Chapter 2
Shadows in the Forest
Shade
Ibalance on the highest branch of an ancient oak like a black knife, watching. The world below stinks of cut grass, rain rotting in the rose beds, and the cloying sweetness of the fruit blooming on trees. I could name every scent in the castle grounds, but tonight, there’s only one that matters.
The princess. Raisa.
She’s wandering the orchard again, barely more than a girl, but already grown—soft in all the right places, bright and curious where it counts. The king keeps her behind iron and stone, but I know every inch of her.
Every night, she slips from the palace, thinking she’s alone in the dark. She doesn’t see the eyes in the branches. The ones that want her most.
I lock my gaze onto her from above, feeling the familiar, savage hunger rise swiftly. It’s not the kind that’s sated by worms or field mice. It’s something bigger, crueler, impossible to silence.
When I’m in this form, the urge is primal.
Simple. Something written into my bones whether I like it or not.
There’s a certain beauty in spilling blood and wielding power to cause pain.
But even as a bird, I remember what it’s like to have hands, to feel the pulse beneath my skin, and the wind on my face.
To want something more than destruction and fear.
Raisa kneels in the wet grass to fix a drooping blossom, her skirt riding up and her black hair coming loose over her shoulder.
I could count every freckle on her neck if I cared to.
Instead, I watch her hands, small, delicate, tender with the flower, even as she snaps off the dead leaves with merciless efficiency.
She does everything this way. Her touch is gentle, but her heart is fiercer than she knows.
She’s made of might and powerful magic, even if she doesn’t realize it yet.
I want her to look up. I want her to see me, to know she’s prey. I want to watch the fear, eagerness, and curiosity dilate her eyes.
I want it too much.
My talons grip the wood so hard the bark flakes beneath them. I feel the heat pooling in my breast like a coil threatening to snap. My brothers would mock me if they knew how badly I want to hunt and stalk and claim, but I don’t care. They’ve always needed more excuses than I do.
What I want is simple. Her. Not because she’s the answer to the curse that keeps us trapped. Not to take her from the king. Simply because the wanting drives me mad.
She stands, brushing grass stains from her knees, and glances over her shoulder toward the castle. The king’s voice is a distant echo—calling for her again.
Raisa hesitates, her lips parting as if she means to answer him, but instead she turns away and walks in the opposite direction, toward the wall and the woods beyond.
She wants out.
She’ll never make it, not with the guards on the ramparts and the king’s magic layered on the gates to keep her imprisoned. But it’s the wanting that matters. It’s what draws me, night after night, until my wings ache from perching and my mind sours with longing.
She’s almost at the gate.
I shift my weight, my wings flaring for balance, and follow from branch to branch until I can see the whole length of her.
The garden is a cage, and she’s the only thing worth hunting.
Even as a child, I took first and asked forgiveness later. The curse hasn’t changed that. If anything, it made me hungrier. Now that the wait is almost over, my chest aches with the need to get on with it. To take what I want.
She walks right up to the gate, brushing aside the ivy. Another quick glance over her shoulder to check that she’s alone, and then she’s reaching for the latch with trembling fingers.
It moves an inch like it did earlier, just enough to allow in a sliver of forbidden air. She trembles in response, her lush body quivering toward it in desperation.
But that’s as far as she gets before she hauls herself back to her feet and quickly brushes off her skirt. Her feet are silent on the path as she scurries back toward the safety of the castle and the watchful eyes of the king’s guards.
It’s enough to confirm what we all know, though. She’s ready. Finally.
When she disappears through the side door with one last longing look toward the gate, I leap from the branch and plummet, folding my wings at the last second to slip through the thorns without slowing.
My vision warps, the world stretching and blurring, until I burst into the gloom of the forest beyond the castle walls. Here, the air is thicker, older. This part of the forest crawls with things that want and bite and rend.
I’m one of them.
I drop to the ground, scattering dry leaves in my wake, and let the change take me.
It hurts like hell. Bones crack, feathers melt to skin, and for a brief, agonizing moment, I’m nothing but violence, rage, hunger, and memory.
