Chapter 4
AVELINE
“He has excellent taste in gardens, at least,” I tell exactly no one, peering around the massive stone arch at the glory before me.
The fragrance out here is intoxicating—a strange mix of damp stone, pine needles, and rich rose notes.
“Terrible manners, of course, but the roses?” I shrug and push the creaking gate open. “Divine.”
“Divine,” a voice croaks above me on the garden wall, and I screech.
Light bounces off my skin in a helter-skelter pattern, a sunbeam drunk on honey mead.
It takes me a moment to calm down, and I force my heart to slow as I look for the speaker.
A great black bird perches on the stone gate, eyeing me as if I’m the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.
If the bird’s been stuck here with Malakai, then I probably am.
I peer around. The outer courtyard bleeds seamlessly into a forgotten, terraced stone path where the castle grounds meet the wild forest.
“Hello there,” I tell the raven in a sing-song voice. “What’s your name?”
“Ter, ter,” the bird replies, cocking his other eye.
A grin kicks up the corners of my mouth, because what kind of idiot am I to think a bird will speak—
“My name is Ter, fair one.”
I nearly piss myself.
Sweat breaks out on my forehead, and I open and close my mouth a few times before regaining control of my bladder.
Hopefully.
“Oh?” I squeak.
“You must be the Stormspire witch. Finally. Things are truly out of hand,” the bird tells me.
“Right.” I pick up my skirts and begin to walk again. A stately pace.
It’s nearly a jog.
“You do realize I can fly, don’t you? Gods help me with this one.” The last is muttered, then the prick of claws on my shoulder have me standing stock-still.
The raven stares at me with one beady black eyeball. “You do know why you’re here, don’t you?”
“I think I’ve gone mad,” I tell it.
It pecks my cheek, and I wince, holding a hand up to fend off the beast.
“You’re not mad. Just in denial. Which, really, could be much worse for us all and is not nearly as fun as a madwoman.”
“I can be fun.” I glare at the bird, rolling my shoulders back.
Ter flaps his wings to stay seated. “I’m sure that you think that’s true.”
“Rude.” I shake my head and decide to keep walking.
The garden grows busier the further into it I go, with giant purple alliums blooming in robust balls, buzzing with bees, flanked by sapphire salvia and the ever-present milky-pink roses.
Statues and follies are placed artfully around, but I don’t pause to stare at the marble busts and weathered faces.
“I take it that you have no idea of the compact you must take part in,” Ter says.
I ignore him.
“You’re walking right towards the same place you always go to.”
That stops me in my tracks. A dragonfly lands on my nose, and I brush it off in severe irritation. “What are you on about?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Ter says archly, and I swear to god, if the raven had eyebrows, his would be at an absolutely devastating angle right now.
“Wonderful,” I tell the nuisance of a bird. “If you don’t mind, I’d like some privacy. It has been a very trying afternoon.”
“I do mind,” Ter tells me.
I keep walking, though I’m slower now, something about his words pinging around my skull too loudly.
The same place I always go to.
“Malakai said I’m a witch.”
“Oh, are you two already on first name terms, then?”
I scowl and walk faster, leaves and detritus crunching under my slippers. They’ll be ruined now, along with my dress, but I can’t find it in me to give one single solitary damn about my slippers.
“I am not a witch.”
“Of course you are,” the raven says, letting a low whistling noise that I belatedly realize is a laugh. “That’s why you’re here. You wouldn’t have me as your familiar if you weren’t.”
I keep walking, growing more and more irritated with every step. A wayward vine snags my hair, and I loose an unladylike curse as I tug my hair free.
“You’ll be late for dinner if you keep this up. Malakai won’t like it if you’re late.”
“I don’t care what he thinks!” I yell at the bird, now beyond manners.
“He abducted me into a castle then had the audacity to ask me to mate with him, not even a hello or a how do you do, just, oh yes, you’re promised to me,” I do my best impression of his deep, raspy voice. “Shall we mate now or later?”
I glare at the bird, who’s doing that weird laugh again.
“I would prefer now,” a male voice says from behind me.
“Damn it all to hell,” I yell, staring at the fiery sunset breaking on the horizon.
Malakai’s right behind me.
Blushing is not the right word for what is happening to my skin. It’s a conflagration of horrified fire across my chest, red and angry, and I’m sure blotchy, as it tends to be when I’m really and truly upset.
“Why is she angry and red?” Malakai asks. It takes me a minute to realize he’s addressing the damned oversized pigeon of a raven on my shoulder.
“You’ve embarrassed her, Shadow King.”
“Because I want her in my bed?” he asks, and I make a horrified choking sound.
Neither of them seem to care.
“I believe the witch would prefer a courtship period—”
I nod vigorously, nearly dislodging the vermin on my shoulder.
“But we both know that time is of the essence.”
“THE WITCH IS RIGHT HERE!” I bellow. Light blasts from my skin, and Ter lets out a squawk as he flaps some more, hooking his claws more firmly into my shoulder.
“Good. Admitting you have a problem is the first step,” Ter tells me, infuriatingly.
I gape at the bird, then at Malakai, utterly beside myself and at a full loss for words.
“I have upset you,” Malakai says slowly, staring at me with interest. Not sexual, thank the gods, or well, thank anything besides the gods… But with the kind of curious scrutiny one might apply to a difficult math problem.
Or a riddle.
I draw myself up to my full height. “Yes, well-spotted.”
I brush past him, skirts swishing, and head for the… well, I don’t know where I’m headed, but I know that I want to go there immediately.
“You don’t remember the last time you were here, do you?” the raven asks, and I don’t answer. I’m not sure he’s talking to me.
I stumble over a wayward vine in the path, and a large, warm hand grabs my upper arm, keeping me from falling.
A thank you, trained in since birth, starts to form on my lips—and then I remember exactly who is stabilizing me and wrench myself out of his grip.
“Mate with him,” I mutter, getting more and more wound up. “As if I am a farm animal to be bred.”
“Oh, she’s really angry now,” Ter says.
I bare my teeth at the bird.
That’s certainly something I didn’t plan on doing this morning.
“Why?”
I round on Malakai, fury and rage building all over again, leaving a sort of tingling aftermath across every inch of my skin.
“Because I do not know you. And apparently, I do not know who I am, and I do not know where it is I’m going right now, and I never expected to be fully in control of my life, but this really, truly…
” I search for the right word, but I’m too angry to find it.
“Fuck it all,” I say, then laugh manically.
I’ve never said that out loud.
“She thinks she’s not in control?” Malakai asks the raven.
“I am RIGHT HERE!” I scream.
“You are not in the right mind to have a civil conversation,” Ter tells me calmly.
“How, how—” I sputter. “How dare you?”
“Grow up,” the bird tells me, not unkindly. “Adapt. More than your… strange human sensibilities depend on this.”
“She doesn’t know,” Malakai muses.
“Sir, if you want to… mate,” I spit out the word, “with me, then you should probably work on getting me to like you first.”
“You always have loved me.” His face is truly puzzled now.
A chill breeze rustles the leaves all around us, cold air licking up my arms and the nape of my neck.
It’s grown dark, darker than it should have in the span of the conversation.
It feels… wrong.
And in this situation? That is truly saying something.
“We need to get her inside.” Ter’s tone shifts, and I cross my arms over my chest, hugging myself.
“May I touch you?” Malakai’s voice is gruff, and there’s something raw in his dark eyes, something I didn’t see before.
Grief.
I nod, unable to form the right words, and darkness coils along my skin before I’m planted in a bedroom, all alone, with only the barest wisp of a shadow retreating under the door.