Page 84 of White Raven

“How do I put up with you assholes?” Brynn peered up at the sky.

“Please!” Bjørn and Onyx both laughed. “You are just as bad! Wasn’t it you last time letting off steam?”

She rolled her eyes, turning her horse for the road and galloping after Renyx. Bjørn and Sven trailed after.

“Come on.” Onyx’s hand went to my lower back, nudging me back to Fluffy, Munch curled up between his ears sound asleep.

Nerves hopped around in my stomach, my heels digging into the ground.

“What?” Onyx peered back at me.

In Shadow Rift I had stood out enough with my silver hair, but here I was truly an outsider. The one who didn’t belong.

Onyx stepped up to me, his eyes tracking mine like he was picking the thoughts from my head.

He reached over, pulling the hood up around my face. “Keep your hood up and stay close to me.” His knuckles brushed over the tie that now closed my cloak. “No one here will touch you with my mark—they wouldn’t dare touch the property of a Night Hunter—but I still don’t want to take any chances with you.”

A shiver ran over my spine, and I was afraid it wasn’t all from fear or anger at his demeaning declaration.

As he pulled me to the horse and the sleeping groundling, I glanced over my shoulder at the moon. The force it drew from within itself was the opposite of how the sun burned from the outside, yet it felt just as powerful. As though at one time the moon and sun had worked together. They were counterparts, not enemies of night and day.

As Fluffy trotted into Carrion Crow, my mouth parted again in shock. My mind was ready to see something similar if not worse to Blackwater. Rundown buildings caked in grime, criminals and charlatans infesting the lawless town.

That was not at all what I saw.

Rows and rows of painted buildings in soft colors of pinks, salmons, greens, blues, and yellows, trimmed in white, reflected off the darkness and mirrored the brightness of the moon, glowing under the dozens of torches lighting the lane.

People milled around, packing up from the market or heading into a pub, going about their business, their outfits replicating the colors of their homes, bringing a subtle vivacity to the dark.

I had lived my life in white and dull earthy hues. Colors were left to the environment, like we were a mere canvas for nature to paint on. Only occasionally would a woman dare to thread a darker shade of ribbon in her hair at a festival, signaling herself open for a lover.

The deep red outfit I wore would have been scandalous, standing out like a harlot, a single red rose defying the snow.

“What?” Onyx rumbled behind me, and I swear I could hear a smile in his tone. “Not what you thought?”

“No.” I shook my head. When you think Night Ravens are nothing but bloodthirsty beasts who had no use for a real society, Carrion Crow was a shock to the system. “There’s so much color.” And civility, I thought in my mind.

The structures were weathered and time-beaten, giving it a shade of grittiness, but it still was nothing like I thought a Northern town would be. The large moon hung over the village, the lake’s surface shimmering with its light. Market stalls stretched down the road, selling various items from soap to furs. Women, men, and children minded some of the booths, while others looked to be closing down for the day. The town bustled with energy as the population moved around the streets, going in and out of the pastel-shaded buildings. Many of the places had a black raven at the crux of the roofline, a symbol of their king. A reminder I was in enemy territory.

“I had actually imagined you all picking your teeth with your toenails.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Bjørn,” Onyx replied.

“And drinking the blood from babies.”

“Why limit it to just babies?”

I snorted, jabbing my elbow back into him.

“The only blood we crave here . . .” His mouth grazed my ear. “. . . is that of the Day Ravens.”

A shiver shimmered across my shoulders, narrowing the air to my chest.

A noise came from Fluffy’s head, the groundling waking up, blinking its large eyes. It lifted its head, his twiggy hair sticking up in all directions. His huge eyes widened further, the light from the inverted sun shining in them.

A clicking sound came from him, Munch’s mouth parting, like he had never seen anything like the moon either. He jerked back, burying himself under Fluffy’s mane, chittering and clicking in terror.

“Munch.” I reached for him, realizing he didn’t know what it was. Like me, he probably had never left his territory. In the Shadow Rift you never knew the sun or the moon. “Hey . . .” I picked up the horse’s hair, peering at him cowering, rolled into the tiniest ball. “It’s okay. It won’t hurt you.”