8. Corvan
Chapter eight
Corvan
I ’ve had a lot to think about lately.
Firstly—what Eliza and I have is once-in-a-lifetime. Undeniable. She is mine and I am hers and I’ll be damned if I let her get away from me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life missing these few days I’ve had with her. I’d rather be creating more memories with her at my side.
But.
I still have her to worry about. Her life. Her career. Her reputation. All things that would be affected if my name was tied to hers. But I refuse to give in to the idea of Eliza and I being anything but together. I’ll figure out a way to make her mine, forever.
It does, unfortunately, start with spending every spare second we’re near shore in my raven form to try to figure out who’s been following me.
It’s too risky and too suspicious to be shifted out in the middle of the ocean, but at least when we’re near land, people don’t think twice about my presence. Ravens live all across the globe, after all. Spotting one just a little way from the coast isn’t exactly noteworthy .
Thanks to my raven blood and the heightened senses it gives me, I’ve got a better idea of what I’m looking for than most would. I remember something about their smell hidden underneath the salty ocean water scent that surrounded the whole boat. Something more like smoke, smog. Pollution. They’d been far enough back that even my sharpened eyesight hadn’t been able to make out specific details about their face, but I still remembered the way they walked. Almost with a shyness to their steps, as if they were afraid of being seen. As if maybe they were used to hiding, to trying to be a nobody, and this wasn’t their first time blending into the background. Or trying to, anyway.
Lastly, I was now sure that they were a woman. One with blonde hair. Which, yeah, ruled out some people—but there were a lot of blonde-haired women on this boat. If that was all I was going off of, I’d be fucked.
It’s the white that she’d been wearing that really cleared things up for me. It had taken me a while to place why that had rang a bell somewhere deep in my mind, and longer still until the pieces had really snapped together.
Everyone working at the bar Eliza and I had met on the first day wore all white. Maybe if I’d been able to focus on anything other than her that night, I would have realized it sooner. It also explained why I’d only seen her following us in the early mornings—the bar was closed then. It was probably the only time she’d get the chance to spy on us. Me .
So I’d go to the bar, then.
Another advantage of my raven form—I was small, and covered in dark feathers. If I could find shadows, I could go unnoticed .
Which was exactly what I did. Behind the bar, tucked in behind the ice maker, I was invisible. A little claustrophobic, yes, but such was unavoidable when even the sight of me might be enough to get another article written. Maybe a picture of a bird beside a picture of me on the same boat wouldn’t be proof , but it would be enough for suspicion. People already didn’t trust that I was who I said I was anymore, and I sincerely doubt reappearing under that article before I could have the chance to prove myself as anything but evil would help my case.
I could not retreat into the woods for years on end. Fuck. No.
A phone rings.
“Hey, J.” Long pause. “No, yeah, I’ve seen him. He hasn’t done anything weird yet, though. Nothing… shifty. If you get what I’m saying.”
Okay, so she’s definitely talking about me, then. Who the fuck is J ? A reporter, probably. Maybe this is just some undercover assistant hoping for a promotion.
“I know, I know, it’s not a joke. I just thought… well, anyway, he seems like a normal guy. They’ve just been—”
Another pause.
“Oh, yeah, he’s here with some girl,” the woman says, and my heart stops in my chest. “I don’t know her name. Haven’t gotten close enough to hear it. But Corvan seems to really like her.”
Fucking great. No denying that they’re talking about me now—and also Eliza. Which is the last thing I wanted, but… considering my recent decision to never let her go, it’s also an impossible thing to avoid.
“I don’t know. Light brown hair. Probably a little shorter than you, but not by much. Couldn’ t say much more about her, though. Like I said, I only saw her for a little while on our first day here. Oh—but their conversation made it sound like they’d only, like, just met. While on the ship.”
Pause again.
“Well, I don’t know! You told me to tell you everything I knew—that’s everything.”
The person on the other end screams in a shrill voice, loud enough for even my ears to pick it up. “It’s not enough!”
“I’m working on it, okay? I can’t exactly force them into talking, can I? And I can’t leave the ship when they do. There’s a lot I can’t do, actually. Speaking of which—we open in ten minutes. I have to go, J.” A long silence, then a sigh. “Yeah, I’ll try, alright? But maybe you just need to drop it, you know? It’s been three years. Doesn’t he deserve a little peace?”
I take it the person on the other end of the call must have hung up, because the woman grumbles, “Such a bitch.”
I don’t stick around much longer after that. Not only do Eliza and I have dinner to catch, but I also have a fucking lot to think about. I need to figure out who, exactly, the woman working the bar is reporting back to.
And I need to figure out how to keep Eliza safe, even while she’s in the middle of it all.
I can’t let anything happen to Eliza. I refuse that. But fuck, I can’t let her go, either. I think I might be physically incapable of it.
I don’t accept the idea of not being there for every one of her achievements, for every one of her failures. I want to be the one she comes home to, and I don’t give a shit if it sounds crazy that I’m thinking all of this after knowing her for barely a week.
I know who Eliza is to me.
And I’ll be damned if I lose her. I’ll be damned if we don’t walk off this boat at the end of the cruise without her being mine.