Thick black bands above its paws, almost blending in with its fur.
The chains were tied to anchor points upon the back wall, embedded deep in the stone. They were runed, glowing a gentle gold she hadn’t been able to see until the beast moved. And the chains were short.
Certainly, not long enough to allow the raphon to reach her if it lunged.
‘I’m not going to get my last hope killed, Arawn,’ Kinlear said. ‘If you had any trust in me at all, you’d never have doubted for a second.’
Chains or not …
She was far from safe.
With her back up against the bars, Ezer watched the beast. It had turned, just enough that it could watch her with one lazy eye.
Its enormous curved raven’s beak was large enough to bite her head off in one snip. The white scar on it was awful. Like the blade used to kill the raphon’s siblings had justbarelymissed. Strange how seamlessly its birdlike head turned into a panther’s body.
Its giant wings were pressed flat to its back, its body curled up the way a cat would laze in the sun, the tail twitching with each second that passed.
She didn’t know whether to speak or move or scream, whether to hold out her hand and try to reach for it.No,she thought. There was no way she’d try that.
But then she saw the stain on its scarred beak. Her own handprint, still there, as if she’d left it on the raphon like a brand. For three days, it had breathed in her scent, carried a part of her with it.
She prayed – gods, she hoped – that today would not be her last.
She still had too much of her story to write, too many questions to answer. She would not die unsure of who she was.
What do I do?
She’d never been so desperate for a lifeline. For the whisper of the wind.
She could scarcely stand for how hard her legs shook. Slowly, she sat, lowering her body to the shavings.
But she did not dare take her eyes off the raphon.
What she had told Arawn had been wrong. She had readplentyabout them in the hours she’d spent leading up to this, and one thing was a common theme in the texts she’d found.
They were bloodthirsty predators. They killed swiftly. They preferred to attack at night, under cover of darkness, when they could blend in with the sky and the black mountains from which they came. And, like ravens, they were far too clever for their own good.
But they could also go for a full week without feasting.
And Kinlear himself had said the pup ate last three days ago. What that meal entailed, she shuddered to think, because they only wanted blood.
But if luck was on her side, it wasn’t hungry … yet.
She didn't know how long she sat staring at the raphon. It stared back at her, breathing steadily, only moving to stretch its wings or scratch at its head with those enormous black paws.
In many ways, it acted like a cat.
Each paw was easily the size of her face and could certainly shred the skin from her with a single swipe.
So why hadn’t it even tried?
At some point, Arawn left.
And returned with a plate of steaming food and a jug of water, which he promptly passed through the bars.
She’d never felt more like a prisoner, like the people who’d slept and died beneath her tower in Rendegard all those years she spent locked away in Ervos’s place.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Arawn. Their gazes met, and something silent passed between them.
