“I haven’t explored it much yet, but yes.” She starts walking toward the oncoming unkindness.
I tense, my fingers twitch as I resist reaching for my weapon. There’s probably more than an hundred massive ravens flying toward us, and the body they’re carrying is moving, as if their captive is still alive.
“Taylan,” I say her name like a warning.
She glances over her shoulder at me, then stops. “Are you coming?”
Fuck. This woman is going to be the death of me, just as Roselyn predicted.
Once I catch up to her, she resumes walking. The unkindness approaches the ground in a flurry of flapping wings and sharp cries. Even from ten feet away, it feels like their beady eyes are judging me.
Shivers run down my spine and I ball my hands into fists. Ever since the accident with my dog and her pups, animals have avoided me. Some have even been aggressive for no reason. They know what I did.
I slow my steps, letting Taylan get a little ahead of me. It’s not because I worry about my safety, I know this isn’t how I die, but because I don’t want to fuck this up for her. She summoned these creatures and I could ruin everything.
Gusts of wind kick up from the flapping as the birds reach the ground, dust and dried leaves float around us until they all land, then tuck their large feathered wings against their bodies. Whoever they were carrying is on the ground, prone, unmoving.
They caw and chatter, the sounds wild and unruly. I take another cautious step closer, craning my neck. “Who is that?”
Taylan doesn’t seem to even notice me anymore. She’s staring at the ravens, moving closer little by little. “Are you certain?”
My brow furrows and I remain where I am, watching her. Is shetalkingto them? These can’t be…are these the goddess of death’s ravens?
The birds explode in a cacophony, shooting into the air, in a frenzy of wings. Dust flies and I squint against the sudden wind and I tilt my chin skyward. For a moment, there’s so many of them, they blot out the sun like a storm cloud, then they scatter, the birds traveling in different directions until there’s only a few dark specks against the cold, cloudless blue sky.
When I look back to where they’d been, the body is all that remains. Taylan is still while she stares at what appears to be a female corpse.
“Is she talking to you?” I close the distance between us, and when I reach Taylan, I suck in a breath. “What’s going on? How is she here?”
On the ground, her face pale and rotting, hair in stringy clumps, is Marian, my mother’s old lady in waiting. The only one who stayed behind with Taylan.
My heart races and I start looking around frantically. Where is she? She has to be here somewhere. I expected that I wouldn’t see her until I reached the Shatterlands. This is too soon.
“Marian?” Taylan’s voice is small, quiet.
I continue scanning our surroundings but look back at the dead ladies’ maid just as she sits up. Her eyes are milky white, her jaw not quite in the correct place.
She stands, but her movements are still and unnatural. Taylan told me she could wake the dead, but I wasn’t prepared for what that looked like. Even if I had been preparing for it for years before she even arrived.
“Why are her fingers red?” I ask, then I notice, she’s missing one. Her index finger is just gone. My upper lip curls. Is she already losing body parts?
“It was you?” Taylan asks. “You left the elm’s breath? Did you also poison the others? How?”
The corpse doesn’t speak. At least not to me.
Talan’s jaw tenses and she turns in a slow circle. “Mara! Mara, explain yourself! You sent a corpse after me and my friends?”
“What?” I rush over to her and grab her shoulders. She starts as if she forgot I was there. “Did she tell you that? Did the goddess of death try to kill us?”
“No. Marian, well, Marian’s body won’t talk to me. The one time I need one of the dead to speak and she’s silent.”
“That’s because I ordered her silence,” a sharp, cold female voice comes from behind me. It’s like I’m plunged into a frozenlake, my breath temporarily stolen, but I recover quickly. I knew this was coming.
I step in front of Taylan, then turn to face the newcomer.
She’s the same as I remember, her smooth porcelain skin doesn’t have so much as a single line or blemish. She always was unnatural in her beauty.
I glare at her. “Hello, Mother.”
