Chapter 36
By the time I make it back to my room, my mind is a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts.
I kick the door shut and lean against it, closing my eyes as I try to force the chaos within into some semblance of order.
The room’s familiar scent washes over me, and I’m struck by how little time has truly passed since I was last here.
Dried lavender, parchment, the lingering smell of smoke from the oil lantern—it’s both comforting and foreign, like stepping into a memory I’m not sure I belong to anymore.
The moment my eyes open, the fleeting comfort vanishes. Raven stands against my desk, his gaze searing into me like a brand.
“We need to talk, Starling.” The warm cadence of his voice wraps around me, but the words—his presence—make my shoulders stiffen.
“What do we need to talk about?” I push off from the door.
My hands move to take off my cloak, but I hesitate at the clasps, the image of the silver scar at my throat charging to the front of my mind.
Cursing under my breath, I tear it off and throw it over the armchair in the corner of my room, putting my back to Raven in the process.
“Perhaps about what exactly happened after I left you in that gods-forsaken palace,” he growls.
I sit down and unlace my boots, feigning intense concentration on the task. “You know what happened. Myna just spoke about it in the debrief.”
“If something else happened to you, I—”
I don’t let him finish. The tension that has been growing within me finally reaches a breaking point, and I snap. Before I can even take my next breath, I’m standing before him. “You’ll what, Raven? You’ll ride back there? Take vengeance for me? Stop lying to me, and stop lying to yourself.”
“Star—”
“Stop calling me that!”
Even in the dim light, I see his bronze skin pale and his eyes go wide. “I just want to be able to help you. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”
A shattered laugh escapes me, shaking free from the charred depths of my soul. “You can’t stand seeing it? I can’t stand being it.” The words are meant to be bitter, but they come out broken instead, my voice cracking over them as tears slip free from my eyes.
“Maybe talking about it will help…”
“What if I told you I don’t know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what happened.” My body shakes, and my voice trembles as the words pour from the cracks in my heart.
“I don’t know how long he held me there, chained and collared.
How many minutes, hours, days. I don’t know what I told him.
What truths and secrets passed my lips after he forced poison down my throat.
I don’t know if he violated me, or if the fear and poison and pain just twisted my mind so much that it was truly broken by that point.
I don’t know what was real and what was not.
So, no, I can’t tell you what happened.”
He watches in helpless silence as I unlace the ties of my tunic. Laying myself bare for him, even as it flays me alive.
“What I can tell you is how a collar with just the right goiteía burns through your flesh to your throat, until it hurts just to breathe. I can tell you which parts of the thigh are the most sensitive to the cut of a blade. I can tell you the thoughts that flash through your mind just as you think you’re about to die. But I don’t want to tell you that.”
His throat bobs as he stares at the scar around my neck. His eyes meet mine, and the anguish I find in them would break my heart all over again if there were anything substantial left of it.
“Then what do you want?”
The question rages in the back of my mind like a storm I can’t control.
His voice, his eyes—every glance, every word feels like salt on an open wound.
I know now. I know about the promises he broke, the lies he wove so effortlessly into his soft words, and the betrayal that cuts through me sharper than any blade.
He doesn’t realize it yet. He talks to me, oblivious, as if everything is fine, as if I don’t know.
I want to scream at him, to throw his lies back in his face, to demand why he thought I wouldn’t find out.
I want to trust him, to believe there’s still something good in him, but the weight of what I know is too heavy.
Trust isn’t just broken, it’s shattered, and the pieces will never fit together again.
He looks at me with those pleading eyes, and all I can feel is the cold, unrelenting ache of what we’ve lost and the wall I’m already building to keep him out.
The only words I find myself capable of giving are the same that have been echoing in my mind since my escape from Keres’s chamber. “I don’t know.”
He exhales, long and slow, and though I don’t lift my head, I feel the shift in him. “You never ask for what you need. That’s part of the problem.”
“Don’t act like you know what I need.” The words come out harsher than I intend, the edges jagged and defensive. Even as I say them, I know they’re more about me than him.
“Don’t I?” he asks. His voice is soft, but the weight of his question slams into me. “I’ve known you for years, El. I’ve seen what they’ve done to you—what they’ve taken from you. Don’t pretend I haven’t.”
My chest tightens, a dull ache spreading through me.
His words scrape against the raw knowledge of his betrayal that I’m barely holding back.
Silence crashes over us, thick and unbearable.
I want to look away, to break the grip of his question, but I can’t.
“Why not start with the truth, Raven? That’s what I need. ”
“The truth about what?”
“How long has the Eagle been pushing you to get close to me?” The question falls from my lips even as a voice inside me begs for me to stop.
To drop the accusation and let Raven have his secrets.
But I can’t back down now. Not when my entire life has shifted so drastically in such a brief span of time.
Raven’s expression flickers with confusion, his brows knitting together for a moment, before it hardens into something more guarded, like a door slamming shut. His eyes narrow, as if bracing for whatever is coming next.
“Was it before we left?” I ask, my voice steady but probing, taking a slow step closer. “Or when you first came back?”
Another step. The space between us shrinks, but he doesn’t move, his shoulders stiff and unyielding.
“Was it when you first showed me kindness?” I continue. Step.
We’re standing toe to toe, so close I can see the faint rise and fall of his chest, the tension in his jaw.
“Am I getting closer?”
“Aella—”
“No.” I bite the word out. My true name on his lips cuts too deep, the sound slipping past my defenses and nestling somewhere I don’t want it to reach. How many times had I wanted to hear him say that name? And now I wish he didn’t know it at all. “Answer the question.”
“Before you arrived at the Aviary.”
