Page 81 of An Honored Vow

My heart tore for Riven. For me. I remembered Gwyn’s wise words from the day I learned the truth about him. That his choices might have been different than mine, but that our secrets had isolated us in the same way. Erected walls around us that had to fall but were a torment to break. We were two children who had grown, set apart from those around them, burdened with choices no other before them had to make.

Finding each other was almost enough for me to believe in fate. Two souls bound in shadow, two people who yearned for something other than darkness.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I know how to be a weapon. I know how to fight.” I pushed a loose strand of Riven’s hair back into his long mane. “And I know how to steal a tender moment here and there.” My finger trailed over the long point of his ear. “But how to maintain joy—to be truly content? To be apersonapart from all of this”—I waved my hand over our heads, sending the faelight swirling—“that is something I do not know much of. But I learn more of it every day.”

Riven grabbed my hand and pressed the back of it against his mouth. Then he laced our fingers together and rested them on his chest. My breath fell into the rhythm of its steady rise and fall. It was my own healer’s drum.

“I know nothing of it.” A thick tear fell from the corner of Riven’s eye and trickled down his neck. I caught it against my lips and nestled my head on his shoulder. “I don’t remember much of being aboy. I always felt different—perhaps I knew I was—even before that first time I shifted forms. But from that day, I have lived in secret. From that day, I’ve tainted every relationship I’ve ever had with the lies I’ve told. Each lie drained my life of color until there was nothing much left. And it has cost those I care for so much more.”

His voice cracked. All I wanted was to wrap my arms around him and press my lips to his, but Rheih had taught me well. Poisons needed to be leeched, and some could only be drained by speaking the bitter truth of them.

“I didn’t put my name down for consideration because I feel like Elverath has given me a second chance to make things right.” Riven’s neck flexed. He stared up at the ceiling but kept speaking. “For decades, I’ve wished that I’d just been born a Halfling. That I never had to hide myself away. No crown, no magic, no mask. Just the same path as every other Halfling.” His jaw pulsed. He knew that life was much harder than that of a prince. Riven had said as much himself—or as Killian rather—in the safe house in Koratha. It shamed him to hold onto that wish, but shame didn’t change the truth; it only burrowed it deeper inside.

“But no other Halfling could have led the rebellion.”

Riven pulled back to look at me in disbelief.

I shook my head, refusing to let himself diminish all that he had done. “I could never have done it without you. Whatever lies we told, whatever masks we wore, this path we’re on has always been a shared one.”

Riven’s hand cupped my cheek. His lips pressed against my forehead. “And I am happy to share it,diizra. But I want to do so in this body. This version of me that never wore the crown or hid from it.” He cleared his throat and met my gaze. “I didn’t make choices I was proud of when I was a Fae—perhaps this time I will make better ones. Redeem myself. Learn how to be a person again too.”

I rested my hand against Riven’s cheek, and we lay there staring at each other. My magic hummed beneath my skin, and I swore his jade eyes glowed just a little. The golden flecks within their depths shone as they looked at me. A glimpse of the color oozing back into him.

So much of Riven was still clouded in darkness. I recognized it because the same shadows had only begun to fade around me. They were still stirred by the weight of Damien and his armies, of knowing the losses that would come, but I could see the horizon well enough.

But Riven’s shadows were still thick clouds of grief. He needed time. Time to heal enough to believe a version of himself he was proud of could exist. Time to believe he was worthy of the love we all held for him.

I knew too well how much time that would take.

I pressed my lips to his, as gentle and comforting a touch I could offer. I would wait for as many lifetimes as he needed. And I would hold faith that the light would come and banish the shadows away for both of us until then.

“Make me a promise,” I whispered against Riven’s cheek.

He froze. His hand dropped to my waist and slowly pushed me away from him. His eyes narrowed, scanning the door and then my face. “What do you have planned?”

I rubbed my thumb over his brow until it relaxed. “Not a promise made in blood.” I pressed my forehead against his. “Promise me, that after this is over, when we can let ourselves become dull and useless without our people dying, that we willtry.” Tears formed at the corners of my eyes. “Promise me, that even when the war is won, we won’t let the darkness win. We will carve out a little bit of joy for ourselves each day no matter what happens until it is all we know. Until our bellies ache from laughing and our rooms are filled with relics of half-drawn hobbies, and we can sleep without a faelight overhead to keep the darkness from catching us again.”

Rivers of want flowed down my face. I yearned for that future in a way I had never allowed myself before. For both of us. A future that was stitched and healed, where our scars barely itched, because we were whole.

Because we were the people we were meant to be.

Riven wiped my eyes with calloused hands. “And if the darkness never clears?” His words shook with a fear that only lovers got to witness.

I kissed his wrist and then his palm. “It will. I know it,rovaa.”

My choice.

Riven’s pupils flared at my name for him. He gripped the back of my head and pulled me into a wanton kiss. His fangs grazed my flesh, almost cutting, as he devoured me.

I gave into his need. Mine had been lingering just below my skin, and Riven’s touch had awakened it. I nipped at his lip as our hands unlaced each other’s trousers. Riven grunted at the double knot I’d tied and slipped a knife from his pocket.

“Do you want to stop?” he asked, somehow finding the restraint to hold the knife against the lace but not cut.

“Do you?” I gasped into his ear.

Riven pulled my leg tighter against his hip so I had no doubt how much he wanted this.

I raised a smug brow. “Then cut it.”

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