Chapter 11 Secrets and Lies
Secrets and Lies
Raisa
Over the next weeks, we don’t stay in one place for too long. The forest is alive with danger—some of them of my making, most of them not—and if there’s one thing I’ve learned since fleeing my father’s kingdom, it’s that the only real safety is in motion.
My thighs are scraped raw, my boots are bloodier than I’ll admit to anyone, and my mind constantly twists itself into knots, trying to make sense of what I am and what it all means.
Rune tries to teach me how to control my magic, how to call it when I want, how to use runes to wield it for a specific purpose, but it’s still a wild thing, more power than I know what to do with.
There’s a darkness to it, an unholy violence that sets my teeth on edge. The magic wants to kill and unmake and break. And day by day, I find myself wanting the same things. It scares me.
I think, sometimes, it scares Rune, too. Even Grim, who has always seemed like he’s cloaked in the dark, looks at me sometimes like he’s leery of whatever kind of monster I’ve become.
It’s a relief to stop thinking, even for five minutes.
Sable and Grim break ahead to check the path, and the others settle onto a fallen log.
I make a show of rummaging in my bag, but what I really need is to get away.
Just for a minute. Just long enough to breathe air that doesn’t taste like the men who watch me like they’re worried I’m going to break.
I mumble something about needing to pee. Nobody protests. Onyx just jerks his chin in a direction that’s both safe and private, and I trudge off, my boots sinking into a patch of moss so thick it swallows sound.
I don’t go far. I can still sense them behind me, but I relish the illusion of being alone.
The second I’m out of sight, my shoulders drop two inches. I squat, relieve myself, wipe with a fistful of damp leaves, and then just…sit there for a moment, my head in my hands.
My pulse drums in my ears. I feel the current of magic running up and down my arms, singing in my bones. I try to shake it off, but it clings, sticky and insistent, stronger every day.
I close my eyes and count to ten.
It doesn’t help.
When I get up, I loop around a thicket I don’t remember passing on the way out. There’s a flicker of motion ahead, nothing more than a shadow, but my body reacts before my brain does. I drop low, my eyes narrowed, all senses set to hunt.
Relief washes through me when I see that it’s just Talon.
He moves with a caution that doesn’t suit a man his size, picking his way through the brush like he’s afraid to wake something sleeping beneath it. I watch him for a few seconds, not sure if I want to call out or just study him.
His shirt is off, his skin glinting with sweat. His hands tremble, his breath coming in a pained rasp.
Instead of following the path back to camp, he hooks left and disappears behind a dead tree.
I follow. Not because I’m afraid for him, but because I can’t stand the idea of any of them suffering without me knowing about it.
The clearing he enters is small, little more than a bowl of grass rimmed with wild ginger and brittle nettle. Talon stands at the edge, his shoulders hunched, fingers digging into the bark of an old stump.
For a moment, I think he’s just going to stand there and cry.
Instead, his body buckles, as if an invisible weight just slammed into him. He drops to his knees, a choked sound crawling out of his throat. His spine arches, then bows. His fingers stretch and curl and spasm.
The first snap is so loud I flinch. I press a hand to my mouth, terrified of making any sound, even a gasp.
Talon’s arms convulse, the muscles bulging, then caving in. His skin ripples, turning a sickly blue-black at the knuckles and along the veins. More cracks, like twigs breaking underfoot.
I watch his hands distort, bones telescoping as skin and blood ooze out of the way.
He screams. Not a human scream, not even close. It’s all death and defiance, animalistic and raw. The same scream I’ve heard a thousand times since leaving my father’s kingdom behind. Every time, I shivered, wondering what lurked in the forest.
The whole time, the source was closer than I knew.
I should run. I should run and never look back, but I’m rooted to the spot, horror-struck.
Talon’s shoulders crunch inward, his ribcage compressing, his chest narrowing and hollowing out.
His hips twist so violently I expect them to shatter.
His feet sprout new bones, the toes fusing and rearranging themselves in a tangle of tendon and claw.
Through it all, his face is locked in a grimace, his jaw distending, teeth falling out, and then reforming into a black, barbed beak.
When the feathers start, they explode from under his skin in clumps—first at the base of his skull, then over his chest, down his arms, and up the backs of his legs.
By the time the convulsions stop, there’s nothing left of Talon the man. In his place is a raven, so hauntingly familiar that the world blurs around me for a moment.
