Chapter
Sixteen
Galantia Present day, Deepmarsh Castle
ith my back pressed against the stone frame and one leg stretched out on its sill, I sat inside the corridor’s window since it offered the most light this late in the day, the book resting onW my lap bound in blackened leather. It had appeared by my door the morning after the library atop a few others with no note. Not that it had needed one. The title gave away my ever-so-vexing
benefactor.
Ravens: a Compendium of Gifts.
As far as gifts went, there existed four major types of Ravens: weavers, fates, pathfinders, and voids. Except for the pathfinder, all came with variations, such as voids who could absorb other’s shadowsgifts, temporarily wielding them as their own. They called them echos—a rare gift, but not
nearly as rare as its third variation.
The thief.
I ran my fingertip along the lines in the book as I read…
There once was a Raven, blessed with the gift of the thief. So empty was the void at his core, so desperate for shadows, he stole the gifts of three deathweavers and wielded them as his own. Great was the power he gained for the house Khysal, crowning himself king.
Greater even was the burden he carried, the rage of stolen shadows within. Until, one fateful night, they swallowed him whole, turning blessing to blight.
“Galantia,” Cici said, making me look up from the book and to where she stood before me with two young women. “Will you join us for a stroll through the market?”
I looked out the window. The lowering sun illuminated a set of tables where tankards stood about.
Men lifted cups, tossed knucklebones over the rough-hewn wood, and traded coins with the wenches who kept the drink flowing. Some even danced in what appeared to be a town square, spinning circles around each other as void of grace as they were of care.
My heart ached. What would it feel like to be down there, surrounded by so much life? What could it hurt if I allowed myself a taste of it? Just once?
I closed the book and slipped off the sill, acknowledging the two females beside her with a nod.
“I’ll come.”
Introductions were made as I followed them down the stairs. Outside in the courtyard, Sebian aimed a black shadowy arrow at a nearby target. A pathfinder trait, which explained why I’d never seen a quiver on him. When the arrow dissolved into thin air, he glanced over his shoulder at me as though he’d sensed me. Or… smelled me?
I dipped my head, cheeks heating at the memory of how his skilled fingers had brought me pleasure like none before. Had I wanted it? No. But I had liked it! For that reason, and the fact that Sebian seemed to be my only source of reprieve in this place, I’d decided not to hold it against him.
But it couldn’t happen again.
“Here.” Gabilla reached me her brown scarf, her fluff of black hair neatly pinned up. “Drape it over your head.”
“Thank you.” I wrapped it around me, tugging it over my blonde strands. “With your black curls, I guess you can easily blend in.”
At an elegant gesture of her hand, black shadows appeared between her fingers, weaving into a sort of cape which she wrapped around her shoulders. Shadowcloth. She was a weaver.
“Yes, I blend in easily,” she said, sharing a giggle with Cici, whereas the other girl ran off toward a store. “You, however, do not. Allow me to suggest that, out here, you keep your name to yourself.
There is no love for you here.”
Oh please, there was no love for me anywhere, which made it all the easier to ignore her snarky remark. I focused on my surroundings instead, taking everything in with parted lips and a wild flurry of excitement at my core.
Whenever I’d stood on Tidestone’s outer bailey as a child, watching the harvest lanterns illuminate the faraway windows of Glosten, I’d imagined a town to smell like sweet bread, foreign spices, and roasted meat. This place quickly cured me of that romantic illusion. It smelled like shit,
urine, and unwashed bodies.
And I loved it!
My entire body thrummed with energy as we passed the merchants’ wooden carts that lined the moss-covered curtain wall, craning my neck this way and that. I wanted to see it all! The exotic fruits, silky linens, and strange trinkets brought here from lands I would never visit. Where did they lay?
How long would one have to travel to reach them?
I stopped in front of a cart and reached for one such trinket, running the tip along the row of small, greenish-blue stones strung onto leather. Veins of gold scattered around the beads, which reflected a hint of pink coming from the setting sun. How beautiful it was, so rich in color.
“I’ve never seen such gemstones before,” I said. “What is it called?”
“They’re not gemstones.”
I jumped at the sound of Sebian’s voice and spun around. “What are you doing here?”
Sebian stepped up beside me, dressed in leather breeches, a white shirt, and a brown vest he hadn’t bothered to fasten in the front. He’d put his black strands up in a loose topknot, and a few escaped wisps clung to his sheared sides. It suited him, this ruggedness one might find in the depth of an overgrown forest. Where was his mate? Not found yet? Dead? Was it wise to wonder?
He gave a long, drawn-out sigh. “If I wouldn’t know better, I’d say I’m protecting you.”
“A habit of yours? Saving damsels in distress?”
“Not exactly.” He sucked in his cheeks, brows furrowing. “But I can hardly let you venture outside alone.”
“I’m not alone,” I said and pointed to my left. “I am—” Alone. Gods curse them, where had they gone? “I shouldn’t have dawdled.”
