Raven Chapter 27 A Five-Course Meal With A Side of Cardiac Arrest 334
Raven
“So you’re positive you’re not a witch?” I ask Miriam. “Or maybe some sort of supernatural with orgasm powers?”
Kieran cackles while Anik chokes on his drink next to me, and I turn to him, unimpressed.
“All of you are still in the dog house for not introducing me to the glory of hot chocolate sooner.” I let the words hang, dripping with theatrical accusation. I’m only mostly joking. Or I would be if it wasn’t for that tiny little tremor in my voice.
The memory of that first sip is still imprinted on my soul—a rich, sweet, decadent warmth that felt like a hug for my insides. Pure pleasure. A basic human—or in my case, supernatural—right.
And they’d kept it from me.
The prickle of real hurt beneath the joke is what surprises me. My brain, that glorified lump of anxiety wrapped in a skull, immediately starts connecting dots that probably don’t exist.
Of course, they didn’t tell you. Look at you.
You can’t even protect yourself. Hades, it took three weeks for you to walk across a flat surface without introducing your face to the floor.
Your magic is a city-leveling weapon you can’t control.
You need a magical ferret to help you accessorize.
Hot chocolate is simple. You are not. Maybe you’re just…
too much work for the little things to matter.
The thoughts land a little too harshly, burning my throat and the backs of my eyes.
It’s a stupid, silent spiral. But it feels true.
The withholding feels intentional. A quiet, unspoken agreement I never got a say in: Don’t give the unstable mystery woman any more new things to stir up those pesky emotions.
She might short-circuit and end up classified as a WMD.
Or worse, she might like it, and then we’d have to keep providing it.
My eyes sweep the table. Forrest is gathering up food onto his fork, probably mentally filing this under ‘Raven: Unnecessary Drama.’ Anik is just chewing, his gaze watchful but offering no defense.
Dre snuck off to the kitchen for something a few minutes ago, and Kieran is still grinning, like always, seeing it as one big joke.
Then my gaze lands on Em.
He's at the end of the table, his plate pushed aside, his long fingers deep in the guts of a small, complex-looking device.
One of his ever-present leather notebooks sits open next to him.
He's been quietly taking apart a silver pocket watch, his contribution to conversation so far limited to the soft tink of tiny tools and the scratch of his pen across the page.
But when my eyes find him, he's already looking at me.
Not glancing. Not checking in. Looking. Like he has been for a while. Like my spiral caught his attention before I even knew I was spiraling.
My stupid, fragile heart squeezes.
He was supposed to be checked out. He's always checked out.
But he's not. He's watching me with that unnerving, total focus—the kind he usually reserves for his projects. The kind that tells everyone without words to stay back, that he's in his own world and not to be disturbed.
Except his world apparently includes me now.
He sets down his tweezers with a soft click, never breaking eye contact. The room goes quiet.
Then all of that focus sharpens. It's like a searchlight switched on behind his amber eyes. He's not looking at the room or his project. He's looking at me. He sees the joke, but he's looking past it, down to the raw thread of insecurity I thought I'd buried underneath my sarcasm.
His gaze drops to my mouth for a fraction of a second—checking the tremor there, I realize. Cataloging it. Filing it away.
"Nobody hid it, Mea."
His voice is quiet, but it cuts through the silence. Rough from hours of disuse. Familiar. Grounding.
"We just didn't think. We're idiots."
He says it like he means it. Flat. Sincere. My whole conspiracy theory wobbles.
He pushes his tinkering to the side, leaning forward until he’s the only thing I can see.
“Forrest thinks in protocols. Anik thinks in terms of threats. Kieran thinks in…” He makes a vague, frustrated gesture with his hand, like he’s swatting at glitter.
“Sparkles and chaos. Leandre thinks in… wounds—in what’s broken and needs mending.
” He runs his free hand through his hair, almost angry. “I think in… schematics. And silence.”
He looks annoyed—not at me, but at the universe, at himself, like the failure was on his part and not mine. “None of that leaves room for hot chocolate.”
Then his expression shifts. The frustration is replaced by something darker, more focused. The kind of focus a starving man has on the last french fry. Which is relatable. I also have that focus.
"It was a blind spot," he says, voice low, intimate, and doing things to my insides. "A massive one. But it's my blind spot now. I will map every inch of it until it's gone."
