It’s not comforting, knowing she cannot feel the chill of the night anymore. Not at all.
As Ruben takes the first watch, I deliberately bed down between Caz and Benny. Sex with Kyor was exactly what I needed in the moment, but I don’t want to signal everything is perfect by snuggling up to him by the firelight.
Things are still so far from perfect, and my heart is heavy.
In my head, I knew the chances of all of us surviving the journey were less than slim, and yet I allowed my friends to come with me. Worse, Iwantedthem to. How fucking selfish can one person be that they would let their loved ones risk their lives for them? And worse still, I know if they offered again, I would make the same choice. Because it’s hard, so damned hard, to be alone.
Grief and guilt tangle inside me, an impossible knot that grows tighter with every thought. Every memory, every truth both past and future, pulls the threads more and more taut. If I believed my time with Kyor would offer anything more than a moment’s respite for the torments that maul my heart, I would have been very, very wrong.
When night fully claims the land, Fen rises without a word.
He pads across the camp on silent paws, his massive form a dark shadow against the night. He does nothesitate, does not look back, and it is without a single word or feeling passing between us that I know where he is heading: to lie beside Stide’s grave.
Guarding her last rest as though it is an act he has done before, and one he fears he will do again.
Morning bringsno respite from the grief. As the pale light filters through the mist-laden air, we pack up our things, though none of us make the call to move out. It’s not our choice when we go today.
And so, we wait.
Thessa kneels at the edge of Stide’s grave, her fingers brushing the cold stones. It is the same place I found her when we woke. The same place she has been since dawn, I suspect.
We wait at a distance and watch as her lips move. I cannot hear what she says, and I do not try to. Caz stays close, one hand hovering as though ready to catch Thessa if she falls.
Is this what our life is to be like now? Never on an even footing. Always ready to catch the next one of us that might fall.
It’s an existence no different from life in the slums. No different to watching my mother’s breaths grow thinner and weaker with every passing day, while my father drank himself into oblivion. When? I want to scream out as tears sting my eyes. When do I get a life that’s not filled with pain and hurt? Maybe I never will.
As hopelessness threatens to claim me, my thoughts drift, unbidden, to the single reason I can’t give up.
The reason I have pushed through all of this.
My family.
Kay.
William.
This journey was never about me, not once I saw those markings. It’s about them. Him.
I will not get my brother back only to lose him, and I will not have Kay’s child be born into a life of fear. If this is the price I have to pay for their future and their safety, for their lives to remain free from pain and suffering, then I will do it a hundred times over.
Homesickness hits like rocks to my ribs. The need to be there with them, far from hard earth and broken bodies and the unending cold that seeps into bone and soul alike.
It’s wrong, I know, but while Thessa grieves and the others watch on, I push myselfaway.
I openmy eyes and find myself surrounded by darkness, and what begins as relief at escape is quickly submerged in fear. Darkness? I shouldn’t be in darkness. Where are my wings? Where is thefreedom?
I thought I understood how this raven thing worked, me slipping into the body of a corvid at the same time of day, just in another location. Ideally, one of my own choosing, but that’s not what’s happening here.
It was a bright morning when I left Kyor and the others. Here, it’s dark. Pitch black. Darker than the forest in the dead of night. How can that be, unless more has changed than I realise?
Gods, maybe I know next to nothing about this power, too.
Knowing that the easiest way to learn where I am is with an aerial view, I prepare to fly, but my feet have barely lifted from the ground when I change my mind. I can’t see any stars above me, not even the flickering canopy of trees moving in an infinitesimal breeze. The air is completely still.
So if I’m not outside, where the fuck am I?
For the first time, I allow myself to look down. There, I see the shadows of bird-shaped feet. I am still Little Raven. At least that is right.
