-Ruik-
I drifted down the empty road, each step slow, uneven. The stones bit into my bare feet, but the pain felt distant—like it belonged to someone I’d already left behind. The robe Tom and Jarold had thrown over my shoulders hung crooked, letting the night wind slip in and rake cold fingers down my spine.
When the road bent toward a thicket, I stopped.
My satchel hit the ground with a dull thud, Drazan’s hilt jutting from the top. I shrugged off the robe, grimacing as the fabric scraped across the burned welts on my back, and tossed it into the brush. I pulled on my old boots, then my tunic—careful, but not careful enough.
Pain lanced through me, white-hot and blinding.
I swallowed the sound clawing up my throat.
The moon hung low above the road, a thin pale blade cutting through the clouds. I stared at it, wondering where the night expected me to go. Where I expected myself to go.
No answer came.
But hooves did.
A slow trot. Measured. Controlled. The sound drifted toward me from the curve in the road ahead, and my body straightened on instinct, muscles flinching with memory.
A hooded rider emerged from the gloom. The air seemed to bend around her, the mist warping as the horse approached. A second horse followed behind, saddled but riderless.
They slowed.
Stopped.
The hood lifted.
Rivulet.
Moonlight caught her features, sharp and cold, as her eyes took me in. She didn’t look surprised. Only… resolved. As if she’d already seen this moment play out.
“Ashes trail behind you, Ruik,” she said. “It’s time to let them go.”
I glanced back down the road as she dismounted.
It stretched empty all the way to Torrain—a dark ribbon leading toward everything I’d just left behind. My brothers. My oath. The life that had been carved into me whether I wanted it or not.
The truth of it settled somewhere deeper than my throat.
“Remember,” Rivulet said gently. “But don’t dwell.”
I nodded, though the tension in my shoulders didn’t ease.
“I don’t know where I’m meant to go,” I admitted. The words came out thin, barely more than the night breeze.
She didn’t answer right away. She stepped closer, boots whispering against the dirt, the second horse shifting behind her with a restless snort. The air around her rippled faintly, moonlight bending, shadows stretching, as if the night itself made room for her.
“You were never meant to stay,” she said. “Not in Torrain. Not beneath Vaelor’s shadow. You’ve been trying to ignore that since the moment we met.”
My jaw tightened. “I know.”
Something flickered across her face—sharp, sympathetic, almost painful to look at.
She held out the reins of the second horse.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
I stared at them. At her. At the road ahead—boundless, dark, terrifying.
“I’m not at my best,” I said, a humorless breath slipping free. Half confession. Half warning.
Her eyes softened. Just a fraction. “You’re alive. That’s enough.”
The satchel tugged at my burns as I shifted, the night air biting at exposed skin. I felt small. Hurt. Stripped of everything I’d thought made me strong.
But she didn’t look away. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t treat me like something already broken.
“That’s why I came,” she said. “Because you’re walking away from the only cage you ever convinced yourself was safety.”
My fingers closed around the reins, slow and uncertain.
“What now?” I asked.
She looked toward the horizon, where the faintest suggestion of dawn hid beyond the Great Mountain.
“Now?” she said. “We keep moving before the day catches us.”
She stepped back, giving me space. Letting me choose.
Somehow, that made it easier.
I hauled myself onto the horse and didn’t look back.
And just before she mounted, I caught the smallest release of breath from her—quiet, relieved.
“Come on, Ruik,” she murmured. “Let the night hold you for a while. It’s safer than you think.”
We rode for nearly an hour, leaving the road for the tangled wild of the Lorien Forest. The trees loomed ancient and heavy, their crowns strangling the stars. Vines dangled like skeletal hands. Pale flowers pulsed faintly at their roots, glowing with an otherworldly breath.
“There’s a cavern near the top,” Rivulet said.
When we reached it, Torrain unfurled below us in moonlit fragments—the river, the chimneys, the distant silver flicker of the Sunspire’s brazier.
“Here.” She pointed to a narrow fissure splitting the cliff face.
Natural steps spiraled down into darkness. We tethered the horses outside, and she slipped into the crevice. I took one last look at the quiet city before following.
The cavern swallowed us.
Cold air seeped from the stone walls. Water dripped in hollow echoes. Her torch cast unsteady light, shadows writhing at its edges.
I paused just inside, bracing a hand against the stone as my breath hitched. My tunic clung to dried blood and sweat. Pain flared with every movement.
I hated how small it made me feel.
Rivulet watched from a few steps ahead—still, taut—like she feared something in me might break further.
“Sit,” she said softly.
I lowered myself onto a stone shelf. The motion tore a gasp from my chest. I clenched my jaw, but she noticed anyway.
She knelt before me. Not close enough to touch. Just close enough to see.
“Let me tend your wounds.”
I hesitated.
I should have done it myself. Should have endured it. But when I tried to lift my arm, fire tore through my shoulder, and the fabric stuck fast to dried blood.
She saw.
“Ruik,” she murmured. “Let me.”
I nodded.
She pulled the tunic over my head, gentle but deliberate. I hissed when it tugged at split skin, unable to hide the tremor in my breath.
Her eyes swept over me.
The scars. The bruises. The half-healed cuts. The way my veins throbbed beneath too-mortal skin.
Her breath hitched.
Not with pity.
With hunger.
It was gone in an instant, but not before I saw it. Her pupils tightened. Her chest stilled.
Heat crept up my neck—not desire.
Shame.
She was carved from shadow and moonlight. I was wounded. Breakable. Bare.
I looked away.
Silence pressed between us, heavy and exposed.
Then I lifted my gaze.
Her eyes had darkened, gold swallowed by something deeper. Every instinct she had was screaming.
Something dangerous coiled between us.
“Rivulet…” My voice cracked. “You could fix this.”
She froze.
“One bite,” I whispered. “And the pain would stop. I wouldn’t feel like this anymore. I wouldn’t be—”
Human. Ruined.
I didn’t say it.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do,” I said. “It would make me strong.”
“It would make you lost.”
“You’re beautiful,” I whispered. “You’re whole.”
Her breath trembled—not with desire, but with something far older.
“You think I’m whole?”
The bitterness in her voice cut deeper than any blade.
“This strength isn’t mine,” she said. “It’s what was left after everything else was taken.”
She touched her chest, where no heart beat.
“I had scars once. They told the story of who I was. When I was turned… they burned away. Along with the rest of me.”
Her throat tightened.
“My pain. My triumph. My history. All replaced with hunger.”
She leaned close enough that her cold breath mingled with my warmth.
“If I turned you now,” she whispered, “your pain would vanish. But so would everything that makes you Ruik.”
My vision blurred.
She lifted my chin, forcing me to meet her eyes.
“Don’t trade your wounds for emptiness,” she said. “Don’t ask me to take from you what I wish I still had.”
The cavern fell silent.
I nodded—slow, reluctant, real.
She cleaned my wounds in silence, hands careful, controlled, reverent. Every motion carried the weight of restraint.
When she finished, she spoke without looking at me.
“You will heal. And you will heal as yourself.”
“Stay,” I murmured.
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
Her hands stilled.
“I’m not leaving,” she said softly.
And for the first time since entering the cavern, the darkness didn’t feel hollow at all.