My breath catches. He's not just talking about hot chocolate.
"Every stupid, simple thing you should've had." Louder than a whisper now. "Consider it my life's work."
And then, just like that, he’s done. He relaxes back, picks up his pencil, and drags his sketchbook over to him. But he doesn’t start drawing. He’s writing. I can’t see what, but his brow is furrowed with a concentration usually reserved for puzzles or decoding dead languages.
The table is silent. Forrest has stopped arranging his food, his knife and fork held perfectly parallel above his plate. Anik has stopped chewing. Kieran’s grin is gone, replaced by a look of respect aimed at Em.
And me? My grand conspiracy theory lies in shattered, useless pieces at my feet. They weren’t withholding. They were just… being themselves. A pack of magnificent, emotionally stunted idiots.
And one of them just looked at my broken, too-messy, too-needy self and declared fixing my missed joys his new divine purpose. Which tracks given what I am. I can’t help the little chuckle that escapes me at that. I don’t think the reality that I’m a literal demi-god is ever going to truly set in.
I have no idea how to even begin to reply, so I simply clear my throat and nod.
If I spoke right now, I’m pretty sure the only words I’d be able to get out would be “fuck me on this table right now,” and I don’t think Miriam and Selena would appreciate that happening on top of the nicely prepared dinner.
A dinner I shift my focus back to because, much like the hot chocolate Selena shoved into my hands the minute she had dragged me into her library to gossip, the food on the plate in front of me could be qualified as magical.
Leandre walks in then, nodding his head ever so slightly to Forrest before he pauses, taking in the weird energy of the room. Not wanting to rehash everything, I search desperately for something else to say, but Selena beats me to it.
“So, back to these supposed orgasm powers my mom has?” She screws up her face. “Gross. Don’t ever let that sentence leave my mouth ever again bestie.”
It’s Dre choking on his drink now, but I just smile at my first ever best friend.
Well, humanoid best friend. And to be honest, I only met her a few hours ago, but I’ve already pulled a Miriam and adopted her as my sister.
She’s awesome, and someone needs to be on her side while her mom is trying to force her out to be social and her brother is threatening atrocities if she so much as gets a paper cut.
I just scoff, “It’s a very serious question.
These are things I need to know. If there’s someone out there with orgasm powers, I need to befriend them immediately .
” Especially considering the last two weeks, I’ve been way too exhausted after training sessions to get myself off, so I’m like a pressure cooker ready to pop.
At least the churning mass of chaotic magic has been blasted out of me. I look inward really quickly and give Huginn and Muninn a quick poke, but they’re both still passed out in some sort of sleep-like state, so I leave them alone.
I can only assume the reason they’ve been radio silent is that they’re busy acting as a cork for that well of power, hoping it won’t spill out of me and wreak violent, bloody havoc.
“No dear, I am just a shifter.” She informs me before asking, “Why would you think otherwise?”
"Well, because these things—" I hold up the round bun, still chewing—"are like sex in my mouth. How is this not magic?"
It was the first thing I grabbed. The first thing I tasted. And if that's the baseline, I'm not wasting another second.
I look around the table and start to drag as much of the food towards me as possible. If the bun is this good, the rest of it can only get better, and I don’t want to miss out on anything. I put a bit of everything onto my plate as well as into my bowl, stealing Anik’s in the process.
For some reason, there is only one bowl per person when there are two dishes here that require bowls. I’m just pointing out a fundamental error in place settings. That’s all.
Besides, I’ll give it back. Maybe.
Miriam smiles, "Those are called chipá guazú. They go with the asado."
Anik leans over to translate for me, the fledgling food-haver. He points at the pile of barbecued meat. "The asado."
I do what she says because who am I to argue with a food wizard?
After the first bite, my eyes go wide, and I can’t help the moan that escapes my lips.
Seriously, this woman is a national treasure, and her food could make angels weep.
And I’m talking about the thousand eye wheel-shaped angels, not those bipedal pretty boys humans seem to think they are.
I can’t help but lick my fingers and lips as I finish up, making sure every last drop of the delicious, rich, sadly non-sexual juices makes it’s delicious journey into my stomach. When I’m finished, I look up and point at the soup-like thing in my bowl, eyebrow raised in question.
She smiles patiently at me like the saint she is. “That is vori vori.”