Chapter Twenty-Seven
Erindor
From the blackened remnants, smoke issued forth, a foul, simmering exhalation, suggesting a lingering spirit of decay.
The battlefield lay broken around us, dust drifting across the shattered stone, tents reduced to skeletal frames. The old tower still stood, blackened and cracked, casting long shadows over the courtyard that reeked of blood and heat.
Gideon lay sprawled beside a shattered column, the left side of his tunic soaked crimson with blood. Ignoring her own injury, Jasira dropped beside him, pressing a cloth fiercely against his wound, her lips a frantic murmur of pleas. Bran stood guard over both, teeth bared, tail rigid with tension.
Alaric limped across the clearing, dragging his sword, one leg bloodied from thigh to knee. His gaze flickered to me, a fleeting touch, before giving the slightest shake of his head.
We weren’t ready for another fight.
And yet the air told me it wasn’t over.
I turned toward the ridge.
Riven walked down slowly, boots nearly silent against the charred stone. Cloak trailing. Shoulders straight. No sword drawn. No urgency in his step.
Just control.
He descended like a shadow returning to its source. Something carved out of vengeance and silence, stitched together with cruelty so old it had forgotten its own shape.
My breath tightened. My blade ready for impact.
Wyn stood near the remnants of the gate. Her cloak had come loose, and she clutched a small dagger as if it were all she had left between her and the end.
Riven saw her. His mouth curved.
"So," he drawled, a smirk twisting his lips, "this is the girl they want to trade for peace." The words, barely a whisper, carried a mocking echo of a forgotten voice.
Wyn didn’t flinch, but I saw the tremble in her hand.
“Leave us,” she said, her voice too soft for fury, shaking.
He stopped a few paces away. “You’ve got her talking now,” he said to me. “Last time she stared.”
My grip tightened on the hilt of my sword.
I inched forward, every muscle tense.
He didn't move. Only his eyes tracked every flicker, every breath, a stillness that hummed with menace.
I could feel the others behind me, Jasira muttering frantic prayers and Gideon groaning through clenched teeth.
Wyn took a trembling step closer.
Riven’s gaze flicked back to her. He tilted his head slightly.
“You’re trembling,” he said. “That blade will slip before you use it.”
“Maybe,” she whispered.
I stepped between them.
“Don’t,” I said to her without looking. “He’s too dangerous.”
Riven smiled, the barest curl of a mouth used to silence. “That’s adorable.”
Riven’s cloak hit the ground before his weapons cleared the air.
He unsheathed a long obsidian blade and a narrow parrying dagger of the same style in a single, fluid motion. Both gleamed with strange veins of metal, something older. Something that hummed faintly as he moved.
There was no flourish or fury; the motion was clean, silent, and devastating.
I stepped forward.
Beside me, Gideon staggered to his feet. Blood gushed from the wound where the blade had caught him, painting his armor in thick, crimson rivulets that dripped onto the stone. But he held his shield high, jaw clenched, defiant even as he swayed on his feet.
Our eyes met for a fraction of a second; no need for words. We’d fought in enough battles to know exactly what the other would do next. The rhythm of survival had its own language, and we spoke it fluently.
He gave me the slightest nod, and I answered with one of my own.
We reached Riven together.
Steel shrieked on steel. My blade met his longsword with a jarring clang, the impact reverberating down my arms.
Gideon lunged, angling for his ribs, and Riven twisted away like smoke, sidestepping with a grace no mercenary should have. His parrying dagger flashed, carving a bloody line across Gideon’s forearm.
Gideon snarled but did not retreat. He slammed his shield into Riven’s chest, the impact hard enough to make him stagger back a step, following with a brutal slash that grazed his jaw, drawing a spatter of blood.
But Riven’s smile widened.
He came at us in a flurry—blade and dagger working in perfect, merciless tandem.
I caught one strike on my sword, felt the jolt rattle through my shoulder, while Gideon’s shield turned aside the next.
We moved in a grim rhythm, one striking as the other defended, forcing him to shift, adapt, retreat a step.
Then Riven feinted left.
Gideon bit, stepping to intercept, and Riven’s longsword crashed into his shield with bone-shaking force. Before Gideon could recover, the mercenary pivoted low, his boot smashing into Gideon’s knee.
The blow drove him down hard. He hit the ground with a grunt, shield still up but body refusing to rise.
“Stay down!” I barked, stepping over him as Riven advanced, the heat of the fight pounding in my ears like war drums.
