Page 49 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
I see the fire in her eyes, and I recognize it as the same fire I felt the first time I ever killed a man. It’s the one that says I decide who I am. Not the world. Not the monsters in it.Me.
I follow her.
We find the buck where we left it, its legs twisted under its body.
Raisa kneels beside it. She touches the wound, bows her head, and whispers a prayer. I don’t know the words, but I feel them anyway.
I stand back, letting her claim the moment. She’s earned it.
When she’s done, she looks up at me, her face streaked with sweat and mud and blood. “Teach me how to do the rest,” she says.
So I do.
I show her how to gut and skin the animal, how to save the best cuts and leave the rest for the forest. She doesn’t shy from the blood, doesn’t gag at the smell. She just learns, her eyes never leaving mine.
When we finish, we haul the meat onto my shoulders and start back toward the camp.
We don’t speak as we walk. The silence is a bandage over everything that’s happened. Over the bodies cooling in the dirt, the blood still sticky on my hands, the guilt coursing through my veins, the buck’s entrails a vivid, red memory in the bag slung across my back.
We cut north, away from the old trails.
After half an hour, the woods open around a trickle of water, a cold, fast stream, perfect for rinsing off the stench of death and fear.
Raisa is the first to kneel at the bank. She plunges her arms in up to the elbow, working the blood off in harsh, angry scrubs. Her skin goes blotchy and red, but she doesn’t stop. Not until the water runs clear.
I watch, struck dumb by how beautiful she is in this moment. No court dress, no careful braids or mask. Just wild hair and wild eyes, her hands raw and rawer by the second. Every part of me wants to take her again, right here. Not just to fuck, but to claim, to put back together whatever I just broke.
I kneel beside her instead, dipping my own hands in the icy water. The shock is electric. I rub the blood from my knuckles, the webbing between my fingers, under my nails. It doesn’t want to come off. It never does.
She glances at me, her hair stuck to her cheek, her lips blue with cold. “Don’t regret it.”
My heart knocks against my breastbone.
“I won’t let you regret it, Talon.”
“I shouldn’t have–”
“You did nothing wrong,” she says, her voice fierce.
I snort, a rough, painful sound. “I fucked a princess like an animal, inches from the graves of the men I killed.”
“Maybe this princess is realizing she was made for the forest,” she whispers.
I glance at her, see the defiance written across her face. I see the truth glinting in the stormy gray of her eyes, the wild magic glowing under her skin. The dainty, caged princess is long gone, and maybe that’s what smothers the guilt. Or perhaps it’s the way she stares at me, half dare, half plea, as if she needs me to see her for what she truly is.
“You were made to break the world.”
Something about that pleases her. She smiles and dips her head, resumes scrubbing.
A moment later, she peeks up at me again.
“What?” I ask.
“You’ve got something right there.” She flicks a frigid drop of water at my face.
I stare, then laugh, a harsh, barking sound that makes the birds scatter from the branches. “Oh, you want to play?”
She shrugs, but I see the dare in her eyes.
