I glance at Nathaniel, but he’s just watching Talon with that unreadable, patient expression of his. Cassian’s leaning forward slightly in his chair, elbows on his knees.
“Organized how?” I ask.
“They follow us,” Talon says. “Not just here. Out on runs, too. They perch where we can see them, but never close enoughto hit. Always in pairs or groups. Staring.” His jaw flexes. “It’s fucking unnerving.”
“You said before that crows gather where she is,” Nathaniel says. “So it may be no more than that. I don’t find it that pressing.”
My spine prickles.
Yes, crows have always hovered near me. They nested in the willow like sentries. They littered roofs around the hospital, thick as smoke. Pain and I couldn’t make it five minutes without one swooping down like it wanted a front-row seat to my misery.
But this…?
They’re following them. Not me. Them.
That’s new.
Does this tie into what Pain warned me about? The “others watching me”?
“I don’t think they’re mine,” I say, slow and careful. “If they were mine, they wouldn’t be tailing you like surveillance drones. They’d just… exist near me. Orbit me. They wouldn’t track you.”
Nathaniel’s expression barely shifts. “Perhaps now that you’re different,” he replies, “they’re responding to that difference. We’ve all seen you changing—rapidly and without a clear pattern.”
“Maybe,” I say, though my gut disagrees. “I still think it’s worth looking into.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Talon chimes in. “I’ve been looking. Ravens and crows belong to Grim lore. Ravens bond to the Reaper; crows drift around the periphery. That’s all there is in the books.”
He tosses his empty canteen onto the table. The metal clank says end of discussion.
Except… no. It doesn’t.
Either the crows have successfully bullied Talon into a genuine mood shift, or something is clawing around under his ribs hard enough to shake him.
Why the hell is he in such a sour mood?
“Either way,” he adds, leaning back in his chair, “I’m telling you, this isn’t the usual fluttering around. These fuckers are acting like it’s their personal mission to fuck with me.”
I sink further into the couch.
The room goes quiet for a moment.
Nathaniel breaks the silence first. “We keep watching them. If it escalates, we escalate. That’s all we can do for now.”
Then Cassian turns his head. “Meanwhile,” he says, voice low, “we should talk about plans.”
And then all three of them look at me.
Not look.
Assess.
Weigh. Measure. Judge.
“We want to know if you’re in.”
My pulse kicks once. “In what?”
Nathaniel leans forward, elbows on his knees, the book now forgotten entirely. “The work,” he says quietly. “The hunts. The kills.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “We were doing it before you. We’ll keep doing it after. But with you…” A flicker of something—hope, fear, belief, doom—moves behind his eyes. “With you, it changes what’s possible.”
