Page 81 of Heart of the Raven Prince

“Don’t forget, Caden,” Yasminda says, swallowing hard despite fear etched across her face. Her words may be quiet, but they are no less strong. “You are worthy.”

I jump up the second the words are out of her mouth, but the resounding crack that fills the hall has me stopping. My wide eyes are trained on Yasminda’s neck, on the odd angle it’s twisted in. It takes a moment for the sound of snapping bone to connect with the image of her bent body. I don’t fully comprehend it until I see the light leave her eyes. Lochlan broke her neck.

He shoves her off his lap, her lifeless body hitting the ground as he shrugs and says, “Where is your other little pet, brother? I’m still hungry.”

Pain bursts in my fists before I’m even aware I’m attacking him. Arawyn shouts behind us, guards rush forward, but I barely pay attention to it. I’m focused only on burying my fists as deep into his face as I can. I punch him again and again, raining down a flurry of blows. His nose breaks, and his skin splits. Blood flecks me as I continue to beat him mercilessly, roaring as I become nothing but a beast hellbent on revenge.

The bastard is still breathing when the guards pull me off him. That’s when I turn my rage on them. I break a guard's arm and steal his sword, running him through with it as he screams. Kicking his body off the sword, I turn in time to slice the head off a second guard. I have just raised my sword to bring it down on the third and final guard when pain explodes from my chest, and I am lost in a red haze.

I do not move. I can’t. I’m no longer in control of my body.

Lochlan lies coughing on the ground, his face a bloody mess. The queen is standing, glaring at me as she holds her hand out in front of her, a swirling red mist seeping from her curled fist. I watch behind the cage in my mind as she opens a rift in the world, and I am powerless to stop as I walk through. I’m stepping directly into a dungeon cell. She doesn’t speak a single word to me; she’s angrier than I have ever seen her. Arawyn never wastes a chance to get the last word in.

There are no windows, just one cell door that leads to a dank, unlit hallway barely visible from the thin slit meant to pass food through. I can hear the distant sounds of torture—the crack of a whip followed by muted wails. Blood stains the walls and floors, mixing in with the dingy water that drips from the ceiling. The rift closes behind me and the moment it does, the queen’s control leaves me. I gasp like I am coming up for air, clutching at the throbbing pain in my chest before I fall to my knees.

Red mist swirls in shackles over my wrists, cutting off my power. I can’t simply open a rift and walk out; I can’t even invoke the runes on my arm and summon Doran. I am left with nothing to do but listen to the revolving sound of Yasminda’s neck breaking as it echoes in my mind. I have failed every single woman that has ever come in contact with me. I am a plague in every sense of the word. Even when I try to do something right for a change, it results in someone’s death.

And next on that list is Fawn.

“What is a little fawn doing hunting such powerful prey?”

I’m pointing my bow at the ethereal creature of green and gold. That’s when I realize it’s not my bow, but Caden’s. Or rather, his father’s. And the end of the arrow is painted in twisting golden ivy. I recognize the woman, she’s the same one I saw inside the woods outside of the cave. Back when Caden was training me to control demons.

Caden.

Something pulls in me at the thought of him. Almost like if I focus hard enough, I can feel that shadowy trace of his mind. But it is just outside of my reach. The woman tilts her head, her woven crown of birchwood and spiderwebs shining bright with dew. She’s radiant under a beam of sunlight, and I have to squint against the sight of her. I didn’t know who she was the first time I stumbled upon her, but as I stare into her moss green eyes, I know exactly who I’m talking to. Grimacing, I take aim directly at her heart as I snap, “Why would you do it? Why would you bless our realm just to leave us defenseless?”

“You assume I have left you defenseless,” Niamh says, her voice like the first call of a songbird returning after winter.

“You’ve abandoned us to a demon,” I shout, my voice echoing around the sunny glen we are standing in.

“Would you have rather never met the demon if it means never finding him?”

Tears burn my eyes as I glare at her, shaking with rage.

“How dare you,” I whisper before raising my voice and shrieking, “How fucking dare you!”

“I am only asking you to be honest with yourself.”

Insects buzz by me, birds calling softly in the trees that surround us. The blue flame of my power is white-hot, and I want to take that visceral rage and burn all this quiet serenity to ashes.

“You want honesty?” I spit out between clenched teeth. “Well, honestly, I wish you and every other god would go fuck themselves. I wish you had never touched our world.” She does not respond, stoically watching and gently smiling, which only enrages me more. “I want to go back. I want my life before I realized you and all your fucking children ever existed. I want to scrub away the nightmare of this world from my mind and wake to find it all one fucked up dream.”

I’m crying. Silent, angry tears leave a heated streak on my face. I’ve started now, and there’s no stopping it as I hiss, “I want to want that. But I don’t. Not truly. Because the most fucked up part is I’m terrified that changing any of it means I won’t get to find him. I walked through hell, and it must have rotted my soul, because the real truth is I would gladly do it all over again if it means we are given the chance to meet.”

Tears drip off my face as I hold that bitter, damning truth in my heart. Hopeless sobs may shake through my body, but I hold the arrow steady toward her heart as I whisper, “Are you happy now? You’ve proved just how damned I am.”

She grins at me, like I have just come to some deeply buried realization.

“You remind me why I fell in love with humans in the first place,” Niamh says, flashing me that infuriatingly constant smile. “Arawyn never truly understood your kind, and their ability to feel so deeply. Her soul bleeds for no one but herself, and because of that she covets your kind. She is consumed by her jealousy of your life, your heart.” She looks directly at my chest, where my heart is beating a war song. She shakes her head slowly as she says, “You are not damned, daughter. You are bound, as we all are. Even my hands are tied. To go against the rules set by the universe would mean to become like Arawyn. I could not change the future, but I never left my children defenseless.”

She steps forward, but I do not lower the bow, continuing to aim my arrow directly at her.

“I have helped my children when I can, in the ways I am allowed.” I think back on our first meeting, when she whispered the words in my mind that woke some innate ability to control demons. It’s one of the only reasons I survived the first trial. Her eyes are sad but unwavering as she says, “I could not change the path of the future, but I was able to connect two diverging roads.”

Once again, I think of that ghost path in the woods—the one I thought led to nowhere, that I now realize led directly to Fomoria. To Caden. She stops, standing in front of my nocked arrow.

“I cannot end her life. So, I connected the two beings that have a chance to.” Niamh looks up as the clouds begin to darken and a red moon starts to rise. She frowns at the sky and says, “You should wake up now, daughter. You’ve slept longer than you realize.”