It stands there for a moment, swaying on the balls of its new feet, then drops its head. The beak is heavy and sharp. It looks around, almost shyly.
That’s when it sees me.
Its eyes are different than his, but still the same. So fierce and sad, I want to throw up.
We stare at each other for three full heartbeats.
The truth rushes in, cold and sharp.
This is what they are. This is what they’ve always been.
I stumble backward, the branch behind me cracking like a rifle. The bird—Talon—flinches, cowering away from the sound, and then leaps, wings pumping, claws raking the earth as he propels himself up through the branches and vanishes into the sky.
I stand there shaking, the world tilting under my feet.
I want to scream, but all that comes out is a whimper.
All the little hints and secrets. The way they move, the way they watch. The feathers that appear in my bedding, the way their faces sometimes seem to change in the dark, the way they know me so well…
For weeks, I’ve been half convinced that this was the truth, but I let them convince me not to ask. I let them distract me, change the subject, keep my focus everywhere but the truth screaming in front of me.
I’m such a fucking idiot.
I sprint back toward the camp, my lungs burning and my knees knocking together with every step. I don’t care if I’m loud or if I get lost. I just need to see their faces. I need to hear the truth from their lips.
When I crash into the clearing, they’re all there, gathered around the remains of the log. Shade is the first to spot me; he rises instantly, every muscle tensed for violence. The others look up, startled by my arrival.
Talon dropping into the middle of the group clarifies the issue before I even say a word.
“Fuck,” Shade growls.
I point at him, my voice trembling so hard I barely recognize it. “You lied to me,” I say, the words shaking. “All of you. You lied. You let me believe I was crazy. That I was imagining things.”
Shade tries to speak, but I don’t let him.
“You’re not just men,” I spit. “You’re the ravens.” They’re monsters, just like me.
Bran steps toward me, palms up, his face white pale. “Raisa–”
“Don’t.” I flinch away, hot tears scalding my cheeks. “Don’t you dare.”
Rune is behind him, his hands shaking so badly they blur. Grim won’t even look at me. Sable just laughs, but it’s brittle, no humor in it.
“I should have known,” I say, and now the tears are coming hard and fast. “I should have demanded the truth, but you–” My breath hitches. “You lied to me, over and over again.”
Shade moves like he’s going to hold me, but I back away, my hands up.
“No. No more lies. No more hiding.”
He hesitates, his jaw clenched. “You weren’t ready.”
I shake my head, the world swimming. “No. You don’t get to blame me for your decisions. You chose to lie to me. I won’t carry the weight of that shame for you.”
Onyx is silent, stone-faced, his arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t break, just watches me with those mismatched eyes that suddenly make perfect, terrible sense.
I wipe my nose on the back of my wrist. “Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice is hoarse, but I force it out. “Why did you let me get so close if you were just going to keep breaking me?”
Bran opens his mouth, then closes it. He looks like he might cry, too.
At some point during my heartbreak and fury, Talon vanished in the trees, only to reappear now, no longer a raven but naked and trembling. Stricken and pale.
“We don’t want to break you,” he rasps.
“You did!” I cry. “You destroyed me.”
Grim finally speaks, his voice sandpaper and smoke. “We thought you’d run if we told you the truth.”
I laugh, the sound bordering on hysterical. “I should.”
“Do you want to?” Shade asks.
My heart knocks against my ribs. “I don’t know.”
The men exchange glances—Shade and Grim and Onyx, all looking to each other for permission to speak, to move, to even breathe.
Sable is the one who breaks the tension. “Better a monster than a coward,” he says, but the words are empty.
I look at them all, really look. The scars on their arms, the way their bodies never seem to fit the space they’re in, the animal restlessness always just under the surface.
It’s always been there.
I drop to my knees, dizzy, my head in my hands. For a long time, nobody says anything. Not a word.
Then, soft as a prayer, Shade says, “You’re still one of us, Raisa. No matter what.”
“I’ve never been one of you,” I spit. “I’ve just been the thing you manipulated to keep me complacent.” I choke on a laugh. “Just like my father.”
Shade flinches. “That isn’t true. We’d die for you.”
I stare at him, blinking back the worst of the tears. “Then tell me what else you’re keeping from me,” I say. “All of it. If you want me to stay, I want the truth, every ugly word of it.”
He nods, and the others gather closer, silent and grave. Bran kneels beside me, not touching, just close enough that I can feel the heat of him.
“It’s the least we owe you,” he says.