9. Raven
CHAPTER 9
Raven
D reams are strange when you’re dying.
I wanted to reach out and strangle the owner of that voice, recognizing Nefir, the brother of Lilis who had, yes, helped save us in the desert. But he’d also stolen weeks of our lives, leading some in the Werewolf Territory to believe that their queen had abandoned them.
A fact that I was sure added to the unrest of her people.
“Nefir.” I growled his name. My body wouldn’t respond, my eyes were closed, and the god was there, like a movie screen inside my head.
Hello, Raven. Fancy meeting you here. Cusp of death and all.
“Fancy is not the word I’d use for it.” I bared my teeth at him. “Why are you here?”
To see if you live or die. Your life is as important as hers, you know. He flicked his hand and Diana’s image solidified beside him. Lovely, isn’t she? Especially when she sheds all those hard layers and lets you see her heart. Heart of a dragon, if you ask me. He lifted one hand and trailed it down Diana’s cheek.
I’d have lunged toward him—maybe I even tried—but there was nothing I could do, not really. My body was bound, floundering as something rippled through me.
Something. Under my skin. “Bloodworm. Did your sister do this?”
Nefir left the image of Diana and walked closer to me, as a strange sensation in my head. Nasty little surprise, that, eh? But no. This isn’t the work of Lilis. I think you and your wolf queen—check that, former wolf queen—have made some enemies here.
He scrunched up his lips and pouted. Fucking pouted.
“Why is my life important? You said that was why you’re here.” I tried again to reach for him, to strangle the words out of him if I could.
Nefir snapped his fingers and the world in my head shifted and danced all around us. When it reformed, we were standing at the top of a high mountain ridge, a city full of lights below spread out to the ocean’s edge.
His voice changed, no longer inside my head, but all around me. “This place is sacred, Raven. You know it, don’t you?”
I did a slow turn, taking in the ocean and the smells, the place I’d been once before. A mountain I knew.
“Vesuvius. Why are we here?”
“The last time my sister threw a tantrum was here, Raven. When she was a child, she lost control. Thousands burned. My parents wanted you to see how little she values others’ lives.”
I turned to him. “This does not explain why I am important. I’ve been here, but so have many others. It means nothing.”
His smile was lopsided. “According to my mother…you will either help Diana pull through her transition with the shard, or you will destroy her. Your death will do the latter for sure. But your life could do either.”
My chest seemed to collapse in on itself. “And you brought me here just to show me the power of your sister?”
Nefir shrugged. “I like the view. It’s as good a place as any to have a discussion about life and death, the inevitability of it all.”
I stared hard at him. “From the god who can’t die…The god who doesn’t care whether the world crumbles.”
He scooped up a handful of dirt. “Even gods can die, Raven. The question is, would the price of a god’s death be worth what you would gain? Perhaps not.”
This motherfucker was always talking in circles. “You said before that we couldn’t defeat her.”
“Defeat and death. Two different things. Or maybe, the only way to defeat her is to finally end her. But her life…her life is attached to parts of the world. As is mine.” He kicked at the dirt, sending a spray down deep into the abyss of darkness.
Tied to… “She’s tied to Vesuvius?”
“Oh, it’s worse than that, my friend. I am a creature made of wind and the changing seasons.” He smiled. “If you’ve noticed, I can be rather…fickle.”
“Rather.” My jaw ticked with the effort of holding back the rest of what I had to say. “And your sister…” I looked down into Vesuvius. She’d been a child when she’d unleashed her wrath on Pompeii.
A child who could control a volcano.
A shiver ran through me, someone was calling my name in the distance. I turned and felt a hand wrap around mine. “They are calling me back.”
“Yes. That Sienna is strong, she is healing you. The bloodworm was tricky…if your mate hadn’t seen it, you’d have died. Rather gruesomely too, I might add.”
I didn’t have time for his games, not if I was being called back. He had information and we needed it. I lunged at Nefir, grabbing him around the wrist and anchoring myself to him.
“Your sister. Just say it plainly. Does she have control of this mountain? This volcano?”
He tipped his head to the side. “If only it was just this one.” He shook me off like I had no grip strength. I floated upward, Nefir’s image and voice fading. “No, my fanged friend, when she regains her strength, every volcano will bend to her will. She is the first fire goddess. The first and the last.”
“Fuck.” The word ripped out of me as I gasped and tried to sit up. Hands shoved me down.
“Raven. Don’t.” Dominic’s voice added weight to the hands pressing on me. “You need to lay still for a moment. Let Sienna double check.”
My mind raced, pieces of my conversation with Nefir, the feeling of the bloodworms being ripped out of me, but more than that…I could sense Diana and she was not close to me. “Where is she?”
“Checking on something,” Dom said. “She has Lochlin with her, she’s safe.”
I snarled and went to push his hands off, but he just held me there. I was that fucking weak. “The bloodworms?”
“Gone.” Sienna appeared at my side. “But they moved quickly. The doctor said it was like nothing he’d ever seen.”
“Diana is not infected?”
“She had ingested them, but the shard protected her and obliterated them as soon as they hatched. But Evangeline…”
Her eyes flicked to her husband then to the left of us. I followed her gaze to see the Duchess on a table, her face wan. “No.”
“She’s alive. Barely.” Sienna clutched at the edge of the mattress. “If you hadn’t gone down, we never would have known in time that the food was infected. Only because we were so close to the infirmary, because Diana was with you…it was a near miss.”
A near miss. “And no one else? Nicholas? William? Bee?”
