to drop that damn fruit in her hand.
“Gods. This kind of laughter is good for the soul,” she coos as she wipes her eyes, then literally takes another bite of the unknown fruit.
Whatever. I’m not correcting her again.
If it poisons her ass, Creed will just have to kill the poison.
Despite my bitch fit and internal crisis that’s going ignored, I stomp over to her and plop down on the ground. I lean back against the trunk of the tree, and she leans right into me.
“For the record, whatever this is you made is really delicious. Like top three best fruits I’ve ever had.”
“Seriously?” I ask.
She raises the damn thing up to my face and shakes it as though that’ll encourage me to bite faster.
It does.
The sweet juice that I didn’t expect rushes over my chin, and I can’t slurp it up fast enough. She huffs as she wipes it off her forehead.
Well, damn. That is pretty good if I say so myself.
“So on a serious note. What just happened?” she asks.
“My powers ganged up on me. I tried to hold my Chaos back, and my Harmony shut me down. It was almost as if it was tugging my Chaos along with it.”
She hums. “Maybe that’s exactly what it was doing. Maybe it wanted to do this together.”
My nose scrunches.
“They never work this well together.”
“Maybe something has changed.”
“That’s a lot of damn maybes.”
She chuckles and shakes her head.
A comforting silence—aside from her bites—surrounds us. It pulls a sigh from my chest and my nerves cause an annoying thud to pound in my ear. My last little truth crawls up my throat.
She was…is going to marry me.
There’s no reason to keep anything from her.
“I’m the Empowerer of Godsden. Much like you just saw, I tend to fields that are struggling and are on the verge of dying.
I help maintain abundance and prevent scarcity.
My power is hiding all kinds of environments where creatures—some dangerous, some abused, some normal—can live in peace and not be fucked with.
“It’s also protecting caves like the one we went to.
I do all kinds of activities with the kids at Annalise and Ellian’s.
They all had a rough start to life, and I always show up to harmonize them when they’re having a rough go.
I float around this region, fixing shit for ungrateful, asshole gods because if I don’t, they’ll let the damn wildlife die off.
“I couldn’t tell you before now, because you didn’t know about my situation in the Abandon.
Then I didn’t want to admit I took on the role title and the duties to prove to myself I’m not disgusting and that my powers can do good things.
That’s an embarrassing amount of self-doubt to admit to the person you really want to impress. ”
She’s quiet for a long moment. I don’t like it.
I get over it quickly enough when the stroke that slides across my soul makes my bones shake.
Fuck. I’ve grown used to only feeling that at night when she closes her eyes.
“Nothing about you is disgusting. What you do is incredible, Riven. I’m seriously blown away.
You’re doing something that makes a really important difference.
It’s intimate, selfless, and so impressive.
I don’t want you to ever feel embarrassed about this again.
Every day I want to hear about what you do and every day I’ll tell you how proud I am. ”
I gulp.
“Proud? You’re proud of what I do?”
“So much so, I’d tell the whole realm if I didn’t think you’d get all pissy with me.”
A smile crosses my lips, and I tuck a wild strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’ve never been pissy with you. I don’t think I could be. You forgive me too often for me to ever really be mad with you.”
“So what you’re saying is I need to stay mad at you longer?”
“Gods, no. I won’t survive going days like that again.”
“Yeah…” Her slow breath fans against my fingers as I trace her lips. “I don’t think I’ll survive that distance again.”
She won’t have to worry about that.
First thing I’m doing when we get home is telling my brothers we’ve got to up our touching game.
After that…I’m going to count down the moments until we give her, her surprise.
Fuck. I can’t wait.