Page 22 of White Raven

“Fuck!” I heard him at the same time my brain understood what was about to happen.

The river dropped, plunging to the unknown.

I could feel him trying to swim to the shore, fight the pull of the current, but the river had other ideas for us.

He reached around, tearing off my gag. “Hold your breath!” he bellowed over the rush. Panic pounded in my chest, but I didn’t have time to do anything more than suck in oxygen before we were plunged over the ledge. My stomach dropped as my body fell. Tumbling and rolling, my body plummeted from the high waterfall to the rocky pool below.

Pain.

It became a distant sensation as I hit the rough water, the cascade battering my bones, the river whipping me around, pulling me under, until I had no understanding of up or down. The deep instinct to survive had me fighting futilely against the bonds tying my arms behind my back.

The river was a force which took no prisoners. My lungs filled with water, the heavy cotton of my betrothal dress pulling me down to my grave. The outfit that once represented a new beginning, start of a new life, would be my burial dress.

When someone dies in our culture, they are painted with ceremonial death runes, symbols marked all over their face and body, for our deities to accept. They are dressed in a white burial costume of bones and feathers and sent down the Silver Feather River to the Forsaken Waters of the Veiled Lands, while mourners cry and wail with the sounds of our ancestors. When the dead reach the island of the Veiled Lands, their spirits fly free with Huginn and Muninn to the kingdom in between life and death. Ravens’ bodies can die, but our essences continue to live on, freed from this world and honored in the next. It was considered a privilege to die in such a way, except I knew I didn’t deserve peace. I hadn’t earned the honor.

What happens when you aren’t worthy of their call?

My mind could no longer produce coherent thoughts, the fight leaving my body. A calm stilled me as I sank further. Darkness spread over my vision, the panic through my body quieting, the river enveloping me in its watery tomb.

Then the quiet was brutally ripped from me, serenity taken in a flash of light and sound.

“No!” A growl pulsed through me, dragging me from the depths of darkness. “Breathe!”

Pressure came over my mouth and chest, air being forced down my throat and pumped from my lungs. Water exploded out of my mouth in a gush, jackknifing my body. My eyes burst open, and hacking and choking, I fought for a shred of air. The peace of my demise was overturned in desperation for my life, yet I couldn’t seem to break through the surface and find relief. I gurgled with liquid, drowning all over again.

“Fuck!”

He rolled me on my side, my face scraping against rocks as I felt a knife cut at the bonds behind my back. The rope broke away, unleashing my arms and freeing something in my lungs.

Water surged up my throat. Heaving, I vomited up the river, my chest spasming and burning as I gasped for oxygen. Agony increasingly returned to my body, pumping blood into my arms, shaking them with fatigue from being pinned for so long. Curling onto my side, I hacked and wheezed through the pain, tears spilling down my face.

He lay on his back next to me, coughing and sucking in air, his gaze on the sky above, water dripping down his skin. I could see his blade still caught in his pants, but the axe and spear were gone, lost to the river’s bottom like an offering to the waterway to let us pass. Neither one of us moved or spoke. The only sound was the rushing river nipping at our feet.

He had saved my life, but it wasn’t out of kindness. There was no doubt that dying by the river’s hand would have been better for me.

Trembling, I blinked my eyes, the light so distant behind the western tree line, it had to be deep into the night. I twisted my head, noting the waterfall was nowhere in view. I had no idea how far north the river had taken us, but the terrain was flatter, the trees only lightly topped with snow, the air warmer, as though the weather and landscape were shifting, taking me further from the wintery mountainous region where I grew up.

Was I completely out of reach of the dogs picking up my scent?

Reading my thoughts, the Northerner sat up with a grunt, his voice even more gravelly and raw. “Get up,” he demanded boorishly, rising to his feet, not even giving me the chance before yanking me up. His gaze went down to the rope on the ground.

Everything in me rebelled, my heart thumping at the idea of being bound again. “No.” My bruised vocal cords barely impelling the sound from my lips, my head shaking. Pleading.

Picking up a strand, he huffed out a snarl. The rope was sliced in small pieces, too short to use. “If you try to run? To scream . . .” His eyes blazed with hostility. “I don’t have to repeat myself, do I?” There wasn’t an ounce of doubt, he would follow through on his threat.

I nodded curtly, our gazes locking in a battle.

“Move.” His grip on my elbow tightened, pulling me along with him. The water-logged dress made me stagger, my body fighting fatigue, falling into him.

A noise came from his throat and he whirled back on me, forcing me to step back. Yanking the knife from his pants, he leaned over, hacking into the fabric. A gasp burned up my throat, the cloth tearing away above my knees.

“What are you doing?” Panic simmered in my chest, coiling my stomach, the cool air slithering over my skin.

As open as our kind was about our bodies and sex, we never showed our legs. Bosoms, yes; women put those on display every chance they got, but revealing our legs in public would have been scandalous. Especially for the White Raven. Weather and customs kept our dresses long.

“You can’t walk with all this extra weight.” He stood up, tossing the bottom half of my dress into the river. I watched it float away, tumbling in the current before disappearing downstream. The occasion that dress had been made for, the reverence of what it symbolized, specifically designed for the marriage of the White Raven. Now it was nothing more than rubbish.

I had felt so beautiful and special when I put it on, believing the runes marked over my skin would bless me in matrimony, a new life set before me. The memories felt so naïve and silly—the girl who stood looking at herself in the mirror, playing dress-up, never imagining what was ahead of her.