Page 34 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
Onyx is last, but when he moves, it’s with a deliberate care that makes me feel protected and treasured all at once. He pulls me up, his hands gentle as he helps me to my feet.
I can barely walk. My legs tremble, my knees threaten mutiny, and every step feels like a challenge issued to gravity itself.
Bran sees it and moves to support me, looping my arm around his shoulders. He’s already dressed, of course, his hair smoothedback and his glasses perched on his nose as if he’s headed to a council meeting and not an endless exile.
“We’ll go slow today,” he whispers, just for me. “I’ll carry you if you need it.”
“I’m not that fragile,” I say, even though we both know I am.
“Doesn’t matter,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to my temple as he helps me into borrowed clothes that somehow fit a little too right. “You’re ours now. We take care of our own.”
Shade leads us into the trees, setting a pace that’s both brutal and efficient. The forest here is denser than anywhere I’ve ever been—branches interlocking overhead, the sunlight shredding before it can touch the ground. The moss grows thick as a mattress, but the rocks underneath it are sharp. Every root is a tripwire.
I last maybe an hour before I’m limping.
Bran stops us at a stream to tend my feet. He sits me on a fallen log, his hands warm as he unlaces my borrowed boots. “Sorry,” he says, wincing at the blisters. “We should have wrapped them first.”
“I’m not used to…” I gesture at the forest, at the world, at everything.
He gives me a sympathetic look, then splashes my feet with cold water and tears strips from his own shirt to bandage the rawest spots. His touch is tender, and I can’t help the way I lean into him.
Across the stream, Shade paces, his eyes fixed on some invisible threat in the woods.
Talon is downstream, filling bags with water, but every time I look up, he’s watching me.
Sable lounges in a sunbeam, whittling at a stick with a knife that looks like it was made for blood.
Grim sits in the crook of a tree, silent and intent, sharpening a blade and never once looking away from me.
Rune picks wild berries, popping them into his mouth and making faces at the sour ones, then pocketing the best for later.
Onyx is closest, crouched beside Bran, his big hands steady as he checks my bandages. “You’ll be fine,” he rumbles, almost kindly. “We’ll slow down for you.”
“I don’t want to slow you down,” I protest, but he just shakes his head.
“You’re not a burden,” he says. “You’re the reason we’re here.”
The words settle in my chest, warm and bright. I want to ask why they came for me and why they care, but I don’t. I’m not sure I’m ready to hear the answer.
We press on, deeper and deeper, until the world outside the forest feels like little more than a rumor. The sun barely filters through, and when it does, it’s weak and thin, more a memory than a tangible thing.
We walk for hours, stopping only for water or to let me catch my breath.
One or two of the men vanish into the woods around us at random intervals, only to reappear a while later, before others wander off. They never explain where they’re going or what they’re doing. There’s no discussion of it at all, in fact, as if it’s practiced, normal behavior. But there’s a grim silence to the way they go that leaves me watching them a little more intently, as if I can pluck their secrets out of the air.
A few times, I think I see ravens ghosting through the branches above us, but before my eyes can pick them out, they vanish into shadow, and I’m not sure if they were there or if it was a simple trick of the light.
“What are you looking for, Princess?” Rune asks late in the day, his eyes on me while I scan the trees.
Shade and Grim are missing, having disappeared into the trees ahead a half hour ago.
“Ravens.” I peek over at him. “They used to visit me in the gardens.”
“Did they?” The way he says it is too casual, too uninterested, and I find myself wondering, yet again, if these seven are the very birds who have watched over me for as long as I can remember.
But I don’t ask. Not yet.
Eventually, Shade and Grim reappear, and we press on.
