Page 70 of Raisa's Cursed Ravens
“Do you hate me?” she finally asks.
The question lands so hard that I almost drop the knife.
“I…” My voice comes out rusty, barely a sound. “What?”
She kicks at the ground, scattering dead leaves. “You won’t look at me. You won’t even sit near me. Last night, you wouldn’t even touch me. I thought…I thought maybe you decided that you hate me.”
I laugh, a raw, ugly sound. “I could never hate you.”
She meets my gaze, and her eyes are storm gray, darker than usual. “Then why are you avoiding me?”
I open my mouth, close it. I’m not sure how to answer. Not without telling her the real reason.
I stab the knife into the log, letting it quiver there. “I’m not avoiding you,” I lie. “I’m just…tired.”
“Liar,” she says. The word is soft, but it cuts.
I don’t look at her. Instead, I run my finger along the blade, testing the edge. It’s sharp enough to split hair, sharp enough to slice skin with no effort at all.
She waits. I can feel her watching me the same way a bird watches a snake.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” I finally say. “Shade will shit a brick if he finds you this far from camp.”
“Let him.” She takes a step closer. “I’m not scared of the forest. Not anymore.”
“Good,” I say. “Because the forest is the least of your worries.”
She frowns, but doesn’t back away. “Then what is?”
“Me,” I want to say. “It’s always me.”
Instead, I shake my head and yank the knife out of the wood, sliding it back into its sheath. My hands are still shaking. I press them together, hard, trying to still them.
She takes another step. “I miss your jokes,” she says.
That’s all it takes. My chest goes tight, my throat locking around the thousand things I want to tell her and can’t. I stare at her, really stare, and for the first time, I see how tired she looks. There are bruises under her eyes, the kind you get from not sleeping. Her cheeks are hollow, her lips chewed raw.
“I miss laughing,” she says, her voice cracking on the last word.
I want to hug her. I want to run.
Instead, I force my hands to stillness. “I’ll try to do better.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what I want.”
I don’t understand, and maybe she sees that on my face, because she drops her arms and lets them hang at her sides.
“I want to know why you’re sad,” she says.
This time, I really do drop the knife. It clatters against the log, bouncing once before settling in the dirt. I stare at it like it might sprout wings and fly away.
“I’m not sad.” The lie tastes like poison.
She doesn’t call me out. Instead, she sits down on the log beside me, leaving only a few inches between us. She smells like smoke and cold air, and something softer, the sweet honeysuckle from the palace garden.
“You can tell me,” she finally says.
I can’t.
