Page 66 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
My soul quivers in horror, in terror.
I wasn’t born. I was forced into the world by magic.
My throat closes up, and the world goes dark for a moment.
“What am I?” I choke, the same question I’ve been battling with since I turned men to stone and set free the darkness in my veins.
“You’re her daughter,” Shade rasps.
I shake my head, tears scalding my cheeks. “Maybe I was supposed to be, but I wasn’t even born, Shade. She wasn’t even alive! I was incubated in a womb of his magic.”
No one says anything.
“Why did he want me so badly?” I look around the circle, my eyes wild. “Why didn’t anyone stop him?”
“He told us you were both dead, Raisa,” Bran says quietly, sorrow in his voice. “He was so angry with us, not because she was dead, but because you were.” His hands tremble faintly. “His heir.”
“His magical experiment,” I say, the words hot and bitter on my tongue. He’s never treated me like an heir. I’ve been a princess in a cage, locked away like a secret, kept from the entire world.
“We didn’t even know you existed until rumors of a little girl at the castle reached us.”
Rune wipes at his face. “We came back to the palace then, to see for ourselves. We saw you in the garden, feeding the crows. You were so perfect. You looked just like her.”
His words are a knife in the chest.
I press a hand to my mouth, the tears coming so fast I can’t see.
“You lost everything because of me,” I choke out. They were cursed, punished,torturedbecause of me. Because my father wanted his precious experiment more than he wanted the boys he promised to protect.
There’s a long, savage silence.
Bran moves closer, his hand hovering over my back. “No. You aren’t to blame for any of it, Raisa. You weren’t even alive then.”
I shake my head, bile rising in my throat. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been allowed to live at all. Maybe I should have died.”
I’m not even sure what I am. Not human, but something else. My mother was dead long before I was born—kept alive through dark magic just to birth me. My brothers were cursed because of me. And my father…I don’t even know what to say or think about him.
My entire life, I thought he wanted to protect me, that he cared in his own way. I’m no longer sure he cared at all. I don’t even think he’s capable of it. I was his dark secret, not his daughter,but his magical legacy, something he used, manipulated, and twisted for his own purposes.
Shade kneels beside me, grabbing my hand. His fingers are warm, shaking. “If you hadn’t been born, the King would have found another way to ruin us. It’s what he does. It’s who he is. We’re not your responsibility.”
But they are. They always will be.
I’ve seen them kill without remorse, fuck without restraint, bare their teeth at the world and at each other. I’ve felt their hunger for me, their need to claim and possess and ruin. And I know, beyond doubt, that every one of them would die for me if I asked.
That’s the thing that cracks me open, finally. The thing that lets some small light in.
I love them. I love all of them, even the broken, jagged, ugly parts they try to hide from the world.
Tears soak my sleeves, but I can’t stop them as the truth of my feelings for them settles over me. I want to run until the world falls away, certain I’m not strong enough for this love, that I don’t deserve it, but my body won’t move.
Onyx kneels and puts a hand on my shoulder, big and solid, impossible to shake off.
“We’re what we are because of his choices, not yours,” he says. “Don’t give the bastard more power over your life than he already took.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, the pain in my chest going supernova.
I sob so hard I think I might vomit.
