Page 1 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
1
A Gilded Cage
Raisa
Apetal falls fromthe rose, landing on the stone path at my feet. I kneel to pick it up, pressing my nose against the bloom to inhale its warm, honeyed scent. There’s a bite to the smell, like a secret waiting for someone to discover it.
There are a lot of those here, whispering from the darkest corners of the palace. One day, I intend to unravel them all, but I doubt that day is today.
Shadows already leak down from the castle’s towers in long, inky lines, slithering between the hedges and over the marble statuary. Every corner drips with green, from the topiary serpents to the boxwood labyrinths, and on to the rose canopies arching just high enough to let in the dimming sky, but not so high that I forget the stone walls imprisoning me.
I never forget those. Most days, they’re my only companions, the oppressive weight marking the boundaries of my marble prison.
Father says they keep me safe. I think they keep me contained. The castle is supposed to be safe, my home. But after eighteen years, it feels a little more like a dungeon every day, isolating and cold.
The garden is the only place where I can breathe. The air shimmers with the promise of spring and the sharp tang of something else, fertilizer, maybe, or the memory of last night’s rain.
The soft, dichotic scents don’t ease the restlessness clawing at my soul.
These days, nothing does that.
I exist in a haze, forgotten by the outside world, crushed by the weight of duty. There is no escape, as much as I wish there were.
I make a circuit of the paths, counting each step even though I’ve already mapped every inch of the palace gardens. One hundred and twenty paces from the door to the gate, if I follow the inner ring. Three hundred, if I dare the outer edge, where the walls climb higher and the iron spikes at the top shimmer like metal teeth in the setting sun.
My slippers scuff the path with each step, the echo just loud enough to remind me that I’m alone, the forgotten ghost of a princess haunting the castle, alive but never seen.
I try to walk quietly, but there’s nothing for the sound of my steps to compete with. Not a gardener’s voice, not even thechatter of birds. Even the fountains in the lower court have been turned off for the evening, leaving a hush so complete it feels sacrilegious to interrupt it.
I want to scream anyway, just to be heard.
I reach the old sundial and collapse onto the stone bench instead, smoothing my skirt over my knees and letting my shoulders slump. My bones ache with the need to be somewhere else—anywhere else—but the garden is as far as I’ll ever go without supervision.
Father thinks I don’t know that the guards perched in the windows are there to watch me, but I feel their eyes on me, even when I pretend not to notice.
The only things allowed to come and go here are the birds. Even then, Father wishes they wouldn’t. He’d bar them from the grounds if he could. Especially the ravens.
As if summoned, a pair of them land on the sundial, their talons scraping the ancient brass. Eyes like polished onyx meet mine. One of them cocks its head to the left and then the right, the motion so sharp it looks like a glitch through the world.
The other lets out a soft croak, fluffing its neck feathers.
I try not to smile at the sound but fail miserably.
The ravens have been coming to see me for as long as I can remember. The seven of them are my only friends in this place, my one joy in the world. And unlike my father and his men, they listen without judgment. They carry my secrets in silence, allowing some tiny piece of me to escape this place when they do each night.
“You’re late,” I whisper, drawing my feet up beneath me. “I was starting to think you’d found better company.”
The ravens ignore my sarcasm, like always, but I think I see the corner of one’s beak curl just a bit.
I named them when I was a child, but I never use those names out loud. They’re too precious, too private. Besides, namingthings in Father’s house is forbidden unless you intend to keep them forever.
I’m not allowed to keep the ravens. Father hates them. Or perhaps it’s fear in his eyes when he sees them circling high above the gardens. I’ve never quite been able to tell for sure. All I know is that he’d kill them all if he could, leaving me well and truly alone in my golden prison.
The one time he caught me talking to them, he ordered his guards to shoot them all. I screamed in defiance, wishing they were human. My defiance landed in the silence like a bomb detonating, shocking him and the ravens both. It didn’t stop the arrow that pierced a wing, though.
It didn’t stop Father from locking me in the tower, either.
It did make the ravens more cautious, however. Or perhaps that was the arrow. It was weeks before they came to see me again, gliding down from the walls like smoke at dusk.
