He was shirtless. Barefoot. His black hair was mussed from sleep, falling across his forehead in disarray.
Loose trousers hung low on his hips, and the lantern in his hand cast flickering shadows across the planes of his chest, lean muscle, pale skin, the dark lines of tattoos I hadn’t noticed before.
He looked human like this. Vulnerable. Not a monster at all, but a man roused from bed by some disturbance, still half-caught in dreams.
But his gaze, still black, still unreadable, fixed on the cat in my lap.
“Lowen,” he said.
The cat lifted its head. A rattle that sounded dangerously like worry.
“He hasn’t let anyone touch him in years.” The Raven King’s voice was strange. Thick. “Not since my mother died.”
I looked down at the skeletal creature purring in my lap. Lowen.
“Your mother’s cat?”
“Her familiar.” He stepped into the room. Stopped a few feet away, like he was afraid to come closer.
“He was meant to die when she did. That’s how familiars work. Their lives are tied to their bonded. But he...”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “He refused. Kept existing. Kept waiting. I sealed this tower because I couldn’t bear to seethe room, couldn’t bear to put him down, couldn’t bear to do nothing.”
Lowen purred louder. Pushed his bony head against my palm.
“You locked him away.”
My husband flinched. “I locked the room. There is no locking up a cat.”
“He’s been alone,” I insisted. “All this time.”
“Yes.”
“That’s cruel.”
The words hung between us. I hadn’t meant to accuse him, to judge him, to risk his anger when I was hiding so much.
But the truth had slipped out before I could stop it, and now it sat in the dusty air like a living thing.
The Raven King didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.
“Yes,” he said again. “It was.”
He crouched beside me and set the lantern on the floor. In the warm light, his face was a study in shadows, the sharp lines softened, the eyes somehow less alien.
He reached out slowly, carefully, and touched Lowen’s matted fur.
The cat tensed. Then relaxed. Then began to purr even louder, leaning into the touch.
“He recognizes you,” the Raven King murmured. “He’s never done that. Not with anyone except my mother.”
I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to explain that the cat recognized me because we were the same.
So I said nothing.
OLWEN
The great hall was full of monsters.
