But everything was different.
He was different.
Black plumage edged his face, sharpening his features into something avian and cruel.
And his wings were massive.
They unfurled from his shoulder blades, filling the space around us, midnight feathers catching the candlelight and iridescent against the darkness.
Twelve feet of wingspan, layered and perfect, stretching wide before curving inward to wrap us both. Creating a cocoon. A shelter. A space apart from the world.
Inside the cocoon of his wings, there was only us.
His eyes were bottomless. But his face…the sharp angles had grown sharper, impossibly more beautiful. The king who had bought me at auction was gone.
This was something older. Something that belonged to the Realm the way I was learning to belong to it.
“The transformation isn’t finished,” he said. His voice had changed as well, deeper, resonating not just in my ears but in my chest, in my bones. “We have to complete the bond.”
He pressed me back against the polished stone. The surface was cold against my spine, but his body above me was warmth and weight and presence.
His wings stayed wrapped around us, blocking out the candles, blocking out Morveth’s chanting, blocking out everything except the space we shared.
“This will change you,” he said. “Permanently. Are you certain?”
I reached up. Touched his face, traced the edge of a feather along his jaw. It was soft beneath my fingers, softer than I’d expected, and when I stroked it he made a sound low in his throat.
“I’m certain.”
He kissed me. Not the desperate hunger of the alcove, this was reverent. His mouth moved against mine like a prayer, like a promise, like something sacred being spoken in a language older than words.
His forehead pressed against mine. “Are you afraid?”
“No.”
“Liar.” But he smiled when he said it, and the smile was tender. Real.
“Now,” Morveth’s voice cut through the darkness, distant and commanding. “Complete the bond now or lose your chance.”
He entered me slowly. Deliberately.
One smooth thrust, filling me completely, and magic rushed through my body.
Not pleasure. Not yet. This was power. Raw and primordial and enormous, the accumulated weight of a thousand years of Raven Kings binding themselves to the Realm.
It crashed through me in waves, rewiring every nerve, remaking every cell. I could feel my bones shifting, my blood changing.
My soul stretched, and suddenly I was everywhere.
I felt the ravens above, felt their minds touching mine. Dozens of them. Hundreds. A vast network of consciousness spreading across the Raven Lands like roots through soil.
Not the one-way whispers I’d heard before, when they’d spoken at me. This was conversation. Connection. I could call them now, and they would answer.
Sister, they whispered.
Cador moved inside me. Slow, deep thrusts that sent sparks racing up my spine. Each stroke pushed the magic deeper, bound it tighter, wove it into the fabric of what I was becoming.
His wings tightened around us, feathers brushing my arms, my legs, soft and encompassing.
