Eagleminder (RAVENMINDER #2)

Chapter 1

He died just before he was born.

One moment, he was in a space of warmth and comfort. A place where he was not alone, for there was another just like him.

A second prince.

A twin.

At first, Kinlear was there, tangled up beside his brother, all limbs and life just waiting to spring forth, and the next...

He fell.

Into silence, into a sea that was dark and depthless. There was no ship to save him, no raft to help him stay afloat as he sank into the inky black. He couldn’t tell which way was up, which way was down. It was absent of space and time, this place that was to be his beginning.

Or, perhaps, his end.

At least there was no pain.

Only the sensation of barreling towards something bigger than himself.

Eventually, he stopped falling, and there in the darkness, he hovered...bathed in the light of a pair of magnificent golden gates. They were glorious. So large, he couldn’t take them all in with a single glance. Their color was so vibrantly gold, he ached to look upon them.

There were others there.

Souls, he sensed, just like him.

They had no age in this space, and nor did he. Together, they simply were, as they bobbed like little lights in the current of the abyss. Every so often, the others shimmered, and their edges were filled with images Kinlear knew to be memories.

The beautiful ache of a desperate first kiss.

The sound of a wailing baby.

A new mother’s midnight song.

He could hear the sigh of a crisp fall wind, see the splendor of orange and red leaves dancing towards a soft forest floor. He saw children playing in white pillows of snow, and lovers embracing at the edge of a glittering emerald sea...

He saw heartbreak and healing and the soft, final moments of a life before death.

They weren’t his memories, for he had none.

But he wanted them.

He wanted them so much it hurt, and as the light of the gates shone upon him, and he grew closer to the front of the line...

Kinlear cried out for help.

“I want to go back!” he pleaded, a desperate prayer from deep within. A line, cast out to anyone who might be there to pull him back to the surface again. “I’m not ready to go to the other side!”

There was an insistent tug that came from inside him, deep where a beating heart should have been, that writhed in the light of those gates.

“No!” he screamed. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want it all to end, I don’t want to die...before I ever get to live.”

He sent up a beautiful prayer, honest and true.

But no one heard him.

He screamed his defiance to the dark, until the desperation became fury. Until he felt like a wild animal howling into the abyss. He screamed until his soul felt ragged, as he begged for someone, anyone, to hear him.

He’d just reached the front of the line, where he saw his name scribbled in glistening blood, at the top of an ancient, long list. He’d just felt himself being pulled towards it...

When suddenly, a sound cut through the darkness like a blade.

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

The sound of something carried on two dark wings.

Help! He begged it. Come and carry me away!

Something flickered in the distance. Wings and paws spun of shadow...a strange beast soaring towards him. Something that could not possibly belong here, for it felt other every bit as much as he did.

But he was not afraid.

A voice broke through the darkness.

“Kinlear.”

It was so soft, he could barely hear it.

“Choose now, before it’s too late.”

He wanted to.

Oh, how he longed to choose. He turned towards the beast, reached for it with everything he had. He stretched and he screamed...until he saw the hooded figure upon its back. In its hand was held a spear of darkness.

And that spear came spiraling towards him, too fast to escape.

It struck him in his chest.

A gasp of breath, a pinch of pain...

And then something bold, something bright, something different, suddenly grabbed him from behind. The shadow-spear broke free as he was torn away from it.

And pulled, kicking and screaming, into the first breath of his miserable mortal life.