Chapter 154 Three Weeks Are a Blur - Callista's POV

Chapter 154 Three Weeks Are a Blur - Callista's POV
Three weeks passed the way things passed when you were too busy surviving them to watch them go.

The tribunal meeting happened three days after the clearing, which lasted four hours and involved more formal language than I had ever heard in one room and ended with the senior observer formally acknowledging that what had occurred was the result of a generational practice within the Alpha King's line that the tribunal had a responsibility to investigate and regulate going forward. Riven sat at the head of the table and answered every question they put to him with clarity. Raze sat beside him, and Alric and Dorian sat across from them with the expressions of people who were still assembling the full picture of their own lives and were doing it in public.

Their father didn’t attend. His absence was its own kind of statement.

I sat beside Riven and said nothing unless directly addressed, which was twice, and both times the silver-haired observer listened to me with a straight expression, as if evaluating me.

Then came Riven’s uncle, the one who was supposedly after Ronan’s throne and the reason for shoving demons into their children.

We drove to the eastern territory in the morning, just the two of us, and I had been dreading it and not saying so since the night at the clearing. I wasn’t afraid of the confrontation. I knew what Riven needed to say in it and I had been watching him carry the weight and hadn't been able to take any of it from him.

He didn't say much on the drive. I didn't fill the silence.

The compound was exactly as described. It looked more like a prison than a home with old framework made of stone.

The man who opened the door was older than I had expected. Ronan's age, approximately, which made sense, and with enough similarity in the bone structure that I understood immediately.

He looked at Riven for a long moment. Riven looked back.

And then Riven said the thing he had been preparing to say since the book, the basement, and the woods at Ashford Clearing. He said it in his own words without Ronan's script or my coaching or anyone else's around it. He said it simply and directly, without asking for anything in return, because that was how true things worked and he had finally stopped being afraid of them.

The man in the doorway was very quiet for a long time afterward.

He didn’t forgive Ronan, but I hadn’t expected him to and that wasn’t really why we were here. Riven wasn’t at fault for what his father had done.

He closed the door without saying much.

“That went well,” I said sarcastically.

Riven snorted. “I guess he didn’t like what was in his sons, but if that was the case, then maybe he should have stopped Ronan himself instead of leaving it to me.”

After that moment, we stayed at my family’s house. Raze and his mate Isla had also joined it. While she was shocked at first, she was happy that everything was a lie. They were planning on holding their ceremony on the same night as we were, though we technically didn’t need it.

She and Sabine were friends within forty-eight hours.

I hadn’t predicted that but in hindsight it was entirely predictable. Isla liked to grill and tease, which was Sabine’s speciality.

Riven slept on top of the covers every night and came downstairs every morning for coffee before anyone else.

He had one conversation with the Nightshades. I didn't ask what was said. He told me afterward, briefly, that they had said what they always said and that it was good. That he was still their son and that some things didn't need to be complicated.

He said it like he was still deciding whether to believe it. I thought he was getting there.

The tribunal issued its preliminary findings on the fourteenth day. It was a formal document that acknowledged the bloodline curse, named the practice of placing demons in heirs as a prohibited act going forward, and requested a full accounting from all surviving parties before the seat's formal installation. It was careful language that meant the tribunal was managing its own institutional exposure as much as delivering justice, but the outcome was what mattered. The practice was named. It was on record. It couldn’t be quietly continued by whoever came after.

That meant this would never happen again.

Alric and Dorian were a longer and more complicated story that I understood would continue well past tonight.

Then finally, the night of our ceremony came.

It was my birthday and it arrived on a solemn note. I skipped cake and everything else, because I was too busy preparing for our wedding night. We were both eighteen now and it was definitely something that I would never forget.

I doubted Riven would either. It’s not as if we had a normal birthday and got to celebrate either of them.

Riven was awake and sitting in the chair by the window before I even opened my eyes. I sat up and looked at him.

"Happy birthday," he said softly.

"Thank you," I whispered. “I’m sorry we didn’t really get to celebrate yours.”

He shook his head. “There were too many things going on and it’s not like we’ll get to celebrate yours either. How do you feel?”

"Like someone who is about to have a ceremony under a full moon but technically already happened in the living room," I joked

The corner of his mouth moved. "Technically."

"The Moon Goddess approved it," I stated. “She made the bond fully click, so it’s all good. This just makes it more publicly official.”

"She did," he agreed.

I got up and crossed the room, sitting on the arm of the chair. He made room for me witout looking away from the window.  

The bond hummed between us.  I didn't mind.

"Little seer,” he purred and it made me laugh.

“You said that over text message, you know?”

He laughed hard. “I know. I was trying to flirt and I think I came across creepy.”

“Well, yes,” I nodded and chuckled. “You freaked me out for sure, but I wouldn’t change anything.”

We sat in the morning light for a while. The house was already stirring below us. My mother was already cooking breakfast. Sabine was on the phone with someone. Raze was speaking to Isla. My father was somewhere down below, probably in his office.

"I love you," Riven said softly.

"I know," I said.

He looked at me in shock as if to ask why I hadn’t said it back.

"I love you too," I murmured. "I just like that you don't need me to say it before you say it anymore."

Something in his expression did the thing it did when I said something that got through to him in a way he hadn't prepared for.

He pulled me off the chair arm and into the actual chair, which definitely was not designed for two people. 

I laughed, because I finally felt free.