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Ihovered my marred, upturned hand in front of Galantia’sanoa,where I’d placed the little female into a silk-filled basket at the edge of my desk. Tiny kernels rilled from the pile of grains sitting in the center of my pecked palm: a colorful mix of oats, cracked corn, ground crickets, and dried blackberries—all of it going equally ignored.
She turned her head left.
My hand followed.“Spisa.” Eat.
She turned her head right.
My hand followed.“Spisa, shå.” Eat, please.
The mangy-looking thing buried her head beneath her creamy-white wing, shutting me out so completely, it felt as if the heavy iron door of my Tidestone cell slammed closed on me once more, sealing me away in the cold, dank darkness. What if I’d frayed our bond to a degree it would never recover?
But was that not a good thing? It wasn’t like I intended to bond myself to Galantia. No, I did not.
I should not.
I was not fit to bond.
“Stop pestering her. It will only get youranoato escape your form again so he can try to peck your fucking eyes out.” Sebian walked over from where he’d silently stood by the window as we waited for Asker, scooped up the little white raven with one hand, then reached the other out before me. “You know full well she refuses food from you, along with everything else. All you’ll achieve here is that she’ll fucking starve herself. Give it up.”
My teeth ground together until they ached at the roots, the entire left side of my jaw still swollen from our fight. Whatever gentle heart Sebian carried in his chest, his iron fist made up for it in spades—no matter those bruises my shadows had left all over his neck and throat.
On my best friend.
Formerbest friend, apparently.
I poured the grains into his palm before I sank deeper into my chair, a fine sheen of sweat covering my forehead with how I’d ordered the maids to keep every single hearth across my private rooms generously fed to keep the bird from shivering.Stolen,Marla had told us about theanoa’sgift shortly after she’d escaped to Deepmarsh, explaining the bird’s poor health, her forlorn demeanor, and why I hadn’t sensed that Galantia was my fated mate.
A dark chuckle escaped me.
Oh, but Ihadfelt it.
Had felt a million things the moment I’d first set eyes on her when she was but a little girl—all of them equally confusing. Back then, I’d blamed it on the fever that had nearly dragged me to my grave. But when our paths had crossed again in that copse of trees, my little white dove, all grown up…?
An inexplicable force of raw want had surged within me that day, its intensity as undeniable as it had been bewildering. Her keen hazel gaze, the way my moniker had made her lift her chin. Fuck… even the cascade of her creamy hair—everything about Galantia had stirred an untamed, insatiable sense of possessiveness within me. I had wanted her in a way I’d never experienced before,a human.
It had been… wrong.
Until I’d heard her name.
And then it had been unforgivable.
“Shh, I’ll take care of you now.” Sebian lowered himself onto the elongated, red-upholstered reclining chair that stood before the window, opening his hand in offering. That was all it took for the little bird to peek out from under her wing, then slowly peck at the meal. “There you go. That’s my good girl. You’re so skinny, you wouldn’t even feed a cat.”
The sight gnawed at my insides—scratching, scraping—shadows convoluting my chest with the same density they fogged my mind. Pitch-black darkness settled onto my thoughts. Who was he to feed my mate? To care for her? A simple pathfinder? I could kill him with a single thought, having him twitch on the floor before he even realized—
You mustn’t succumb to its darkness.
I closed my eyes against the echo of Mother’s words, breathing down the anger in my core until reason slowly trickled back into my mind. Without Sebian, I wouldn’t be alive. He’d been with me for years, and reliably so. Weak as she was, the little female needed nourishment. If anything, I should be grateful that Sebian got her to eat.
I turned my gaze away, allowing the pang of pain beneath my sternum to twist deeper into my chest. The same one that had plagued me countless times: the morning I’d found Galantia in Sebian’s bed after the storm, the night when she’d first come against his tongue, and pretty much every fucking night thereafter, where she’d fallen to sleep inhisarms.
I hadn’t understood back then why the sight of her toes wedged beneath his calf had made me so… fucking… angry. Certainly not because I was jealous. No, how could I have been? Wanting a human woman for myself? Even worse, aBrisden? Ridiculous.
That pain in my chest?
Unrelated. Merely a coincidence.
Nothing but the Endless Ache, I’d told myself, that untied bond beneath my ribs aching for my mate.My bright-featheredanoaley, such a rarity that few ever met a white Raven in their lifetime, raised by the one man I hated the most. Ah, I’d been so stupid, so blinded by these fucking… shadows at my core. Always shadows. Only shadows!
