“Yes,” Cian confirmed gravely. Without hesitation. “She was that involved, and there was little I could do about it.” He shook his head. “Little Revna could do.”
Tor narrowed his eyes. “So Revna knew the goddess was in her territory?”
“She knew,” he confirmed. “But could only do so much about it.”
“Why?” Raven clenched her fists. “Why was our arch-enemy able to get past both you and Revna? What was her deal with me?” She glanced from where the enemy had been back to the wizard. “Did I really align myself with her? Because all signs point to that.”
“You did what you had to do.” Cian remained as vague as ever. “You did what was best for all parties involved.”
“As if there were a shit ton of us,” Raven muttered.
“Were there not?” The wizard arched his brows at her. “Your sisters? Their mates? All of Scandinavia? Maine? Humanity?”
Raven scowled at Cian. “This is nuts.”
Her composure was so rattled it took everything Tor had not to pull her into his arms. To offer comfort any way he could.
“I mean, really stupidly nuts that you’re only able to dish out bits and pieces,” Raven continued.
“Yet undoubtedly necessary,”came Destiny’s telepathic voice in their minds. It was the first time she had contacted them. Perhaps the first time she had been able to.“I, too, could only dish out bits and pieces of information to someone I loved when she was on her journey to find her truth, Raven. It’s not easy, but you can do it. Leviathan and I know you can.”
The color drained from Raven’s face, and more tears fell. She was falling apart at the sound of Destiny’s voice. At the feel of Leviathan right there with her. Something about them made her emotions far more volatile than they had been moments before.
Enough with Raven trying to keep him at a distance.
The moment Tor felt how impacted and unstable she had become, he pulled her into his arms.
“She’s not handling this well, my Queen and King,”he said into their minds, but whatever brief connection they shared was already severed. They were gone.
“Are you okay, sis?” Trinity asked, back to her sweeter side. She looked at Tor with concern. “This isn’t just her being in heat but more.Farmore.”
“I’m fine,” Raven said hoarsely. “Totally cool.”
She was anything but, seen clearly when she went to shove him away only to wrap her hands in his tunic and pull him close again. She buried her face in his chest and shook, so undone now he knew she wouldn’t want others to see her like this.
“It’s time to rest for the night,” Tor announced.
Raven wouldn’t like it, but he didn’t care. He scooped her up and carried her in a direction that seemed burnt in a memory he had completely forgotten until now. Thankfully, she didn’t fight him but kept her face against his chest and wept softly. He knew she hated it but couldn’t stop if she tried.
He turned down yet another tunnel that didn’t go all that far before it ended in a cozy nook with a tall endless ceiling and a small fire pit. He manifested a fire, fur on the ground, and some food and drink before sitting with her on his lap with his back to the wall.
“I can’t,” she tried to say between sobs, “stop.”
“There’s no need.” He manifested another fur around her and held her close, more than content just to hold her but distressed at her pain. While tempted to navigate and understand it within her mind, it was best to wait for her to tell him how she felt. Why Destiny and Leviathan had affected her so profoundly.
“I wish I knew,”she said telepathically, clearly unable to speak aloud quite yet.“All I know is they feel like family. As close as my sisters, if not closer.”Another soft sob.“They feel like the parents I never met. Like they’ve been lost to me for so long.”
Saying those words opened her anguish to him. The incredible but unexplainable grief she felt. Why, though? Yes, she had been part of the Forge but so had her sisters.
“Perhaps not as much, though,”came a soothing voice in his mind he recognized as her aunt Elsie. Her voice was faint but there.“Where her sisters at least had some interest in the parents they lost when they were so young, Raven didn’t, and with good reason. She was only a baby. Yet even if she had known them....”
That’s all he caught before her voice was washed away by the mountain’s magic as swiftly as Destiny’s had been. Unsure what else to do, he did the only thing he thought would work. What Revna had enjoyed when she was Raven. He stroked her hair and rubbed her back. Soothed her with touch rather than words.
“Even if I had known my parents, it wouldn’t have mattered,” Raven eventually whispered, having followed Elsie’s words. More composed now, she sniffled a little but didn’t move. “I never felt connected to anyone but my aunt and sisters. Not until tonight. Not until I felt Destiny and Leviathan in my mind.”
“That makes sense, does it not?” he said softly. “Considering how much of them you took in the Forge? How much of them you are?”
“I guess.” She inhaled deeply as though pulling in his scent. “But hard to process for someone like you.”