With those words, everything between us falls apart, unraveling the bond we had built over time. The trust, the shared moments, the unspoken understanding—all of it collapses in an instant, crumbling like a fragile structure under too much weight.
What remains is an aching silence, heavy and suffocating, filling the space where connection and warmth once lived. It feels as though the air has been sucked from the room, replaced by a stillness so dense that neither of us knows how to cut through it.
I take a step back. “Leave.”
“Aella, just let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” I say, my voice trembling with equal parts hurt and anger. The words feel heavy, like they’re dragging the air from my lungs. “You lied to me. You betrayed me.”
Raven’s eyes widen, a flicker of regret flashing across his face. He reaches out, his fingers brushing against my arm in a tentative, almost desperate attempt to bridge the distance between us. Where his touch used to burn, it now chills me to the bone, and I instinctively recoil from it.
“Goodbye, Raven.” My voice is barely more than a whisper but it cracks under the weight of emotion—under the finality.
The silence that follows is suffocating, broken only by the faint shuffling of Raven’s feet as he hesitates, as if searching for the right words.
The door clicks shut, and those words never come.
Tap, tap, tap.
I roll over, pulling the sheets tighter around me and pressing my face into the pillow.
The ache in my body feels distant, like a memory I’m not sure belongs to me.
My lips twitch—almost a frown, maybe—but then the weight of yesterday presses in, heavy and indistinct, a blur of images and feelings I can’t quite grasp.
There’s a strange stillness inside me, like my mind is holding everything at arm’s length.
The hollow ache in my chest feels far away, muted, like it belongs to someone else.
A muffled sound escapes me—raw, broken—but it feels detached, like I’m hearing it from somewhere outside myself.
I stay that way, quiet and still, waiting for the storm inside me to hit, but it never comes.
All I’m left with is the empty, echoing silence.
Tap, tap, tap.
My body goes still as the incessant noise that pulled me from sleep sounds again. Sharper, more insistent, pecking at my mind.
I push up with a gasp as awareness floods back in. “Cinder!”
Throwing the tangled sheets aside, I scramble to the window, reaching it in a flurry of graceless limbs. The brisk air kisses my bare skin as I fumble with the latch and throw it open. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I register that I’m naked, but the thought doesn’t hold.
In a flurry of soot-spotted white wings, my feathered friend flies into the room with a shrill cry.
Tears prick my eyes and my vision blurs as I watch him swoop around the room before settling on the desk.
I drop to my knees, my heart almost bursting at the familiar sight of him perched on the scratched wooden surface.
“I missed you so much,” I breathe, reaching out a hand to stroke his feathers.
But instead of feeling their silky texture, I yelp as a sharp pain pierces my fingers.
I stare as blood drips from the puncture of Cinder’s sharp beak before looking up at him incredulously.
Cinder glares back, his beady black eyes narrowed with accusation.
“Are you mad at me?”
He ruffles his feathers, causing his sleek body to puff up, and then turns his head away. My jaw drops open in shock, but I promptly close it in case that response only annoys him further. Nursing my stinging hand at my chest, I shuffle closer.
“Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment?” A laugh breaks free, startled and raw with emotion. And for the first time in what feels like forever, I feel something real.
He huffs out a shrill squawk without sparing me a glance, and my heart twists with guilt.
Shuffling closer, I grab the small jar of dried fish flakes from the desk.
Unscrewing the lid, I pour a generous helping in front of him.
“Peace offering?” I say, holding the jar aloft.
“How about this—no more leaving without telling you first. Does that sound fair?”
He cocks his head at me, one wing twitching as if considering my proposal. Finally, with another resigned squawk, he leans toward the pile of fish and begins eating.
My laughter comes easier this time, small and shaky but grounding. Reaching up, I stroke his feathers, and this time he lets me. Relief blooms in my chest, a fragile warmth that threatens to spill over.
He holds still under my touch for a moment before letting out a sharp chirp and lifting one foot. My breath hitches as I notice the small scroll tied to his leg. My fingers tremble as I untie it, unfurling the parchment.
East gardens. Noon.
I trace the familiar script of Kal’s note, my heart pounding with a mixture of anticipation and dread. He’ll have questions, I’m sure of it. Questions I’m not sure I’m ready to answer. But I need him. I need his help if I’m going to see this through.
My eyes drift toward the open window. From the angle of the shadows, it’s still early morning, and I have at least a few hours before I need to leave.
Just enough time to set my plans in motion.
I move to my desk, rifling through the drawer to find a small graver. Holding it tight, I cross to the bookshelf and pull down a simple jewelry box. Inside is a golden ear cuff and a small round pendant on a thin chain, both smooth and unadorned.
Cinder trills, pulling me from my thoughts. I glance over at him where he sits watching me, his small body framed in the rising sunlight. My lips tilt into a faint smile—an honest, unguarded one this time.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him softly as I sit cross-legged on the bed. I put the pendant aside and press the graver’s tip to the cuff. “I know what I’m doing.”
Closing my eyes, I look inward, toward the warmth nestled deep in my chest. It feels soft, like thread spooled over a golden core, one that hums alongside my heart.
My chest tightens around the warm glow—the soul magic the Anemoi gifted each tycheroi to carve goiteía.
The magic my mother gave me.
With my mind’s eye, I reach inside with spectral fingers and grab the end of the thread.
The connection comes easily, though it’s been years since I dared to use it.
The warmth flares to life, pooling in my fingertips as I direct the magic through the graver, carving into the cuff with deliberate focus.
The glowing marks trail behind the tool like flickering sparks, each stroke precise and unshaken.
The act feels like a claim, a quiet defiance against the version of myself that refused to fight for so long.
And, for the first time in years, I carve a mark.