Then I’m kneeling in the underbrush, naked and shivering from the aftershocks of the shift.
My hands are always bigger than I remember, my knuckles raw from the fight to merge man and beast. My hair, as black as the feathers I wore a heartbeat ago, falls loose to my shoulders, streaked with dirt.
My skin is tanned bronze by years of sun and wind, littered with scars I don’t bother to count.
I’m not beautiful, but I am meant to be feared.
I savor the first lungful of air. It tastes like rot and moss and promise.
I stretch, rolling my shoulders until the tension snaps, and stroll to the hollow tree where I stashed my clothes.
The curse already screams for the change, demanding wing and feather again, but I ignore it.
My brothers will want to hear what I saw, and that’s a far more powerful motivator than the king’s twisted magic.
I pull on my black pants with a soft groan. The old shirt smells faintly of smoke as I slip it over my head. The last touch is the ring at my throat, a simple silver band I keep to remind me of who I was before.
Now, dressed or not, I’m just a predator. The clothes just make it easier to walk among the sheep.
I climb to the top of a boulder, planting my feet wide for balance. The castle glows in the distance, every window a square of golden light. I imagine Raisa inside, brushing out her hair, humming a song she thinks no one else knows.
She’s wrong, though. I know all her songs. I know everything about her.
I cup my hands to my mouth and whistle, low and long. The note carries through the trees like a rush of wind. The branches shudder as an answer comes back—one, then two, then a whole chorus, some close and some far away.
My brothers are on their way.
They come to the clearing in ones and twos, melting from shadow to flesh in the blink of an eye. I stand at the center, my arms crossed, watching them shed wings and beaks for hands and teeth.
No matter how many times I see it, the change is never the same twice.
Some of my brothers bear the agony easily, shifting in a blink.
Others drag the agony out, savoring every crack of bone, every pulse of new blood.
I used to think it was about pain. Now, I know it’s about her. Everything always is.
I remember the first time the curse took hold. We were human, then. Brothers by adoption, not blood. The king wanted the heirs he thought the queen couldn’t give him, so he gathered us, lost boys with nowhere to go. He taught us to fight, to kill, to die for his kingdom if needed.
We gave him loyalty. Hell, we gave him everything.
And then, he betrayed us, cursing us for a simple mistake. We didn’t even know the queen was pregnant when we knocked her down the stairs. We were just foolish boys playing games.
The king knew, though, and he hated us for it.
He destroyed us for it.
I watched my brothers crumble in front of him—spines warping, flesh rending from bone, hands fusing to wings. I felt the agony, the terror, and then the sharp-edged joy of not dying after all.
We became something more than death, something less than human.
We avoided the castle at first, haunting the farthest edges of the forest instead.
But then Raisa changed everything.
Whispers of her birth drew us back, curious, furious. Jealous.
The king was different with her. Gentle, sometimes. Protective, always. He never let her outside the walls, never let her speak to anyone but him or his council. She was a living secret. His caged songbird. The reason for our destruction.
The first time she came to the garden alone, I thought it was a trick.
Some trap meant to bait us. But when she walked the length of the path without flinching, when she spoke to the flowers and the birds like she was their queen, I realized the truth.
She didn’t know she was the reason for our destruction. She just wanted to be free.
She fascinated me. She’d sit for hours on the sundial, her knees tucked to her chest, and tell her secrets to whoever would listen. Sometimes it was the wind. Sometimes it was me. I’d perch just close enough for her to feel my eyes on her, never moving, never breaking the spell.
One day, she looked right at me and said, “If I could, I’d trade places with you.”
She meant it. I could taste it in the air.
I should’ve hated her for it. Instead, I found myself wanting to be the one to give her what she wanted. Or maybe just wanting to be the one to take away her pain.
I still do.
I didn’t know then what the king did: that she carries the same powerful magic he does. That knowledge came later, the day she whispered humanity back into our hearts. But where his magic is corrupted, hers is pure. And it’ll be the thing that heals what he destroyed.