Page 67 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
But the brothers—mybrothers, the men who claimed every piece of my heart—don’t move. They stay with me, forming a silent ring, each one radiating a different flavor of guilt and shame.
For a long time, there’s nothing but the sound of my sobs, the pulse of my blood, and the promise of seven men who refuse to let me shatter alone.
Eventually, I run out of tears, but I don’t move.
Nobody tries to fill the silence. Maybe they’re as lost as I am.
When I finally look up, the sun has moved on, leaving thick shadows across the path. The brothers are still around me, a living wall of bone and muscle and regret.
“What do you want from me?” I ask, the words barely more than a breath.
Shade is first to answer, his voice even but gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “Nothing you won’t give,” he says. “We’re not here to take, Raisa.”
The words settle over me, but they don’t tell me anything, not really. “Why are you here?”
Rune crouches beside me, pressing something soft into my palm. I look down and see the battered, bent black feather I carried from the castle. “Magic doesn’t obey rules,” he says. “And neither do we. It doesn’t matter what your father wants with. What matters is what you want. You wanted freedom. We refused to leave you caged.”
I run my thumb over the feather, tracing the subtle bend and the oily sheen. “You could kill me,” I say. “You should.”
There’s a collective flinch, as if I’ve slapped them all at once.
Onyx wraps his cloak around my shoulders, tucking it under my chin. “You’re our salvation,” he says, his voice raw. “Not our enemy.”
Sable snorts. “If we wanted to kill you, we’d have done it before you learned to use magic.” He nudges my foot with his, a clumsy attempt at comfort.
Bran kneels in front of me, taking both my hands in his. “We want you free and loved,” he says. “That’s all.”
I close my eyes, squeezing the feather. “I don’t know if I know how to be loved.”
Grim’s hand covers mine, huge and callused, his touch surprisingly gentle. “You already are,” he says. “Even if you don’t believe it yet.”
Shade wipes the tears from my cheeks, his rough thumb dragging across my skin. “You gave us hope when we had none.”
Rune tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his hands trembling. “You saw us as men, not monsters.”
I shake my head, the world tilting. “I wished for you to be human,” I whisper, the memory a bitter ghost. “I wished it every day for so long.”
“We know. The first day we learned to change between forms, you screamed your wish to the stars.” Sable grins. “They answered.”
My mouth goes dry. “You mean–?”
“Your magic,” Bran says by way of explanation. “When you made your wish, you gave us back our bodies, even if only for a while. That day was the first time since he cursed us that we were able to walk or speak or touch one another with hands.”
I press my forehead to his knuckles, fighting the urge to cry again. They give me so much credit, but I don’t deserve it. My father cursed them because of me. He cast them out into a lifetime of pain.
I saw Talon change, saw the way it brutalized his body. If that was because of my wish, there was no kindness in it, only pain.
“I don’t deserve any of you.”
The brothers exchange a look, a question I don’t understand.
Shade leans in, his mouth at my ear. “Let us show you how wrong you are,” he says. “Let us prove it.”
I let go of everything then. The pain, the guilt, the ancient fear crawling under my skin. It doesn’t matter how much I hold ontoit, it won’t change what I am or who they are or undo the past. Pain has never been able to do that.
There’s nothing else to hold onto, nothing else that makes any sense, so I cling with both hands to the only constant—my love for these men. If I’m strong enough, brave enough, and willing to fight hard enough, perhaps it’ll be enough to change everything.
I nod, once.
