Page 18

The shift comes on like a tide, unstoppable once it begins. My bones ache, stretching and hollowing, my skin prickling as if flames are licking me from within. The magic screams. Crimson feathers burst across me in waves, catching the gold of morning sun and burning like embers. My wings tear through the air as they unfurl. Freedom and bloodlust surge through me. Talons curl, long and hooked and wicked. My beak is sharp enough to split a man’s skull in one strike.

This form of mine embodies death itself, and death has always fit me better than my own skin. I was cursed—blessed—with the most powerful form of shifting the old stories ever whispered: the Morrígan’s raven. A myth laced with blood and venom. Talons made for rending flesh from bone. A beak made for piercing hearts. A body of pure muscle, built for the sky. Seven feet of wingspan that can blot out the moon.

The magic it demands leaves me hollowed out after, but I’ve always had a taste for beautiful things. And when I shift, my feathers are not the common black of carrion birds. They are deep crimson and bruised violet, shimmering bloodred beneath the sun, glistening nightshade violet beneath the stars.

My talons dig into the earth, cracking the fallen branches beneath them as I spring upward. My wings spread farther, swallowing the morning light, and with a thunder of feathers I take to the sky.

The wind screams and suddenly I see faces, twelve of them flashing like lantern light in the dark—twelve pairs of eyes, twelve gasps, twelve silences. Zorren is the thirteenth, the thirteenth soul that I had almost taken. The memory slices through me before I can stop it. My wings falter mid-beat and I force them steady, shoving the ghosts back into whatever corner they crawled from.

Magda’s shoreline spreads out far below in a fractured ribbon, white sand bleeding into streaks of volcanic black where ancient fire once kissed the earth. Higher and higher I climb until the clouds brush my face and the mist cools my feathers. From up here, Magda looks small, almost delicate. But on the ground, she is everything. My territory. My world.

Beyond her borders stretches the ocean, vast and endlessly hungering. Beneath its glittering surface dwell beasts older than memory, Sirens with voices spun from silk and poison, kappas with their bone-crushing grips, mermaids whose beauty is every bit as perilous as the schemes lurking behind their smiles. The sea has no mercy for the careless and neither do I. With the awaiting blue beneath me, I cut across the wind toward the kingdom of my enemies.

I miss the ocean more than anything. Every day away from her is another grain of sand slipping through the hourglass.

I’m lucky to have Nyra. She always brings seawater to drink so I can feed the siren inside me. She keeps my secret like her own life depends on it. Maddoc, too, would leave a glass of it on my nightstand each night he would stay, a quiet kindness for a creature that would send any other man running. Knowing this could possibly never happen again sends a shock of pain through my heart.

All I want is to dive into the deep again, to feel the ocean's weightless darkness close over me, but I’ll never be able to, not with the burden I carry. My only solace is knowing that if I can’t return, I can at least make the place I’ll leave behind safe for the ones I care about. And that means ending whatever game the king and Silas are playing, tearing their board to splinters before they can crown themselves victors.

I’ve heard rumors the royals are in league with the worst of the known species. Species most, including me, don’t dare speak of. The nyx, for example. Just one could bring me to my knees. I’d be helpless and vulnerable, two things I resent feeling.

They’d take their time draining the magic from me thread by thread. I’d feel it as each vein in my body ruptured, as my blood turned against me, spilling from the inside out. It would be a slow, intimate, agonizing death.

I was born of shifter and siren blood, dark magic, and whatever the hell my father is. Not from the blood and bone of a human, the way most beings are made. I was never meant to exist.

How I survived those fragile infant years, I don’t know. Maybe the ocean herself had a hand in it. Maybe she regrets that mercy now. She kept me alive, and I grew to become an exceptional killer.

Ironic.

I was saved once. Sirena plucked me from a life that would have been slow, suffocating, and unseen. I will never stop owing her for that. The only way I know to repay that debt is by making sure Mira never shares my fate.

My mother is the most sick, twisted, and deadly siren of them all. If she ever caught me in her waters—which span the entire ocean—she’d have me hunted down and caged just as she did when I was an infant, leaving me half-alive, saltwater filling my lungs, darkness pressing in until light was just a memory. Drowning without dying. Breathing without living. And when she’s finished with me, I would vanish, erased from every story.

