Page 77 of Broken Star

The seconds stretch, and frost thickens beneath young Riven’s boots, swallowing the patterns he was tracing only moments ago.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says steadily to Ghost. “I promise.”

Something shifts.

Ghost moves. Not an attack, but a slow, deliberate step forward. Then another. Then, with a quiet exhale, he presses his head against young Riven’s outstretched palm.

A sharp breath escapes the boy.

Then, he smiles.

Not the cold, calculating smirk I’ve seen on my Riven’s face a thousand times. Not the detached, court-polished grin he wields like a weapon.

A real, unguarded, achingly young smile.

My fingers tighten around my Riven’s hand, and while his expression doesn’t change, I can feel the silent pull of something breaking inside him. Something he’s fought to keep buried for years.

The boy in the vision doesn’t know what waits for him—the brutal training, the isolation, the ice that will thicken around his heart with each passing year. But the man standing beside me does.

And yet, he’s still clinging to that moment. To the fragile piece of himself he never let fully die. The one whose eyes glistened with tears, who created patterns in the frost when no one was looking, and who let Ghost into his heart when he was on the verge of shutting down entirely.

“Ghost saved me,” my Riven says, his voice distant. Like he’s speaking to the memory instead of to me. “In ways I don’t think I can explain.”

I look at him. Really, trulylookat him. Not just at his face, but at the tension in his body, the way his fingers stay curled around mine, and how his chest rises and falls a little too carefully.

I could tell him that I understand. That I see the way he’s gripping onto the past, just like I am.

Instead, I say the only thing that feels right.

“You don’t have to.”

And as the vision continues, something shifts between us.

A silent understanding. A reminder that beneath the ice and steel, my Riven—the one who looked at me like I washisbefore he gave it all away—is still in there.

Tears are threatening to push their way into my eyes when the vision shifts again.

This time, there’s a strange shimmer to the edges. As if the cosmic force isthinking—struggling to piece together whatever it’s about to show us.

When the vision finally solidifies, it shows the Winter Court’s throne room. But there are differences from the room I saw when I was there on trial. The ice sculptures are more imposing, the frost patterns along the walls are more intricate, and the chandeliers overhead glow with a colder, harsher light.

A solitary figure sits upon the Winter Throne.

Riven.

But it’s not the Riven I know. This version of him looks older somehow. Not physically, since fae don’t age past their mid-twenties, but there’s a weight to him. A heaviness in his eyes that speaks of centuries of isolation.

His hair is longer. A crown of ice spikes rests upon his head, glittering with deadly elegance. And he’s wearing the same ring on his middle finger that we just saw on his father, although the swirling frost is muted instead of glowing.

There are no advisors. No courtiers. No companions. Nome.There isn’t even Ghost.

But most disturbingly? Older Riven’s eyes are filled with loneliness, regret, grief, and pain far deeper than I ever imagined possible.

And his wedding band—the one that’s shimmering on my Riven’s finger—is muted completely.

Riven

“This isn’t possible.”

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