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I followed Risa out the western gate, glancing back over my shoulder whenever she wasn’t looking. Was that what I’d heard? The squeaks of rats and the scuttling of little claws over rock?
“Rats aren’t that big,” I said.
I looked up at the dreary sky, catching a whiff of the salty breeze that drifted between the walls. Waves clashed against the nearby cliffs upon which sat Tidestone, rumbling to the squawk of a gray gull that glided on the wind toward the deep, wide sea.
My chest expanded at the sight. “Where do you think it’s going?”
Risa abruptly stopped. “Oh, no, we’ve come too late, Galantia.”
She waved at the path that passed through the meadows that stretched out before Tidestone, strewn with field stones as big as my head. Apple trees grew like soldiers standing perfectly in line to one side of the road—all of them empty.
I pointed at a lonely cart that stood by the edge, holding woven baskets, each filled with red and yellow apples. “What about those?”
“It wasn’t our sweat that shook those off the trees.”
“But trees grown on my father’s lands.” I released Risa’s hand, climbed onto the cart, and lifted an empty grain sack from a basket of apples. “We only need one. Nobody will miss it.”
“Catch him!” The shout coming from within the gate made me jump up. “Don’t let the prisoner escape!”
My heart thundered inside my chest when my eyes caught on a tall, older boy who slunk around barrels. He sprinted down the path, his long black hair knotted and filthy, his trousers torn, the green-bruised legs poking out beneath like thin stilts of brittle wood. He frantically looked back, as if a wolf was after him. Where had he come from?
Within the blink of an eye, tendrils of black shadows whirled around his wobbly legs, his skinny arms, his sunken-in cheeks. His bare foot caught on one of the field stones, ripping him to the ground.
But he never hit it.
Instead, he burst into a flock of one, two… five ravens. The black-plumed birds flapped, croaking their hoarsekra-kras, but they never left the ground. As though their wings had been broken, they all jostled and rolled across the path, never taking flight.
With a surge of black feathers that danced on the breeze, the birds came back together, only for the boy to keep running. Falling. Pushing back up and running again.
My fingers numbed.
A Raven.
Nothing but warlocks and witches with magic as black as their plumes, Father always said, and blood like pitch in their corrupted hearts. They were wayward beings. Wretched. Corrupted. Vile.
“Don’t let the Raven escape!” one of the guards shouted. “Catch him!”
My muscles tensed.
Yes, we had to catch him!
As if curled by the chill running through my limbs, my fingers tightened around the woven edge of the apple basket. I looked at the boy, then I tipped the basket with all my strength.
Dozens of apples rolled off the cart and over the ground. He stepped on one, which ripped his pale-bruised leg out from underneath him. Paddling his arms like useless wings, he stumbled and fell.
Thud.
His head hit a field stone, rocking his face sideways. His matted hair fell away from a birthmark that sat right beneath his earlobe, black and round.
The boy stared at me, unblinking. And he continued to stare at me even as the crushed rock beneath his face swelled with blood, forming a perfect circle around his pallid features.
Not black like Father said.
Crimson.
“What is this?” Father’s deep baritone resonated the area to the hoofbeats of his stallion before he brought the horse to a stop. He dismounted, casting his hazel eyes—which I had inherited from him—over the dead boy first before he finally looked at me. “Your mother will be out of her wits if she learns you left the walls.” He looked over at the boy once more. “What happened here?”
Another guard bowed his head as he slowly approached Father. “The prince escaped with that… evil magic of his.”
