Page 76 of Broken Star

“Or what?” Madeline scoffs.

Zoey tilts her head, considering. Then she reaches into her bag, pulls out her phone, and scrolls through it with exaggerated care.“Or I’ll make sure you regret it in ways you can’t even imagine,” she says with a cold smile.

Madeline’s expression wavers. “You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?” She turns the screen just enough for Madeline to see. “I have some interesting things on here. Like that time at Josie’s party in the bathroom. Or the balance beam incident over the summer. Take your pick.”

“You wouldn’t,” Madeline says.

“Try me.” Zoey raises an eyebrow. “Because if you touch my best friend again—hell, if you evenlookat her wrong—I’ll burn your entire life to the ground. And I’ll enjoy it every single step of the way.”

Silence.

Madeline swallows. Then, without another word, she spins on her heel and stalks off, her friends hounding her with questions.

Watching the painfully insecure version of myself makes me feel small all over again. Because while starting to work at the Maple Pig a year after the hair dying incident helped me come into my own, I don’t know what I would have done without Zoey.

She’s always been the strong one.

And I’m going to return the favor by getting her out of the Night Court and safely home.

“They were jealous,” Riven says, the intensity in his gaze stealing my breath away. “Because even if they spent their entire lives trying to be more, they’d never be what you are—what you’ve always been—without even trying.”

I freeze, his words crashing into me like the echo of something I lost before I had a chance to hold it.

“You didn’t even know me back then,” I finally say. “You can’t know that.”

“It only took one look for me to see what’s been inside you all along,” he says, and suddenly, Matt’s words from Circe’s island are flooding back to me at once.

He looked at you like someone who knew they were doomed from the start, but who fell anyway. Like he didn’t have a choice.

But he did have a choice. He chose to trade his love for me away.

So why does it sound like he still cares? Like maybe—just maybe—he remembers what he sacrificed?

I almost ask. Almost demand the truth.

But before I can, the vision shifts, dissolving into a clearing in the Winter Court’s forest.

Young Riven sits alone on a fallen log, using his magic to create detailed patterns on frost-covered ground, letting them spread from his feet to the surrounding trees. He looks slightly older than in the funeral vision—maybe nine or ten—but his expression remains carefully controlled, even in solitude.

A rustling in the nearby bushes makes him look up, and a white snow leopard emerges, its eyes fixed cautiously on him.

Ghost.

Young Riven doesn’t move. Not at first.

But I know what’s going to happen. Because my Riven told me about this moment. About how terrified he was that the snow leopard would attack him, and that he would have to fight for his life.

Now, watching it unfold, I see the tremble in young Riven’s fingers as they inch toward his dagger. Not in fear, but in readiness.

He would fight if he had to. He would kill if he had to.

But his unarmed hand slowly extends toward Ghost in an offering. A choice.

“Hello,” young Riven says, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. “Are you lost, too?”

Ghost remains still, watching and waiting.

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