Prologue: What the Blood Remembers
"Ahhhh!"
Someone was screaming. The sound was filled with pain.
"Arrrgh!"
Riven wanted it to stop. He wanted peace. He just wanted to sleep, but the sound wasn't stopping.
"Arrrrrrgh!"
Opening his eyes hurt. Closing them hurt too.
Then suddenly, he wasn't in the dark anymore.
Drip. Drip.
Something warm landed on his skin. He rubbed a finger against it, and his hand came away red.
He looked up.
His mother hung from the ceiling, suspended at a horrible angle by ropes that had no business being there. He only knew it was her because of the gown — the one he had saved up to buy her with the first money he ever earned delivering newspapers. His father had helped him wrap it.
Her fingers were gone.
The ones that used to run through his hair when he couldn't sleep. Gone.
Riven shook his head and stepped back. His legs were weak. This wasn't real. It couldn't be real. He just needed distance, and it would stop being real.
But then he stumbled.
And fell into a pool of blood.
He caught himself with his hands, and when he looked down, he was inches from an eyeball staring up at nothing. Not far from it was a teddy bear soaked through with red—the one he used to play with his younger sister.
He grabbed it without thinking.
The head came off in his hands.
Inside was another eyeball. And fingers.
He threw it away and crawled backward, shaking his head, telling himself none of this was real, none of this was real, none of this was—
He turned, and his sister's head was there. Just the head. Eye sockets hollow and dark, staring at something he couldn't see.
The screaming in his ears became deafening.
Then he was somewhere else. A bedroom. His father was on the bed, or what was left of him, his chest torn open with stab wounds too many to count, mouth open wide, ears removed, legs gone, blood soaked so deep into the mattress it had turned black.
Riven covered his ears. Covered his eyes.
"It's not real. It's not real. It's not real."
The screaming only got louder.
"STOP!"
"Oi!"
A slap cracked across his face.
"Stop shouting, some of us are trying to sleep!"
Riven's eyes flew open immediately. He took in his environment.
Bars. Filthy walls. The smell of rot and unwashed bodies. A row of men staring at him with irritation and something closer to fear.
He was in a prison.
His mouth was open. His face was wet.
He had been the one screaming too.
The memories didn't leave with the dream. They never did. Because they weren't just memories — they were the truth of what he had walked into at sixteen years old. His mother. His father. His sister.
And somewhere out there was the person who put him in this cell for something they did, and Riven would burn the world if he had to, just to find them.