Chapter 129: Said Our Piece - Riven's POV

“She’ll find what we need,” I said quietly, nodding.

She had to, because she walked into the basement of this mansion when I had given her every reason to walk away. I had pushed her, kept her away while her wolf had torn her apart, and yet she still chose me. That had to mean something, and I knew that I would spend the rest of my life making it up to her.

I looked at the book again, remembering her opening it and the look on her face as she collapsed moments later.

She would end this. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did.

"Yes," Ronan said. "I believe she will."

I reached forward and covered her hand with mine on top of the blanket. She was warm, at least. That was another comforting thing while I waited for her to wake up. Her pulse was steady beneath my fingers when I checked, the same way I had been checking it almost every hour since she passed out. It was as if it was a ritual and the repetition would eventually bring her back to me.

As for the bond, it was quiet, a thread of warmth running between us that the demon kept testing the edges of.

Let me show you, it said, that low, cold impression again. What she's seeing. I can show you.

I pressed it back down.

"No," I said quietly.

Ronan looked at me with a narrowed gaze, then understanding flashed across his face. “Oh, the demon.”

We sat in silence after that, and eventually he left quietly, as he usually did. I didn’t watch him go. This time, I kept my eyes on Callista and my hand on hers, counting her breaths.

Two more days passed in a blur. I barely slept or ate anything while waiting for her to wake up.

The only thing that caught my attention was the door opening. Sabine stepped in. I hadn’t been prepared to see her, especially just past dawn.

She stopped when she saw me.

We looked at each other for a solid minute, which made me think of what she had said at the academy. She had been ready to finish me off that day.

“She’s still out?” She asked, her voice hesitant.

“Yes,” I said softly, as if my voice would wake her if I spoke too loudly. “I’ve been waiting for five days.”

She held my gaze for a moment, her eyes never wavering. So much was said without speaking a word. She was fearful for Callista, hoping that she survived this.

"Is she—"

"Stable," I said softly. "You can come and see for yourself. She’s breathing and warm. The healer said she’s in a vision and—” I stopped for a moment, my eyes settling on Callista. “She’s not in any danger.”

Sabine’s gaze narrowed, then she came forward. “If you’re wrong, and she dies, I’ll finish you.”

“I know,” I whispered. “Do you want some time with her?”

“Yes,” she snapped.

I slowly rose from my chair and made my way to the door, looking back once. Sabine settled on the bed next to her sister, curling up by her side. I left without saying a word.

Instead of hanging outside the door, I went downstairs and waited for an hour. I let myself eat something small and found something to drink. I hadn’t even realized my throat had gotten so dry while sitting there for hours with nothing. My mind had been too distracted by everything else that this was the last thing on my mind.

When I went back upstairs, she was still lying on the bed, holding onto Callista. I stayed in the doorway.

After a moment, Sabine looked up and saw me there. Something moved through her expression that I hadn't expected. It wasn’t the anger she had been carrying at the academy, or even the protective fury. This was something rawer than that, something that looked, briefly, like gratitude.

She looked back at her sister. "She's stubborn," she said, her voice rough.

"Yes," I agreed.

"She gets it from our mother." A pause. "Don't tell her I said that. She'll use it as ammunition and get me back so much worse.”

I said nothing.

"When she wakes up," Sabine said, and the way she said it was forceful, "you're going to make sure this doesn't happen again. You promised to take care of her and I expect you to do it.”

"I'm trying to make sure the whole thing never happens again," I said quietly. "That's what she went into the book to find and then this happened.”

Sabine turned and looked at me fully, properly, the way she hadn't let herself look at me at the academy because looking at me fully was admitting I was actually there and she hadn't been ready for that yet.

"The curse," she mentioned, her gaze dragging over me. “And the demon. It’s because of what she saw?”

"Yes."

She was quiet for a moment. "She told me some of it before…you two split. Not everything, though. She has hidden so many things that I wonder if we will ever know all of it.” Sabine paused and huffed. “I knew she would find her way back to you, and why I couldn’t stop her, even if I wanted to.”

"I don't forgive you," she admitted. "Just so we're clear. What you did to her last year is not something I'm going to just—" She stopped, then started again. "But I understand it.”

"I know.”

She turned back to her sister. "She would have chosen this, anyway. Even if I had locked her in her room and refused to let her out, she would have found a way back to you." Something in her voice softened despite itself. "She's been yours since the moment she met you. I knew it then, and I was furious about it and I still am, a little, because you are a significant amount of trouble."

I almost said something, but decided against it.

"But she's happy," Sabine said quietly. "Even with all of this. Even with whatever is in that book and whatever is happening right now, when she's with you she's the version of herself that I remembered before everything got hard." She reached out and smoothed a strand of hair back from her sister's face with a gentleness that was entirely at odds with every version of Sabine Monroe I had seen so far. "So fix this, Riven Blackwood. Whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes," I agreed.

She left an hour later. She didn't look at me again on her way out. But she didn't need to.

We had already said our piece, and hopefully we could now move forward.