“Or maybe you shouldn’t blindly follow women who serve nothing but their own selfish interests.” He jutted at the stone trinket. “They’re rocks from my island, Lanay.”
“That’s where you’re from?” I asked and, when he stared at the gemstone for a long time without saying a word, I cleared my throat. “Sebian?”
A jerk went through him, and he turned his head to look at me. “Hmm?”
“Is that where you’re from? Lanay?”
He nodded. “We call them laool, which is Old Vhaer for seafoam… I think. Maybe.”
“Laool,” I repeated in a language I’d thought as dead as the royal house of Khysal. “You speak it?
Old Vhaer?”
“Few Ravens do these days. I remember two or three words my uncle tried to teach me until he said I was a lost cause.” A bemused twitch rippled over his shapely lips, here one second and gone the next. “Malyr speaks it perfectly. Writes it, too.”
As was probably expected of a Raven prince. “What does dados’ta… No, that’s not right. How
did it go again? Dalos—”
“Delos’ta lay.”
“Yes.” That had been the title of the book in the library Malyr had wanted to read. “What does it mean?”
“It means The Endless Ache. Right in here, remember?” A tap against his chest. “It’s where our anoa longs for our fated mate, to a point it can be physically painful.”
Was that what made Malyr feel unwell? Longing? That he felt any emotion other than hate was hard to believe. Above me, wings flapped, making me lift my gaze to the sky. Nothing but an unkindness that must have roosted nearby before taking flight.
I circled the bead with my thumb, bringing my attention back to the stone. “It’s beautiful.”
“I used to find them aplenty at the bottom of riverbeds around my village,” Sebian said. “Sold them at the docks for good coin. Mother almost always caught me. Slapped me straight in the face and took my coins away for daring to leave the village.”
“A rule breaker.” I could admire that. “You spent all your childhood there?”
He nodded. “You have to fly over the mountain chain that surrounds the valley to get to the docks.
Perhaps the one reason why we went unbothered by war. That was, until Father decided we would
leave for the mainland and join the Ravens’ cause. Zaima loves, um… She used to love these stones.”
Used to love.
Used to… That he spoke of her in the past could only mean she was no more. Which shouldn’t affect me the way it did, slowing those pulses of excited energy. Not on this day, not when I was finally surrounded by so much life.
I turned toward the barbican, eager to explore, to experience. Shops. Stables. Taverns. There was still so much to see!
“How many months does it take to travel to Lanay on horseback?” I asked.
“Horseback? A fortnight? Two? Fifteen?” Sebian shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. With good winds coming from the south-west and little sleep? I can make it there in five days.”
Five days… That energy dropped all the way into my fingertips, tingling beneath my nails. What would it feel like to be so free? So untethered, you could reach the highest mountains and glide over the widest oceans, going wherever you pleased? Not for the first time, I harbored something other than contempt
for the Ravens.
It was envy.
High-pitched laughter had my attention drift up to the parapet walk. A small boy stood there, red- cheeked and snotty-nosed, clinging to the wooden rail. He whimpered more the harder he braced against those little hands that pushed at his back.
“Don’t be so scared!” the girl behind him shouted, giving a hard shove to his shoulder. “Jump,
Olivar! Maybe you’ll shift!”
My throat swelled shut.
Maybe?
My pulse quickened as the boy’s upper body drifted dangerously far over the rail. “If he doesn’t shift, he’ll break ten bones.”
“More like all of them.” Sebian came to a halt beside me. “It’s pretty high.”
I stared at him, flabbergasted, while the boy’s whimpers grew louder, digging a hole into my stomach. “Will you do nothing to stop them?”
A grin came over Sebian’s face. “Guess the rumor that Ravens make uncaring parents never reached you.”
My gaze wandered back up, guts tying into a ball when the group of children giggled and pushed harder. Then, with a half degree shift forward, the boy fell over the rail. He screamed. Gods, he screamed until my heart stopped inside my chest. Why wouldn’t he shift? Why didn’t he— A burst of shadows wafted up to the parapet, black tendrils weaving together into four small ravens. They flapped their wings at the children’s excited claps and landed to sit on the wooden rail shortly after.
“Finally! Well done, Olivar!” Sebian’s shout pierced my ears before he looked at me, once more carrying a rather smug grin. “You look paler than usual, Galantia. Don’t tell me your heart’s growing soft for us. Your father would be so disappointed.”
My teeth clenched for a moment, because he was absolutely right. “He was scared.”
“It was his first flight.” With a sparkling wink, Sebian placed his hand on the small of my back, gentling me back into a walk. “My father shouldered me one fine Sunday, saying that he was getting tired of dragging me everywhere on foot. Tossed me straight over a cliff. I shifted right before I hit the waves. The instinct to survive is too strong for our primal to ignore, no matter how scared some
children are of their first conscious shift.”
