Page 62 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
Raisa
Over the next weeks,we don’t stay in one place for too long. The forest is alive with danger—some of them of my making, most of them not—and if there’s one thing I’ve learned since fleeing my father’s kingdom, it’s that the only real safety is in motion.
My thighs are scraped raw, my boots are bloodier than I’ll admit to anyone, and my mind constantly twists itself into knots, trying to make sense of what I am and what it all means.
Rune tries to teach me how to control my magic, how to call it when I want, how to use runes to wield it for a specific purpose, but it’s still a wild thing, more power than I know what to do with.
There’s a darkness to it, an unholy violence that sets my teeth on edge. The magic wants to kill and unmake and break. And day by day, I find myself wanting the same things. It scares me.
I think, sometimes, it scares Rune, too. Even Grim, who has always seemed like he’s cloaked in the dark, looks at me sometimes like he’s leery of whatever kind of monster I’ve become.
It’s a relief to stop thinking, even for five minutes.
Sable and Grim break ahead to check the path, and the others settle onto a fallen log. I make a show of rummaging in my bag, but what I really need is to get away. Just for a minute. Just long enough to breathe air that doesn’t taste like the men who watch me like they’re worried I’m going to break.
I mumble something about needing to pee. Nobody protests. Onyx just jerks his chin in a direction that’s both safe and private, and I trudge off, my boots sinking into a patch of moss so thick it swallows sound.
I don’t go far. I can still sense them behind me, but I relish the illusion of being alone.
The second I’m out of sight, my shoulders drop two inches. I squat, relieve myself, wipe with a fistful of damp leaves, and then just…sit there for a moment, my head in my hands.
My pulse drums in my ears. I feel the current of magic running up and down my arms, singing in my bones. I try to shake it off, but it clings, sticky and insistent, stronger every day.
I close my eyes and count to ten.
It doesn’t help.
When I get up, I loop around a thicket I don’t remember passing on the way out. There’s a flicker of motion ahead, nothing more than a shadow, but my body reacts before my brain does. I drop low, my eyes narrowed, all senses set to hunt.
Relief washes through me when I see that it’s just Talon.
He moves with a caution that doesn’t suit a man his size, picking his way through the brush like he’s afraid to wake something sleeping beneath it. I watch him for a few seconds, not sure if I want to call out or just study him.
His shirt is off, his skin glinting with sweat. His hands tremble, his breath coming in a pained rasp.
Instead of following the path back to camp, he hooks left and disappears behind a dead tree.
I follow. Not because I’m afraid for him, but because I can’t stand the idea of any of them suffering without me knowing about it.
The clearing he enters is small, little more than a bowl of grass rimmed with wild ginger and brittle nettle. Talon stands at the edge, his shoulders hunched, fingers digging into the bark of an old stump.
For a moment, I think he’s just going to stand there and cry.
Instead, his body buckles, as if an invisible weight just slammed into him. He drops to his knees, a choked sound crawling out of his throat. His spine arches, then bows. His fingers stretch and curl and spasm.
The first snap is so loud I flinch. I press a hand to my mouth, terrified of making any sound, even a gasp.
Talon’s arms convulse, the muscles bulging, then caving in. His skin ripples, turning a sickly blue-black at the knuckles and along the veins. More cracks, like twigs breaking underfoot.
I watch his hands distort, bones telescoping as skin and blood ooze out of the way.
He screams. Not a human scream, not even close. It’s all death and defiance, animalistic and raw. The same scream I’ve heard a thousand times since leaving my father’s kingdom behind. Every time, I shivered, wondering what lurked in the forest.
The whole time, the source was closer than I knew.
I should run. I should run and never look back, but I’m rooted to the spot, horror-struck.
Talon’s shoulders crunch inward, his ribcage compressing, his chest narrowing and hollowing out. His hips twist so violently I expect them to shatter. His feet sprout new bones, the toes fusing and rearranging themselves in a tangle of tendon and claw. Through it all, his face is locked in a grimace, his jaw distending, teeth falling out, and then reforming into a black, barbed beak.
