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Vision? Like a magical vision? Why would I be part of a vision, yet they hadn’t known who I was upon my capture? My temples ached from all the blood trapped in my skull. I understood none of this.
Except for one thing.
This… fate—whatever that meant—Captain Asker wanted me for reasons I couldn’t grasp yet, but he also wanted me alive and unharmed. That knowledge was no small comfort.
“Fantastic…” Sebian mumbled before he abruptly stopped and lowered me off his shoulder.
My ruined shoes sunk into a blanket of moss as I swayed and glanced around the copse of trees we’d entered. Several tents sat nestled between evergreen shrubs, as abandoned as the half-burned logs in the nearby fire pit.
“Where did Asker go?” Sebian asked loudly.
I frowned at him before I glanced about the silent camp. Water bladders hung from low branches, rolled-up furs were stacked on a stool beside one of the tents, a wooden bowl with a half-eaten chunk of bread sat beside the cold fire pit… there was nobody here. Who was he talking to?
“Malyr…” Sebian lifted his gaze toward one of the firs while pinching the bridge of his nose. “It took me five days of scouting from the sky to find this damn village. In the rain. I didn’t have a decent meal in just as long, and I’d like to be home before the clouds break again and soak me to the downs. Where’s that damn fate?”
I followed his line of sight, stomach dropping when I finally spotted the raven that sat quietly on a branch. Head tilted, the bird watched me, the bit of light filtering in through the canopy casting a blueish hue over its black plumes.
When ahrk-hrkresounded behind me, I spun toward the noise. Yet another raven sat on a young oak across, whetting its long, curved beak on the rough bark. Another perched beside it with its head tucked away beneath a wing, yet one of its eyes poked out from between feathers.
Kra-kra!
The raven’s call drove a shiver down my spine as I turned my head toward the one that sat in the shadows beneath a shrub. It tilted its head this way and that, watching me. Another stretched its wings, flapping them a bit where the animal sidestepped along the branch of a maple. Watching me.
All of them watching me.
It unnerved me, the way ten pitch-black eyes scrutinized me where I’d only ever been ignored…
Wings flapping brought my gaze back to the one on the ground by the shrub. The bird had taken flight, gliding toward me. Another shifted in my periphery. A third dove from the oak to my right, flying my way.
When a sudden flare of wind tousled my strands, I let out a little squeal and ducked just as a raven flew over my head. It circled around a tree, then dove straight at me, along with the other four, making me stagger back a step.
Wafts of black shadows twisted and whirled from their feathers as they all descended at rapid speed. They clashed in a burst of darkness and black feathers. Some drifted away on the current, while others floated to the ground right in front of me, gathering around a set of black boots.
My heart quickened, filling my veins with liquid terror the higher my gaze wandered along black breeches, an equally dark but intricately tooled leather cuirass, a set of impressive shoulder guards shaped like pointed feathers… until I saw his face.
Then my heart cracked.
The shocking intensity of the man’s empty, passionless stare sent an ominous sensation through my body, paralyzing me. Long open strands as dark as pitch framed smooth skin, angular cheekbones, a firm jaw, and a chin held high.
It gave him an aura of forlornness. A sort of apathetic look filled with old sorrow, with his narrow lips in a flat line, his tall stature at ease, the tendons along his neck unmoving, the chest beneath his cuirass lifting slowly with each inhale. He was young, couldn’t have reached his thirtieth name day yet. Not nearly.
Sebian stepped up beside me with a shake on his head and a smirk lining his lips. “That shift was a bit dramatic, even for the Lord of Shadows.”
Dread expanded in my chest. Oh gods, of course it had to be him who’d decimated that village, killing the men, raping the women. What would he do with me?
I held Malyr’s cold stare, trying not to shiver in the throe of his unsettling presence. “You are the one they call the Lord of Shadows?”
Malyr’s head tilted sideways—a gesture so similar to the one of his raven, it amplified how my skin cooled at his nearness. How panic clasped at my throat, choking me, making it clear that I stood before the Raven responsible for slaughter, rape, famine, and war.
Chaos.
Terror carved itself a hollow in my chest. How could this be? He was too young to hold such power, too inexperienced to defeat nearly every lord between Tidestone and the southern seas. Or was he simply evil enough by nature to spread such mayhem over the realm?
“This is her?” His dangerously dark voice spilled into the forest, pebbling my skin. “The young woman from Asker’s vision?”
“I fucking hope so, because I’m not going back to that writhing shadow-mess you left behind at the village,” Sebian said and slowly turned away, gesturing me to follow. “Where is he? I want this settled and done with.”
Malyr reached his hand for my face, cupping my chin. The warm touch sent a flinch through me, surprising in the way his thumb traced the line of my bottom lip. He turned my face to the left. To the right. Up. Down. Scrutinized me from every angle, shifting my face toward every bit of light the forest offered.
