Page 53 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
One of them—a big man with a pike—breaks through and lurches straight for me. Shade shoves Bran aside and leaps to intercept, but not fast enough. The soldier’s blade catches my shoulder, biting into my flesh.
I scream. It’s a stupid, useless sound, but I can’t help it.
Shade tackles the man, rolling him into the dirt. He jams a fist into the man’s mouth, then rips his jaw down, the sound making me gag. But there’s another soldier right behind, his sword raised, aiming for Shade’s exposed neck.
Bran grabs the man by the hair, yanking him back. But this soldier is desperate, flailing. He brings the sword around in a blind arc. The edge catches Bran across the chest, opening a red line from his collarbone to his ribcage.
Bran goes down.
Something inside me shatters.
I don’t think. I just move. My hands claw the dirt, the roots, anything to drag myself forward.
“Stop!” I scream, but it comes out wrong, too loud, too bright, like the inside of my head just cracked open.
The world goes silent.
And then I see a blue-black shimmer like a crow’s feather, exploding from my fingertips. It doesn’t look like light, exactly. It looks like venom and moonlight braided together, alive and hungry.
The tendrils snake out, latching onto the nearest soldier. He convulses, his jaw locked and his eyes wide with terror. The braid crawls over his skin, turning it hard and gray, tracing lines across his face like frost in a windowpane.
He’s screaming, but the sound is trapped behind stone.
The next soldier is still running, his blade raised. I fling my arm toward him, and the braid grabs his legs, crawling up him in a spiral. He stumbles, dropping the sword, his hands already gray and curling as the stone eats him alive.
A third man tries to run. I don’t even mean to hit him, but the braid latches on anyway, rooting his feet to the ground and turning his body to brittle marble. He falls, shattering on the rocks.
The last two get caught at the same time, turning to stone in midstep.
The forest goes deadly quiet in the aftermath.
I stare at my hands, still raised, still crackling with whatever just happened. My whole body is shaking. My mouth tastes like blood and copper.
Shade kneels in front of me, his hands up like I’m a wild animal he’s afraid to spook. “Raisa,” he says, and I can barely hear him over the static in my ears. “It’s over. They’re gone.”
Bran is behind him, sitting up, his hand clapped over the wound on his chest.
He’s alive.
The relief almost knocks me out, siphoning power away from whatever I just did. My hands are just hands again, pale and shaking.
The brothers are all staring at me. Not the way men stare at women. Not even the way animals stare at meat. They’re staring like I’m a bomb, and they’re waiting to see if I’ll go off again.
I try to stand, but my knees buckle.
Onyx catches me, his arms careful, not crushing. He’s gentle for a man who could snap me in half.
“What did I do?” I ask, my voice a ghost.
Shade glances at the petrified men, then back at me. “You stopped them,” he says. “That’s all that matters.”
But I can see the truth in his eyes, and it chills me to the bone.
I push away from Onyx, stumbling toward one of the stone men. He’s frozen mid-scream, one hand clawing at his face, the other stretched out as if begging for help. His eyes are glassy with terror.
He could be alive, if not for the web of cracks spreading across his neck.
I reach out and touch his cheek.
