Chapter 359 Yes, This Whore Is Offering

Tristan found her in the temple.

“River, what did you do?”

His voice echoed off the temple walls. The words were flat, devastated, the voice of a man who already knew the answer and was asking anyway because the alternative was accepting it in silence.

River didn’t answer. She was curled in a tight ball on a stone slab, her knees pulled to her chest, her arms wrapped around herself. White hair fell across her face in a curtain that hid everything except the sound of soft crying.

Tristan turned on the priestess. The green in his eyes was a wildfire.

“You performed a severing without my knowledge.” His voice climbed into a register that the temple had never heard and the priestess had rarely faced. “Without my consent. Without the authorization of the council or the crown. You severed a royal bond in this temple, on her word alone, and you did it while I was unconscious in a bed and unable to stop it.”

The priestess met his fury with the steady gaze of a woman who had served the Goddess through wars and plagues and the fall of dynasties, and whose capacity for being intimidated by angry princes had been exhausted centuries ago.

“The bond belonged to her as much as it belonged to you. She had the right to release what she chose to hold.”

“She had no right to—”

“Tristan.” River’s voice came from the slab. “Please. It is what I wanted. Please do not blame her.”

He crossed the temple in four strides and scooped her off the stone slab.

Her face pressed against his neck.

He carried her out of the temple. Through the columns. Across the grounds until they were in their chambers.

His jaw was set and his arms were steady and his chest was the war zone it had been since the moment Vesper Willow walked into his ceremony, except the war had just been lost, and the woman in his arms was the one who had surrendered on his behalf, and the fury and the grief and the love were so tangled inside him that breathing around them required concentration.

He laid her on the bed, pulling the blanket over her.

The room softened at the edges. Tristan’s hand was still around hers.

She drifted.

Voices moved at the periphery. Tristan’s, low, asking something she couldn’t parse at first. The head healer’s, closer.

“Your Highness, you need to rest. The corruption has started to spread again. Severing the chosen tie helped, but I’m afraid it is not enough.”

River’s heart sank. Still spreading. The severing hadn’t been enough.

“You’re telling me she did all of that for nothing?” Tristan asked, voice raw.

“You are still not honoring the Moon Goddess’s will,” the head healer explained. “Your chosen tie is sleeping in your bed while your fated rots in a dungeon.”

Atlas’s voice came next.

“Tristan. Let’s move River back into her own chambers for now. Go visit Vesper in the dungeons. See if you can try to salvage a relationship with her.”

“I can’t believe my ears right now,” Tristan said. “You want me to move River out of our chambers. Do you hear yourself?”

“I understand this isn’t easy, son,” Atlas replied. “But she severed your tie because she loves you. She wants you to be with what fate gave you. Do not let that go in vain.”

“Even if I didn’t love River, I would not want Vesper Willow by my side,” Tristan stated. “She is crazy and currently using dark magic. I can feel her emotions clear as day. They aren’t kind.”

“I agree, she should not be wearing a crown,” Atlas conceded. “But you heard the healers. Severing with her will kill you right now if you try. You are too weak.”

Tristan laughed, dark and cold. “So you want me to play nice with that woman after everything she’s done to get her to stop using dark magic on me.”

“I want her dead, Tristan. Understand that,” Atlas said. “But you cannot survive a severing in your condition, so we do this the ugly way. She did not arrive at your ceremony by accident and she is not doing this alone. You will be pleasant to her. You endure her. Get information out of her. And when you are strong enough, we will revisit severing.”

✦✦✦

THE DUNGEON

Tristan was asleep in their bed and River had come alone.

The guards recognized her and parted without a word.

River sat in the chair across from Vesper Willow.

The two women looked at each other across the cracked table in a windowless room underground, and the silence between them carried the weight of everything that had happened and everything that was about to.

“I need your help,” River began.

Vesper’s mouth curved. “You need my help. The woman who had me tackled by guards, paraded in chains, and thrown in a dungeon wants my help.”

“I didn’t do any of those things,” River replied, voice calm. “I tried to stop the arrest.”

“That was all an act and you and I both know it,” Vesper snapped.

River exhaled a long breath through her nose. “I am here, because I need your help. I severed my tie with Tristan to save him. He is free. He can be with you.”

Vesper looked at River’s neck where the star had been. The look lasted five seconds. River let her.

“How touching,” Vesper said. “The selfless princess, sacrificing everything for love. Tell me, is this the part where I cry and we braid each other’s hair and become the best of friends?”

“We both care about the same man,” River said, and the words tasted like glass and she said them anyway. “Please stop, whatever you are doing to him. I know deep down, you don’t want him to die either. If you can do that, I will help you get out of these dungeons and build a relationship with him.”

“YOU of all people offering to help ME?” Vesper asked, giving River a once over. “I don’t need help from a common whore. And I don’t need to save the man who locked me in a dungeon.”

“Yes, this whore is offering to help you,” River said flatly. “Stop hurting the man the Moon Goddess gave you. If you want him to honor you, you must honor him too.”

Vesper studied her.

Then, without warning, she leaned forward, and spit in River’s face.

The saliva hit River’s cheek.

Vesper sat back in her chair with a settled smirk.

River exhaled. She closed her eyes for a single second. Then she stood and left the room without another word.

Vesper stayed in the chair for a long while, staring at the door.

“That bitch thinks I want her help.”

She laughed. The sound bounced off the stone and came back to her, and she liked it, so she did it again.

The laughing went on for a while. The guards outside the door heard it and exchanged a glance worth a thousand words.

“She thinks she gave ME the man I am FATED for,” she yelled to no one. “And then she had the audacity to ask me nicely to stop hurting him.”