Sienna shook her head, her eyes going to Dom. “No. They didn’t eat the cabbage, nor did Dom, so I think we’ve narrowed down that dish as the culprit. And Myrr and Theo are immune, as is Maverick.”
My eyes shot to hers.
Maverick.
He’d been so keen on sparring with me. It made so much sense. The sudden boldness…the strength he’d tried so hard to hide and had finally decided to let show. The fact that he’d even landed a blow against me…he had to have known.
He knew I’d be weakened because he was the one who had planted the worm eggs.
“That traitorous, backstabbing motherfucker!” The roar that ripped out of me had me pushing even Dominic’s hand back. “He could have killed her!”
“Easy!” Dom shoved me down. “Raven! I think you’re jumping to conclusions. Why would he want to hurt Diana?”
“He didn’t. He doesn’t even know what she is yet. He’d been trying to kill me, and he was fine with the rest of our kind going down as collateral damage.”
“Other things have come to light while you slept, so I’m not so sure of that…”
“What things?”
“There was another wolf present in the forest last night. We think he may have seen Diana feeding on that deer…”
“Who?” I fought to calm myself for the simple fact that, in this state, I couldn’t do anything. If I couldn’t push Dom off me, then I was in no state to hunt down the would-be killer.
“I’ll fill you in on all the details once you’re hale and hearty.”
“Fine, whatever you say. And what of the Duchess? She will be okay…”
“Yes.” Sienna sighed. “It’s strange to say it is a blessing, but here, we can give her infusions of blood while she is unconscious. I don’t think she’d fed since Lycan died. This gives us a chance to…to help bring her back to us. Not just in body, but in mind and heart…I hope. A chance anyway.”
I held up both hands, lying flat on my back in a ridiculous show of surrender. “Can I sit up? I would feed as well. I need to be back on my feet, I need to be there for Diana at the meeting.”
“Assuming she even agrees to let you go.”
“It’s your job to convince her,” I shot back, grateful when Dom grunted and released me. I tried to sit up, but it was a task as my muscles trembled with the effort. Damn it…I was weak from that fucking bloodworm.
“This is nuts. How did your father last so long?” I muttered under my breath.
“Sheer stubbornness.” Dominic sighed. “And a much slower parasite than what you had in you. According to the doctor, the bloodworm eggs were strengthened using some sort of spell. He thinks…an old style of witch magic. Dark, but not of the goddess.”
Witch magic? How many enemies did we have?
I put a hand to my head and lowered myself back to the bed, nausea and fatigue rolling over me. I had to tell Diana what I’d learned from Nefir.
“There are many players at work here. I…I would speak with Diana as soon as she is back. If she’ll speak with me.”
Sienna motioned at a wooden rack on the table next to me. Six vials of blood were set in it. “Drink, Raven, the best thing you can do now is feed and sleep. I am sure Diana will come to you the second she returns.”
I nodded, not as sure as Sienna, but with my eyes trying to drift shut, I reached for the first vial, pushed the cork off with my thumb and tipped it back. Werewolf, the taste of fresh snow and…a tingle of something else. Fae blood? I did a double take.
A half-breed? Here?
I rolled the blood across my tongue, trying to figure out who it was, a mystery to distract myself from the fact that I’d nearly died.
One by one I downed the vials, realizing that they’d drawn from the strongest of those willing to donate. Werewolf-fae hybrid. Human tinged with magic—that was Theo, I was sure. Pale blue that tasted of the ocean. Xefia? The one that felt like sunshine going down my throat, the power behind the blood, I was certain that was Sienna. The fourth one was Diana—her blood sung through my body, refreshing me a dozen times as much as the others combined—even over the werewolf-fae hybrid.
Sienna had told me to drink them all, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to drink the last.
It seemed to have the least amount of blood in it, and sluggish, a red that didn’t seem to be fresh. Hell, I could almost smell the mothballs, as if the blood had been soaked in them.
“That’s exactly who you think it is,” Nicholas said, startling me as I stared at the half full vial in my hands. “You drink that, and you might see the future like I had done.”
I looked at Nicholas. “For how long?”
“Who can say? Apparently, even Myrr only knew it was possible when it happened to me, not a certainty.”
“What if it never goes away?”
His responding grin was unexpected and lopsided. “Then we can hold hands and really fuck shit up with what we see coming, can’t we?”
The laugh escaped me—my worst fear had always been a vampire like Nicholas, who could see inside my head. Now, I was actually contemplating doing something almost as terrifying. Facing a future that may or may not include Diana, head on.
“It would help her,” I said. “It would surely help her cause to know things ahead of time.”
“It also might help save the world, dumbass.” Myrr stepped into the room. “I don’t know how much time I’ve got, hell, maybe another hundred years, maybe two minutes, but you two…you two should outlive me.”
I stared at her. “Why me?”
“Because you don’t want it.” She said, the most sober I’d ever seen her. “You don’t want it any more than Nicky does. But the world needs guidance, even if it just comes in flashes. Won’t be as good as me, you can bet your sweet patoots on that!” She jabbed a finger in each of our directions. “Still, it’s better than leaving the world with nothing. At least until the next of my kind comes along. And who knows when that will be?”
She sighed and plopped herself down on the end of the bed, staring at me, her eyes remarkably clear. Waiting for me to drink her blood…Waiting for me to potentially sacrifice my sanity as she had done with hers, all in the hopes that it would help Diana, and complete our mission.
And with that, I tipped back the vial of blood, drinking down a destiny that I never wanted.