“He… tossed you over a cliff? Into the sea?” My core turned heavy, weighed down by the resonance of a dozen rules that had framed my childhood. “Sometimes, I snuck outside the walls and spent the afternoon watching the waves at the beach, flapping my arms, pretending to be a seagull that could fly far, far away.”
“Snuck out…” Sebian narrowed his eyes at the ground. “Sweetheart, Tidestone is right at the beach.”
His reaction added to that weight in my chest. What a terrible bore I was indeed. Nothing but a coddled little girl who knew nothing about anything and had seen nothing of anything.
I glanced back at how an older Raven girl climbed the ladder up the parapet, joining her friends.
One after another, they jumped over the rail. Those who waited their turns all clapped and giggled.
All but one.
The girl who’d tended to my hair the evening of the feast leaned against the battlement. A breeze tugged on those sparse black wisps that hung over the burnt side of her face. The other side looked as though it wanted to melt downward along with the rest.
“Why is that girl just standing there?”
Sebian’s gaze followed my line of sight. “Her name is Tjema. She no longer has her unkindness.”
“Why not? Because she lost her anoa?”
“Our primal is the one allowing us to shift. She lost it when your father came through a camp of displaced Ravens that had taken her in,” he said. “His soldiers caught some of her unkindness in a net and set them aflame—made certain their feathers smoldered enough they could no longer escape before they stabbed them. She only survived because her udnas, the ravens holding her human form, weren’t killed.”
My stomach shifted uncomfortably. I thought back on how skittish Tjema had been that day. How I, a Brisden, had caused her visible discomfort. Perhaps even fear was more justified than I’d first thought?
“There has to be more to this story.” Something to smother that guilt surfacing in my core, that empathy I couldn’t afford. “She still had her gift then, I take it. Perhaps she wielded it against my father’s soldiers?”
“Wielded it against them? Doing what, exactly? Suffocate them under shadowcloth?”
So she’d been a weaver. Harmless. “She’s a Raven. Our enemy.”
“Is she?” Sebian stopped and turned to face me, cocking his head slightly. “She’s a skinny girl with no gift and no ravens left to shift into… who happens to have black hair. Is she still a Raven, Galantia? Or is she now a human?”
That question took me aback, mostly because I had no answer, and… and now that buzzing energy was gone!
“I don’t know,” I bit out, annoyed by how this evening was taking a rather depressing turn. “What I do know is that this is war.”
“That easy, huh? Goddess help me, you’re so terribly obstinate sometimes.” His features hardened in a way I’d never witnessed on this man before, all his usual aloofness cracking away against his sharp cheekbones. “Is that what you tell yourself to justify the atrocities your father had committed against us? Still? After everything you read? Heard? Saw?”
With waning effectiveness. “What about your atrocities? You kill and pillage just the same. And you rape. Not a single woman in that village was spared that atrocity.”
“I have never—” he cut himself off, muscles jumping above his jaws. “Ask me how my sister
died.” When I remained still, he took a step toward me, clasped my chin between his thumb and pointer, and lifted my gaze to that swirl of emotions that sat at the depth of his green irises. “I said… ask me… how… Zaima… died.”
A foreboding chill trickled down my spine. “H-how did she die?”
“A hit to the head, because she wouldn’t stop fighting off the man who grunted over her like a beast. Even after her heart had stopped, he fucked into her, ripping her little body apart from the inside.” He held my gaze as though he wanted me to see the agony in his eyes, the pain he’d hid so perfectly behind his easy smiles and aloof demeanor. Until now. The sight fractured my heart, leaving no doubt that he spoke the truth. “I heard it all over a distance too far for my arrow to reach. Not that it would have mattered, because she was already dead. She was eleven, Galantia. A child who hadn’t even bled yet. Do you want to know who did it?” Against the way I shook my head, he leaned in closer, bringing his lips to my ear. “Your honorable Prince Domren.”
My body went ice-cold. “It can’t be.”
I shook my head again, clinging to my ignorance as if my life depended on it. Because it did! How could I ever share a bed with Prince Domren now that I know this? How could I bear his children?
How could I even want such a man to love me?
“Oh, sweetheart, you are so naïve, I can’t decide if it’s adorable or increasingly annoying.” He inhaled deeply, visibly trying to regain his mellow demeanor as he slowly blew out a long breath.
“Say it. Say, it is war.”
The words sat on my tongue for long moments, bitter, foul, rotten. “It is war.”
“One you started.” The sound of my words resonating back to me shook me to the marrow in my bones until Sebian jutted his chin back toward the barbican. “Turn around.”
My surroundings shrunk as though the high walls were creeping toward me. “But… but why?”
“You’re going back to your chamber,” he said as he grabbed my shoulder and bodily spun me around, just as faraway lightning scattered along the horizon. “Naïve little girls shouldn’t be out here once the sun sets.”
