Page 58 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
Him, and all his secrets and lies, are the cause of everything. Every pain, every loss, every moment of grief are his cross to bear. I’m not sure how yet, but I feel the truth echoing in my bones, and I’m no longer sure if the brothers saved me from my cage…or if I’m meant to save them from theirs.
10
Ruined by Touch
Rune
Ialways wake beforethe others. Sometimes, it’s the curse, prickling along my bones, itching for wing and feather and pain. Sometimes, it’s the magic, humming beneath my skin like it’s alive. Other times, it’s habit, just waiting to snap me out of dreams so I can watch the world and breathe without witness. Fear is a good teacher, and I learned early that the first to wake is the last to die.
Tonight, it’s neither. Tonight, it’s Raisa.
She sits on a log by the fire, her arms wrapped tight around her knees, her face turned to the dying embers. The rest of our brothers are scattered in their makeshift beds. Shade is sprawled like a dark stain. Talon snores with his mouth open. Onyx is curled around his own hands as if he’s afraid someone will cut them off while he sleeps. Even Sable, who claims he never sleeps, is limp and slack against a mossy stone.
I watch her from under my blanket, pretending not to see. But her body hums in the night, the leftover magic from earlier vibrating just below her skin. It’s not subtle. I can smell it, taste it—the raw, bruised edge of power barely leashed. Her pulse is as sharp and wild as the animal she’s becoming.
She thinks she’s alone.
I sit up, slow and silent, pushing away the blanket without a sound. The moss and needles are a cushion beneath my bare feet. I move through the dark the way water does, unnoticed, everywhere at once.
She doesn’t look up when I stop behind her. For a moment, I let myself watch—the curve of her shoulders, the shiver running down her back, the way her hair falls forward in a tangle so black it eats the firelight. There are scratches on her arms and bruises on her thighs, some from the forest, some from us. I can’t help the way my fingers twitch, wanting to touch her, to trace the marks and memorize them.
She speaks first, her voice so soft it’s almost lost in the snap of cooling wood. “Can’t sleep?” she asks.
I consider lying, but what would be the point?
“Neither can you,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend.
She shrugs, pulling her knees tighter to her chest. “Everything’s so… loud.” She glances up, her gray eyes catching the last licks of flame, and I see the shadow of what’s really inside her—the hunger, the grief, the bitter twist of too muchchange too fast. “I thought it would fade away,” she says. “But it’s worse now.”
I crouch beside her, my elbows on my knees, watching the little universe of sparks swirling above the fire. “That’s how it works,” I say. “The noise never leaves. You just get better at tuning it out.”
She snorts. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It’s not.” I pause, picking at a scab on my knuckle. “But you’re not simple either, Raisa.”
Her mouth twists, like she wants to argue but can’t quite get the words to cooperate. “You ever wish it would just…stop?” she asks, her voice small.
“Every fucking day,” I say, and that’s the closest to the truth I’ve ever come.
For a minute, we just sit there. The fire collapses in on itself, the last spark hissing out in the damp air. She shivers, and I realize she’s barefoot, the hem of someone’s shirt, probably Bran’s, barely covering her thighs.
Without thinking, I reach out, my hand hovering over her shoulder. I want to pull her in, but she’s brittle as glass right now, and I don’t want to be the one who cracks her.
Instead, I offer her my hand. Just that—a palm, open and waiting.
She doesn’t take it. Not right away. She stares at it like it’s a puzzle she’s never seen before, some strange artifact from a world where hands mean safety and not chains.
“You trust me?” she says.
“Do you want the honest answer?”
She almost laughs. “I want to believe you’re not just waiting for me to explode again.”
“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” I say. “I’m afraid you won’t.”
Her eyes narrow, searching my face for something, anything to hold onto. She finds it, or maybe she just gets tired of waiting,because she puts her hand in mine and lets me pull her to her feet.
Her touch is electric—magic, sex, violence, all wound tightly together. But there’s something gentler in it, too. Something that feels like a promise.