I surged forward, blade arcing up toward his throat. He slammed into my swing, steel screeching against steel, and our blades locked in a vibrating, skull-shattering deadlock. The sheer force of it reverberated through my arms, threatening to tear them from their sockets.
We were chest to chest, breaths mingling in the cold air, each of us straining for an inch of advantage.
His eyes burned with something feral, a predator sizing up prey, and I knew mine were no calmer.
Sweat and blood slicked our grips, the muscles in my shoulders trembling with the effort to shove him back.
The blades shuddered between us, caught in the small, brutal space where one mistake would mean the end.
His face crowded into mine, unnervingly close. What should have been eyes were coals of smoke and chips of ancient stone, harboring a darkness that spoke of something primordial and unknowable beneath.
“Sloppy,” he murmured as he leaned into me.
Then the earth moved.
A sickening tremor tore up from beneath us, like a vein had burst under the ground. Cracks spiderwebbed outward from his boots, shoving gravel and broken stone into the air. The pulse hit like a battering ram.
I staggered, boots sliding, but Riven was already on me.
His parrying dagger slashed into my thigh.
A stab, puncturing deep above the knee. My vision sparked white.
His longsword plummeted, a shimmering arc of death.
My blade was heaved up to meet it, both hands braced, but the cataclysmic clash slammed me to my knees. A blinding shower of sparks erupted.
He ripped my sword from my hands, and I hit the ground hard. The wind fled my lungs. Dirt and grit coated my tongue. I coughed blood into the dirt.
He stood over me. His eyes burned into me with an icy fire.
He held no expression, just calculating, disassembling a broken tool as if determining where it had failed.
“Still soft where it counts.”
“You talk too much,” I spat.
“Better than sulking like a dog under that girl’s skirts.” His grin widened, ugly now. “She looks at you like you’re her answer. That must be exhausting.”
Then Alaric roared behind him, sword raised, Bran a blur of teeth and fury at his side. The prince’s strike was precise, a diagonal meant to split the bastard from collarbone to hip.
Riven spun. He should’ve been too slow.
But the ground shuddered under him. A jag of stone thrust upward from the floor like a conjured step, shifting his footing just enough to slip past the blade. The air cracked as steel cut through space.
Alaric snarled, coming in again with a flurry—high, low, a vicious backhand slice. Bran darted in tandem, snapping at Riven’s legs. And for a heartbeat, they drove him back.
Riven’s hand flexed against his hilt, and the earth itself answered. A ridge erupted under Bran’s paws, throwing the war hound sideways into a cracked pillar with a yelp and a bone-shaking thud. The animal rolled, staggered, then relaunched itself, blood at its muzzle.
Alaric pressed harder, forcing Riven to parry three quick strikes in succession.
The ring of steel on steel was deafening, sparks leaping between them.
But Riven’s stance never broke. Another sharp tremor rippled underfoot, forcing Alaric’s knee to buckle just enough for Riven’s sword to kiss his chest. A shallow slice, but deep enough to draw a crimson bloom across his tunic.
I shook my head clear, the ringing in my ears fading as I pushed to my feet. My legs screamed at me, but I forced them to move. The sight of Bran snapping again at Riven’s calf, buying Alaric that sliver of breathing room, was enough to shove me back into the fray.
“Move!” I barked, stepping in as Alaric pivoted away, blood running from his chest. My sword came up high, teeth gritted, and I drove at Riven with everything I had left.
I stepped in, driving Riven back with a vicious overhand swing. The clang shook up my arms, but I didn’t relent—strike, pivot, slash for his ribs. He caught the blade on his crossguard, twisting to rip it sideways, and I slammed my shoulder into him, forcing him a step toward the rubble.
His eyes flickered with calculation.
He lashed out with a low kick. I caught it on my thigh, and I responded with a powerful vertical chop, nearly breaking through his guard. But then his heel struck the stone beneath us. The ground answered to him instantly—cracking, heaving, throwing my stance wide open.
He surged into the gap like water through a breach. Steel rang against mine in a furious barrage, the last blow knocking my sword low just long enough for his elbow to drive into my jaw. Stars burst across my vision.
I staggered, teeth gritted, swinging up again, but he was already inside my guard.
His blade punched into my ribs; I twisted, barely catching it with the flat of mine.
The impact rattled my bones. Then, the stone under my back foot shifted, a slick rise just big enough to unbalance me, and Riven’s shoulder slammed into my chest like a battering ram.
The air ripped from my lungs as I hit the ground hard, the weight bearing down briefly before he pushed off.