Smoke curled like fingers through the halls of Cassian's estate—thick with incense, wine, and the growing scent of unease.
Riven stood on the balcony, shirt half-unbuttoned, wind teasing strands of his dark hair. Below, the city shimmered in golds and ambers, a kingdom that looked whole but was splintering fast.
Behind him, footsteps. Measured. Familiar.
Cassian.
"Are you going to tell me what Valen offered?" his voice was low, measured, but his eyes burned. "Or am I meant to guess—between the silences and your sleepless nights?"
Riven didn't turn. "Does it matter?"
Cassian stepped close, fingers brushing the exposed skin at the base of Riven's throat. "It matters when my empire is cracking—and the only person I trust won't look me in the eye."
Riven turned then, sharply. "Trust?" he laughed, but it caught like glass in his throat. "You had Nyra in your arms days ago."
"That wasn't what it looked like."
"It never is," Riven hissed.
They stood close, the heat between them thick as a storm—lust, rage, and unspoken fears swirling like wildfire.
Cassian's hand tightened around Riven's wrist. "Don't do this," he growled. "Don't make war with me when the world already wants our heads."
"Then stop treating me like a liability," Riven snapped. "I am not your weakness. I'm the reason you're still breathing."
Their mouths crashed before their words could draw more blood. Kisses rough, frantic, driven by fury and desperation. Hands found skin, clawing past fabric, demanding more—proof they still belonged to each other. Proof they weren't already too far gone.
And yet...
Riven pulled back, breath ragged. "If you knew what I've agreed to—what I've become—you wouldn't be touching me like this."
Cassian gripped his face, forced him to meet his gaze. "Then tell me. Make me see it."
Riven shook his head.
Because the truth would kill them both.
The gala's aftershocks hadn't faded. Whispers still clung to the walls like perfume, thick with scandal and secrets. Cassian stood in the darkened war room, hands braced against the table. Maps. Ledgers. Bloodlines. All crumbling.
Nyra stepped out from the shadows, dressed in midnight velvet. Her voice, honeyed venom. "You've lost your edge, Cassian."
He didn't flinch. "And you've lost your leash, Nyra. Who let you in?"
She smiled. "The same people who will soon walk over your grave if Riven doesn't choose correctly."
He turned, slow and deliberate. "Say that name again and I'll show you how sharp my edge still is."
Nyra purred, circling him. "You don't frighten me. But losing him does. Doesn't it?"
Cassian didn't answer. Couldn't. Because she was right.
Meanwhile...
Riven moved through the lower levels of the Valeblind estate—Valen's territory. The ceilings here were too low. The heat too deliberate. Like being pulled into the lungs of something waiting to consume him.
Valen waited in a room drenched in scarlet lamplight, perched on the edge of a velvet couch, swirling a drink that matched the bloodlust in his smile.
"You came," Valen said. "Even after everything."
"I said I would," Riven murmured.
Valen approached. "And will you give me everything I asked for?"
Their eyes met—tension a taut thread between them.
Riven didn't speak.
Instead, he stepped forward, unfastening the clasp at his throat—offering not submission, but a challenge.
Valen moved like a storm: lips rough, hands insistent. Their kiss wasn't sweet. It was poison laced with seduction, fire and ash. Riven let it burn him—because in the inferno, he couldn't feel the guilt.
Valen's breath grazed his ear. "Once you cross this line, there's no going back."
Riven whispered, "I crossed it the moment I didn't stop you."
And so he let the night consume him.
Cassian knew.
Not because someone told him.
Not because Nyra smirked too knowingly when she left him in the war room with words like daggers.
He felt it. In the way Riven didn't come home that night.
In the silence that greeted him the next morning.
In the crack in the coffee mug Riven always used—the one now missing.
He stood alone in their private quarters, fingers brushing the cold glass of the window, watching smoke coil from the eastern quarter.
Valen's territory.
His voice was hollow when he said, "He's with him."
Sera, his head of intelligence, approached quietly. "You were right. We intercepted a communique… encrypted, but the route was unmistakable."
Cassian closed his eyes. "Did he give me up?"
"No," she said gently. "Not yet."
But the yet throbbed between them like a wound.
---
Elsewhere, Riven sat in Valen's lair, still flushed from the night's hunger, body marked with bruises of passion and power.
But the guilt had arrived, late and choking.
He hadn't slept.
He hadn't spoken.
Valen lounged lazily beside him, like a beast after the kill. "Tell me, Riven. Was I better than him?"
"Don't."
"Then why are you still here?"
Riven stood, slowly. "Because if I leave now, I'll never stop running."
Valen tilted his head. "You'll betray him eventually. Why not start now?"
"I already have," Riven said. His voice broke on it.
Valen rose to close the distance between them, gripping Riven's jaw. "Then own it. Use it. Or run back to Cassian and wait for the day he can no longer look at you without seeing me on your skin."
---
Cassian stood before the mirror that night, shirt unbuttoned, tie hanging like a noose around his neck.
The bed behind him remained untouched.
He stared at himself. At the man losing his grip. The empire built on strategy and shadows was now a battlefield of hearts and blood.
He whispered one word.
"Riven."