The silence after pleasure was louder than any scream.
She lay across my chest, her breath uneven, her body still shaking from what we'd just done. Her skin was damp against mine. Her heart beat against my ribs like it was trying to remember how to belong in her chest again.
I didn't speak or move. The air between us was too soft, like the stillness that follows a storm you're not sure has truly passed. One wrong breath, and I feared the moment we shared would crack.
My arms stayed around her, not to keep her caged, but to anchor her. To stop her from slipping too far into that hidden place I had only glimpsed when her mouth was on mine. A place of silence, rage and longing.
Her cheek rested against my shoulder. Her skin was warm, her breath slow and uneven. Her hair smelled of ash and wind, of fire doused too soon, of something wild and waiting to burn again. Her thighs were still draped across mine, trembling faintly, as if her body hadn't yet caught up with the truth of what we had done.
There were no words.
Only the echo of her moan still haunting my ears, and the way my heart refused to beat without matching hers.
Only raw full undeniable feeling.
And then the Core stirred.
Not with hunger. Not with the raw, urgent pull I had felt when it first woke. This time, it moved like warmth rising through my blood, slow and steady, like a second heartbeat finding rhythm beneath my own. It didn't take. It didn't command. It pulsed quietly, as if in reverence.
It felt almost grateful.
A low vibration bloomed in my chest and spread outward, rippling through every torn muscle, every fractured bone. I felt my body knitting itself back together from the inside out. The pain fled so completely it left a strange hollowness in its place, like I had been emptied of suffering.
I gasped. The air that filled my lungs was full and clean, untainted by blood or ash. My hand flexed instinctively against her spine. My strength returned so swiftly it startled me, like breath after drowning.
The pain was completely gone as if it had never lived in me at all.
Then I saw the words.
They weren't carved in stone or spoken aloud. They appeared in my mind, clear and silent, like truth whispered from inside my soul.
Lustbound Core: Fully Activated.
I exhaled, long and low, as though my lungs were releasing something older than breath. The glyph on my chest still glowed, pulsing with a faint red light that dimmed with each passing second, like an ember trying not to die.
Her fingers moved first. Just a twitch against my side. But I felt it like a jolt.
She didn't lift her head yet. She stayed curled against me, her skin was warm against mine, her breath brushing my collarbone in slow, uneven waves.
But I could feel the hesitation coiling beneath her stillness. The way her body tensed just slightly, like she was waiting for the weight of what we'd done to crash over her.
Then she finally spoke. Not with the sharp edge she had used when we first met. Not with command. She spoke softly and carefully. Like she was afraid of what her own voice might reveal.
"As soon as I touched you… I knew it would be like this."
Her voice broke at the edges, low and strained, like it hadn't been used for softness in a long time. Like someone who had forgotten what it felt like to speak without armor.
"I told myself it wouldn't happen. That I wouldn't let it. But the moment I felt your skin—"
She stopped herself, jaw tightening.
"I didn't want this," she whispered. "I didn't plan for any of it."
I let the silence sit a moment before answering. Not because I didn't believe her. But because I did.
"I know," I said, quiet and steady.
Her breath caught, sharp against my skin, as if the weight of her own confession had stolen the air from her lungs.
Then she pulled away slowly, like the act itself cost her something. Her body slid from mine with tense grace, every movement measured. She sat up, keeping one arm crossed over her chest while the other reached for the shredded cloak beside her.
I didn't stop her.
I just watched in silence as she dressed, her fingers moving quickly, too quickly, fastening straps and tugging cloth like she was trying to wrap herself in distance. The rawness in her eyes was replaced by something tighter. Controlled.
Her face held no shame. No regret. Just weight.
Like whatever was pressing on her had been there long before me, and now it had simply gotten heavier.
She didn't meet my gaze.
"I shouldn't have let it happen," she murmured, voice quiet, almost to herself.
I sat up, the heat from her skin still clinging to mine. I could feel the Core humming beneath my ribs, tethered now, alive and aware.
"You didn't let it happen," I said. "You wanted it."
I paused, letting her hear me.
"We both did."
She looked at me then. She didn't glance nor flicker. She truly looked.
And in that moment, something in her guard faltered. I saw it. The heat still smoldering beneath her anger. The fear she hadn't named. The confusion threading through the way her eyes held mine, like she didn't know whether to run or reach for me again.
Her lips parted, as if to deny it. But her words had failed her. Only breath.
"I felt everything," she said.
The words were soft, but they struck like lightning.
"Even the pieces of myself I didn't know were missing."
I didn't answer right away. I couldn't.
Instead, I sat up, slow and careful, as if moving too quickly would break the moment wide open.
My body obeyed without pain. Without resistance. Whole and alive.
I placed my hand over the mark on my chest, still faintly warm, still pulsing. Because the Core had felt everything.
"What happens now?" I asked.
She drew in a breath, opened her mouth to answer but something shifted beneath us.
A low rumble rolled through the floor, subtle at first, then stronger. Dust rained down from the ceiling. Cracks whispered across the stone above our heads. The cave trembled, groaning like it was remembering how to collapse.
She turned fast, instincts honed and sharp. Her hand reached for the sword at her hip, but there was no time.
A slab of stone broke free from the ceiling.
It fell fast.
I didn't think. I just moved. My hand snapped upward.
Flame burst from my palm. Violent, radiant, alive flame. It surged through the air and struck the falling stone in a roar of heat and light. The rock didn't just stop. It disintegrated midair, reduced to glowing dust and cinders.
Then the fire vanished. And silence filled the space like smoke.
She stared at me. Not moving. Not blinking.
