Read Riven for Free Online Page B

Essie darling? Two weeks and suddenly you’re afraid of the dark?"
    "It's not the dark that you should be afraid of." It’s what hides inside it. I stepped further into the room, a sense of familiarity washing over me in cold shocks. The dull glow of three blue orbs came closer to view, red spiraling within to create a blast of brilliant violet. Underneath one of them, my name had been scrawled in a precise script, red printed on gold. "Ari, I... I think these belong to us."
    "What?" Ari's voice barely reached me, his tone colored with nervous confusion. I barely paid attention to him, concentrating more on the growing glow of the orbs. Still perched on their center pedestals, I was no longer curious as to what they were for, but what they could do if placed in the wrong hands. Hands like the Queen.
    I stopped before the furthest orb, unable to make out the name written on the golden plaque. Barely any blue swirled within, black smoke filling the once illuminated globe. The second was just as dark, but the third was easy to read, bright and burning like a thousand suns. A name I knew and recognized well, delicately written in script, stood out against the gold; Ari .
    Footsteps sounded behind me, and I heard his breath catch as he read his name from over my shoulder. "What is that?" Ari whispered fearfully, inching closer until he stood by my side. Using one of his hands, he brought his brilliant white fire to a glorious blaze, illuminating the whole room in a dull, milky glow. “Do you... do you hear that?”
    I shook my head, confused. “Hear what?”
    He leaned closer to the orb, reaching a hand forward as if to touch it. “It’s whispering... I can hear my Father... and Bethanie...”
    I grabbed his hands before he grasped it, enveloping my fingers around his. "I don’t think you should touch it,” I said, shaking my head again. “I’ve seen these before, when the Queen captured me. She brought me in here, and my guess is she showed me these for a reason. It could be a trap." My breath caught in my throat, the memory of burning black bands awakening a stinging sensation deep within my wrists. "I don't know what they do, but Kayden said-"
    Kayden .
    "Where is he?" I whipped around to face Ari, the pounding in my head matching the frantic pounding in my chest. Fear flushed a river of cold, destructive rush of ice through my veins. "Where is Kayden?"
    Ari’s fire flickered, and that was all it took for me to know. "I don't know, sucking your brother dry with a straw? How am I supposed to know where your leech of a demon is?"
    Anger bled red into my sight. “You don’t get to be like this. Where is he?”
    “It doesn’t matter,” he said, quieter than before. The look he gave me bordered on pitying. “The plan wasn’t to save him.”
    A surge of energy unlike anything I had felt in weeks pushed through my veins, a fire igniting off my skin in a violent burst of blue and black. He didn't know where Kayden was, didn't know that the last time I had seen him, he had been in tow with a familiar succubus and her slimy seduction self. How had I not thought to ask her where he was before she left? He had to be here, trapped somewhere inside this castle.
    "We have to find him," I said, brushing past him and making for the door. Adrenaline mixed with something equally dangerous ran rampant inside of me, a swirling cocktail ready for the smallest provocation. Torture me, fine, but torture him? The Queen had just signed her own death warrant, twice over. I'd give her a burning hotter than the sun. "He's here, I know it. How fast can we comb the place?"
    “Are you mad?” Ari nearly shouted, taking a step toward me. "You're talking about covering countless rooms, not including the hidden ones, and for what? For a thing that put you in this mess to begin with?"
    “ A thing? Shut up! Demon or not, he is not a thing, he’s a part of this, and we need him.” The scream had left my lips before I could even think of taking