Mira wouldn’t survive that. I need her to survive. When the time comes, I know I’ll do the impossible thing, whatever it costs me. But she’s still growing for now, still untouched by the weight of our world. She has what I never did: a childhood. She’d felt the love of a mother. She was raised by a father who would set every ship at sea ablaze before letting anyone even look at her.

The wind lifts me higher, my wings cutting through the fading light. I skim over the endless stretch of ocean, its surface catching the molten colors of a dying sun, pastel pink bleeding into blood orange, into violet, into deep gold as night gathers at the edges. Another day’s flight still lies between me and my destination. Soon the moon comes out, shimmering silver streaks across the ocean's surface.

When pirate ships cross my path, I slip above the cover of the clouds. No one needs to glimpse the mythical raven in the sky.

As a shifter, you don’t choose your form; rather, your form chooses you. The books in Magda’s tiny library all agree on that. It’s not luck or something you can train yourself to do. It’s a gift you’re born with, and you learn to live with it. Adapt to it. Make it your own. I spent so many hours in that library trying to make sense of what little information we know about shifters. Not much has been uncovered. Shifters are seen as a form of dark magic, hiding behind a skin that isn’t their own. Most are killed, if they’re even found out.

I was given two forms. The first: an alley cat. A shadow between shadows, small enough to slip through barred windows, quick enough to vanish before anyone thinks to grab me. No one questions a stray.

The second: the Morrígan’s raven. Black as midnight and red as spilled blood when the light catches. A war-bringer’s omen with wings strong enough to carry death across any distance. Without the gods’ gift of flight, I’d still be bound to Magda’s soil, rotting with the rest of them. Instead, I can cross oceans and put my beak to the throats of royals overseas who need reminding why my name should make them shiver. This time, the king’s head is on the line.

Below me, a royal boat cuts toward Shoreline Village, its deck glittering with gold chains. Young royals—loud, arrogant, and oblivious—laugh as if the world belongs to them. My shadow passes over them unnoticed.

And then I see him. A broad-shouldered man disembarks a ship, the shape of his jaw strikingly familiar. Maddoc. My wings falter for half a beat before I catch the air again. It can’t be. It’s too early. He wouldn’t have made it here yet, would he? Surely his ship wasn’t fast enough.

I climb higher and farther out of sight, keeping pace with the wind. Letting the thought of Maddoc fall out of my head, I try to focus on saving him, not being with him right now. Showing up in Shoreline Village will only cause commotion. Whispers would start, and every whisper always made its way to the king.

By the next day, the air becomes heavier and thicker. Magic thrums in the currents, ancient and hungry. Coral Haven is close now. Every beat of my wings brings me nearer to the king’s territory and the reason I came. It's time His Majesty and I have a long-overdue chat.

Coral Haven finally appears in all its cruel glory. The stake in the middle of the town square burns high, flames clawing at the sky, taller than the buildings that hem it in. My ears catch the sound next, sharp, splitting screams that could cut bone. Witches tonight. I can feel their magic spewing into the air along with their screams. The whole city gathers to watch the fire eat them alive. They call themselves a kingdom of care, but the second someone is born with magic, they are branded as a devil. Fools. Burning a witch is never smart. Even in ashes, a witch is just as powerful.

I keep low, gliding beneath the clouds until I slip into the King’s Grove. The ancient trees weave a canopy of shadow that swallows me whole. My talons grip a thick branch before I shift back into my skin. The two-day flight has wrung me dry—ravens like me can easily cross seas without rest, but the human body always pays the price.

The fog lies heavy, thick enough to mask the daylight entirely. I sink into the crook of the branch, letting the bark bite into my back. My black cloak wraps around me, swallowing me in a shroud of warmth and shadow. To anyone below, I am nothing but another patch of darkness in the trees. My eyes drift shut. I will need every ounce of strength I can recover before stepping into the king’s castle. Sleep claims me. Soon, I’ll wake ready to prowl through the night.