I looked down at my hand, the skin warm and pulsing with leftover energy. My breath slowed, but the Core within me hummed like a satisfied flame.
"I didn't try," I said quietly. "It just… happened."
She turned toward me slowly, her expression unreadable.
"That's not possible," she said at last. "You're not a mage. You shouldn't be able to use elemental fire."
"But I did."
She stared at me for a long time.
Long enough for the silence to tighten between us. Her hands curled into fists at her sides showing she was in control. As if she was holding something back. A thought maybe, a fear or a need. I could almost hear her thoughts racing, each one louder than the last.
"The Core," I said quietly. "It gave me a piece of you."
She flinched, just barely. Then took a step back.
For a moment , I thought she would turn and walk away. It would have been easier. The safer option.
But she didn't.
Instead, she stepped toward me slowly. Like she was approaching something sacred or dangerous or both.
"I thought it was just a myth," she said. Her voice was low, but steady. "The Lustbound Core. A relic from the old gods. A thing of war and pleasure. A hunger that lives, takes, gives, and binds."
I didn't speak. There was nothing I could say that would make it less real.
She came closer until the space between us vanished, until I could feel the warmth of her breath against my chest.
"And now it's inside you," she murmured.
I nodded.
"And you're inside me."
We both fell silent. And then she touched my chest again. Not to ignite the Core. Not to test her power. Just to feel the shape of what had changed.
Her fingers brushed the skin above the mark, gentle now. I looked into her face. The firelight in her eyes. The tremble in her breath.
"I should walk away from you," she whispered.
"But you won't."
Her lips quirked in something like sorrow.
"No," she said. "I won't."
I reached up and caught her hand before she could pull away.
"Tell me your name," I said.
She hesitated.
The flicker of resistance in her expression cracked, and something softer slipped through.
Then, barely above a whisper, she said it.
"Riven."
The name landed in my chest like a blade. Sharp and beautiful. Fierce and quiet.
"Riven," I repeated, letting the sound of it settle in my mouth.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them again, she wasn't running anymore.
"You need to leave this place," she said. "We both do. Before it gives us more than we can handle."
I nodded.
She helped me to my feet. I was taller than her, but the bond between us made us feel equal. Different but aligned. Two halves of something not yet defined.
We gathered our things in silence.
The wind met us as we stepped out of the cave, warm and bitter with ash. Above, the trees stood like ghosts blackened trunks, scorched leaves curling at the edges, the scent of burnt wood still clinging to the soil. The fire hadn't just passed through. It had lingered, consumed, and carved this place into a half-dead memory of what it once was.
And yet, it breathed.
Smoke still hung in the air, but sunlight filtered weakly through the skeletal canopy. A raven croaked in the distance. The earth cracked beneath our steps. Nature, bruised and hollow, was trying to remember itself.
Riven walked slightly ahead of me, her eyes scanning the treeline, one hand never straying far from her weapon. The air between us had shifted quieter. We had touched something that could not be untouched, and now the weight of that knowing filled every silence.
I could still feel her. Not just from memory, but from within. The Core tether pulsed faintly in the back of my mind, attuned to her presence. Her breath. Her heartbeat. The thread between us was alive.
She hadn't spoken since we left the cave.
And yet, everything about her screamed of things she couldn't say. The stiffness in her shoulders. The quick glances over her shoulder when she thought I wouldn't notice. The way her fingers twitched when mine brushed hers by accident.
Or maybe not by accident at all.
"Where are we going?" I asked finally.
She paused at a curve in the trail and looked back at me, her eyes like molten amber in the slanting light.
"There's an old waystation north of here," she said. "It's abandoned. Burnt halfway through the last raid, but it'll shelter us for the night."
I nodded.
She turned again, leading us forward.
We moved through the charred forest in silence. The deeper we went, the more the trees began to change. Burnt trunks gave way to crooked oaks bent with heat. There was life here too. Stubborn shoots of green breaking through the blackened dirt. Roots splitting stone. Ferns reaching through ash.
"I was supposed to die in that pit," I said after a while. "But you found me."
"You weren't in the pit," she said, not looking back. "Not when I found you."
I frowned.
"You were in the ruins. Curled up in fireglass, half-dead. Like you'd crawled out of the center of something ancient. I thought you were a corpse until you breathed."
I tried to remember. The last thing I knew was falling into blackness. Pain. Flame.
"I don't know how I got there," I murmured.
"I figured as much."
We stopped again at a clearing. A circle of scorched earth stretched around us, edges curling with melted rock and long-dead embers. She dropped her pack at the edge and crouched low, inspecting the ground.
"Footprints," she said. "Light and fresh. We're not alone out here."
I felt the Core stir in my chest, more aware now than it had been since we stepped outside.
Then came the whisper soft but distinct, curling through my mind like smoke.
Bond Thread Dedected
My breath stilled.
"What is it?" she asked, rising to her feet.
I looked around us. Nothing moved. Not yet.
"I think someone's coming," I said slowly. "Someone the Core already knows."
Riven's face darkened.
"We need to move. Fast."
But I didn't move yet.
I looked at her. This woman who had saved me, fought me, taken me into her body and still hadn't decided if she wanted to stay. Her red hair danced in the dying light. Her jaw was set. Her posture ready.
"You said you didn't plan for this," I said. "What did you plan for?"
She glanced at me. Her expression flickered.
"To disappear," she said simply. "To stay hidden. Far from bounty hunters, far from my father's reach. Far from everything I used to be."
"What were you before?"
Her answer came quietly.
"Princess of fire and ruin."
Then she walked. And I followed.