Page 14 of Reaper’s Curse

The problem was, Raven had only healed one afflicted individual…as far as I knew…or maybe the count was now two, if what Aoes had said about Winter were true… Either way, she professed not to know how she had done so. I had been inclined to believe her. As angry as we had gotten with each other, I hadn’t sensed any deceit on her part.

“Raven?” one of the twins asked.

I snapped out of my inner reflection to find the child staring at me. She pointed to one of the parchments her afflicted sister had been clutching when they first entered the pub. It was a crude drawing of a female who clearly wasn’t their mother.

The young girl tapped the picture. “Raven.”

“This is Raven?” I asked, and the girl affirmed with a quick nod.

I glanced at Camilla. Her eyes were wide, like a trapped animal’s. Her delicate fingers curled into fists as she bit down on her lip.

Aoes, on the other hand, leaned forward to better see the drawing. He clearly wasn’t privy to whatever knowledge had Camilla cowering.

I pulled the picture forward, gliding it across the table surface, and picked it up to examine it more closely. A female dressed in all black, with her obsidian- and red-highlighted hair flowing around her. The image could easily depict Raven.

But where I faltered, and where my eyes continuously roamed, was the gold and crimson halo surrounding her body, and the many ruby markings cut across her figure. As if someone had taken a knife to multiple points of her body, and the blood had spread in patches.

“What is this?” I tapped my finger to one of the larger blotchy lines of red.

One colored in above Raven’s hip.

“That’s how we first saw her,” the girl said, peering over to her sister for confirmation. The twin nodded. “That’s Raven with her death glow and life-eating holes.”

For a moment, I thought my heart stopped beating. Time stopped moving.

Then the girl added, “We thought she was going to die.”

The world dropped out from underneath me, and all I could hear were the hiss and click of coming specters and the flapping wings of a sea full of crows.

The image of Winter covered in another’s blood whooshed to the forefront of my mind. I had stood face-to-face with the prick and outright asked him about Raven. And he… He had said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even though⁠—

Winter knew. He knew, and he didn’t say anything. Went to lengths to hide the truth, in fact.

My hands fisted. And despite the clear argument transpiring between Aoes and Camilla, all I could hear was the swoosh of blood and thump, thump of my heart.

I was going to kill Winter. I would march straight up to the palace and kill him.

Right after I smashed the prince’s face in and made him suffer in every conceivable way.

5

Wake up, wake up, wake up. I need to wake up.

I repeated the mantra over and over, but my too-heavy eyelids refused to comply. Less than a full day had passed since I’d pulled Winter out of his icy coma, and I was exhausted on a level I’d never before experienced.

And my slumber…it had come pretty damn close to my own personal death-state oblivion.

I pinched the skin of my forearm hard, and my eyes sprang open.

My skin burned for not having insisted that I return to the pub last night and retrieve my belongings myself. But what would have been the point? A detail had already been dispatched by the time I had heard anything about the plan. Not a chance in the blue flames of death had existed that I would have gotten to the pub first.

Plus, I’d been so deathly tired.

I could only hope that the men would be sworn to secrecy about whatever they found, lest I forfeit my deal with the queen before I even got started.

But oh, by the death gods, I had been drained and required a decent night’s sleep. Still wanted more, yet⁠—

I need to get up. Get up!