Page 85 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
The castle rises ahead, cold and impossible, the walls tinged blue and black by the deep shadows. There are no torches, no sentries pacing the ramparts. Not even the stink of smoke wafts down from the towers. I know what defenses look like, and this isn’t it.
This is a mausoleum waiting for its ghosts.
I angle my body so I’m halfway between Raisa and whatever comes next. The others do the same in their own ways. Talon swings wide, his hand on the hilt of a knife that’s longer than most men’s legs. Grim moves off to the other side, hunched low, his eyes scanning the upper windows. Rune and Bran close in from behind, each step matched and measured. Even Shade, who’s never protected anything in his life until Raisa, walks just a little ahead, his spine straight and his jaw set like it’s the last part of him he can control.
The curse used to scream in my bones at moments like this, demanding wing and feather, death and pain. Now it’sa whisper, barely a suggestion. The magic’s not gone, but it’s changed.
Raisa did that. She burned its power out of us, or maybe just rewired it. I feel it under my skin, twisting, trying to find a foothold, but there’s nothing left for it to grasp when every part of me belongs to her now.
“Stop,” she says.
We do. No one hesitates, not even Shade. The air hums, sharp with her command, and we obey.
She turns, studying each of us. Her gaze hits me last. I meet it, let her see I’m not afraid, but my throat is thick with all the things I never learned to say. If she asked, I would walk through hell on my knees. If she asked, I’d gut the world and bring her its heart.
She doesn’t ask. She just looks at me, and then at the castle, and then back, like she’s weighing which one matters more.
I scan the line of trees, every muscle ready for the first shadow to move. But the quiet is complete.
Raisa’s magic pulses, faint but steady. I see it now, where I never did before—an aura under her skin, not so much night as the memory of it, the way shadows still float behind your eyes when light suddenly floods into the dark. She breathes, and the frost on the ground melts away in a perfect circle around her feet. She blinks, and I swear the trees bend toward her.
“Almost there,” Bran murmurs. His voice is rough, but there’s a thread of hope in it. “We keep moving?”
Raisa nods, once. “We go straight in. We don’t split up, not until we have to.”
Shade grins, but there’s no humor in it. “He’ll be waiting.”
“That’s the point,” she says.
I want to say something—anything—but words are clumsy things, and there’s nothing I can offer that she doesn’t alreadyknow. Instead, I shift closer, close enough that my shoulder almost brushes hers.
She doesn’t move away. Her hand hangs at her side, her fingers flexing, and I want to grab it and never let go, but I don’t. Not yet.
The others tighten the formation. I catch Grim watching me, his mouth a flat line, his hands twitching at his sides. He wants this over, wants the king dead and gone and the rest of us free to figure out what comes next. He and I don’t always see eye to eye, but tonight we’re the same animal, one too old to care about subtlety, one too hungry to stop now.
We push through the last screen of trees. The castle fills the sky, every window black, every door shut and barred. I study the main gate, the murder holes, the angles of the stone, but there’s no one on the walls. Not even a stray arrowhead glinting in the dusk.
It’s wrong. It’s so wrong I want to scream.
I step ahead of Raisa, just enough to draw any arrow meant for her. My arm swings wide, creating a wall between her and the castle.
She almost laughs, the sound a thin thread of warmth in the cold. “You don’t have to,” she whispers.
“I know,” I whisper back.
But I do. I always will.
We stop at the edge of the woods, a single line facing down the stone mountain of my nightmares. I hear the brothers breathing, the soft click of Sable’s tongue as he braces for the rush, the slow, measured exhale of Grim as he centers himself for the kill. I watch the wind tangle Raisa’s hair, her face already set in the calm before the storm.
I want to say I’m not afraid. I want to believe it.
But if there’s a last regret before a war, this is it: the second when you realize everything you’ve ever wanted is standing rightnext to you, and you might never have another chance to say goodbye.
I think she realizes it, too.
She moves to Shade first.
He doesn’t flinch as she approaches, though his shoulders tighten, his hands balling into fists at his sides. Raisa lifts one hand and cups his cheek. Shade is taller, heavier, all angles and violence, but he melts under her touch.
