Page 6 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
It’s enough to confirm what we all know, though. She’s ready. Finally.
When she disappears through the side door with one last longing look toward the gate, I leap from the branch and plummet, folding my wings at the last second to slip through the thorns without slowing.
My vision warps, the world stretching and blurring, until I burst into the gloom of the forest beyond the castle walls. Here, the air is thicker, older. This part of the forest crawls with things that want and bite and rend.
I’m one of them.
I drop to the ground, scattering dry leaves in my wake, and let the change take me. It hurts like hell. Bones crack, feathers melt to skin, and for a brief, agonizing moment, I’m nothing but violence, rage, hunger, and memory. Then I’m kneeling in the underbrush, naked and shivering from the aftershocks of the shift.
My hands are always bigger than I remember, my knuckles raw from the fight to merge man and beast. My hair, as black as the feathers I wore a heartbeat ago, falls loose to my shoulders, streaked with dirt. My skin is tanned bronze by years of sun and wind, littered with scars I don’t bother to count. I’m not beautiful, but I am meant to be feared.
I savor the first lungful of air. It tastes like rot and moss and promise.
I stretch, rolling my shoulders until the tension snaps, and stroll to the hollow tree where I stashed my clothes. The curse already screams for the change, demanding wing and feather again, but I ignore it. My brothers will want to hear what I saw, and that’s a far more powerful motivator than the king’s twisted magic.
I pull on my black pants with a soft groan. The old shirt smells faintly of smoke as I slip it over my head. The last touch is the ring at my throat, a simple silver band I keep to remind me of who I was before.
Now, dressed or not, I’m just a predator. The clothes just make it easier to walk among the sheep.
I climb to the top of a boulder, planting my feet wide for balance. The castle glows in the distance, every window a square of golden light. I imagine Raisa inside, brushing out her hair, humming a song she thinks no one else knows.
She’s wrong, though. I know all her songs. I know everything about her.
I cup my hands to my mouth and whistle, low and long. The note carries through the trees like a rush of wind. The branches shudder as an answer comes back—one, then two, then a whole chorus, some close and some far away.
My brothers are on their way.
They come to theclearing in ones and twos, melting from shadow to flesh in the blink of an eye. I stand at the center, my arms crossed, watching them shed wings and beaks for hands and teeth.
No matter how many times I see it, the change is never the same twice. Some of my brothers bear the agony easily, shifting in a blink. Others drag the agony out, savoring every crack ofbone, every pulse of new blood. I used to think it was about pain. Now, I know it’s about her. Everything always is.
I remember the first time the curse took hold. We were human, then. Brothers by adoption, not blood. The king wanted the heirs he thought the queen couldn’t give him, so he gathered us, lost boys with nowhere to go. He taught us to fight, to kill, to die for his kingdom if needed.
We gave him loyalty. Hell, we gave him everything.
And then, he betrayed us, cursing us for a simple mistake. We didn’t even know the queen was pregnant when we knocked her down the stairs. We were just foolish boys playing games.
The king knew, though, and he hated us for it.
Hedestroyedus for it.
I watched my brothers crumble in front of him—spines warping, flesh rending from bone, hands fusing to wings. I felt the agony, the terror, and then the sharp-edged joy of not dying after all.
We became something more than death, something less than human.
We avoided the castle at first, haunting the farthest edges of the forest instead.
But then Raisa changed everything.
Whispers of her birth drew us back, curious, furious. Jealous.
The king was different with her. Gentle, sometimes. Protective, always. He never let her outside the walls, never let her speak to anyone but him or his council. She was a living secret. His caged songbird. The reason for our destruction.
The first time she came to the garden alone, I thought it was a trick. Some trap meant to bait us. But when she walked the length of the path without flinching, when she spoke to the flowers and the birds like she was their queen, I realized the truth. She didn’t know she was the reason for our destruction. She just wanted to be free.
She fascinated me. She’d sit for hours on the sundial, her knees tucked to her chest, and tell her secrets to whoever would listen. Sometimes it was the wind. Sometimes it was me. I’d perch just close enough for her to feel my eyes on her, never moving, never breaking the spell.
One day, she looked right at me and said, “If I could, I’d trade places with you.”
