Feathers So Vicious (Court of Ravens, #1)

by Liv Zander

At his gesture, the lutes and harps turned as still as the air before a storm, only to flare up again in a different tune. A familiar tune. One that whirled through my chest, stirring up a tangle of shock. This was not a Raven dance.

My heart pounded in my throat to the lively rhythm of a song I’d heard a hundred times—during celebrations in Tidestone’s great hall, betrothal feasts in the courtyard, and my dancing lessons with Risa. But… but how could this be? My stomach dropped alongside the deep hum of the lutes as I looked up at Malyr. “This is not the Dance of Ten Feathers.” He stepped closer until our bodies touched. “No, it is not.”

“You are my betrothed, my wife before long, the future queen of Dranada and Vhaerya. Before the eyes of the kingdom, I will forever show you the honor and respect that is due.” His fingers slid up along my spine, only to cup the back of my head, gently pressing until the side of my face sunk against his chest. Lips brushed over my temple, nuzzling me before they whispered, “But make no mistake, little white dove… I have every intention of being my cruel, cold-hearted self with you in the privacy of our chambers.”

The way he must have observed how I preferred my hair loose. That moment when he’d watched me dance with a smile on his face. How he’d closed his eyes during our almost-kiss. This very dance, and how he’d pulled my face to rest against his chest. I held his pensive stare. “And if I were not a Brisden?”

“Yeh ash valtem flig ak’ya,” he said quickly, releasing his hold of me just as fast as he mumbled, “I will forever fly with you.”

“My future wife doesn’t trust me, you see. She thinks I will break our betrothal the moment she gives us Marla. What better way to secure her success than have my heir in her belly?” Heat itched along my earlobes. Oh, for fuck’s sake, could I ever be a step ahead of him?

“Fuck, sweetheart, I’m not going to last. Do you want it, hmm? Do you want my cum?” “Yes, she does,” Malyr growled behind me, thrusting into me more urgently, sending hot, taunting spasms through me. “She’s being such a nice slut for our cum tonight.”

“Yeh ash valtem lailla ok darrida,” Malyr whispered. “I will forever protect our young. And I would never, ever let my unborn child get anywhere near your father.”

“It’s a shame that it’s too cold for you to sleep beneath the stars, but we can still stay a while,” he said and laid beside me, pulling me tightly against him before he wedged my toes beneath his calf to keep them warm. “This is how you like it, sweetheart, isn’t it?”

that twinge beneath my ribs at the distance between us? That longing for his strong body to frame my other side? That was new. New and terrifying. And confusing, because… how could I press myself against Sebian like this, soaking up his warmth, his care, the sense of protection he provided? And in the same moment, long for the closeness of the man who insisted on hating me? How could I enjoy them both, each in a different way? How could I long for them both?

“For five years, I tried breaking him of his self-destructive habits. Then you showed up.” “Habits?” “Oh, you never noticed that he was fucking drunk half the time? Either that, or his head was poisoned,” he said, making me think back on how poorly Sebian had looked the day Captain Theolif had come, and the gray discoloration on his lips. “You have a strange effect on people, little dove.”

“Your father took it off my person when he captured me.” “It was yours?” “Not truly. It belongs to my anoaley. My mate. Years before Valtaris fell, a messenger reached my parents. Around his neck, he wore the pendant, stained red from his blood. Something or someone must have attacked him or his unkindness on his way to our city,” he said. “It is of the girl destined for the younger prince,

“Sebian told me how strong the pull is. Between fated mates.” “I found it to be more than tolerable, almost forgettable, really.”

“I have seen everything they have done to you in that dungeon. Every beating. Every humiliation. Every. Single. Rape. And I love you no less for it. I admire your strength! I want you no less for it, Lorn, don’t you understand?” “No, you don’t understand!” she hissed. “Just because you saw doesn’t mean you understand. But he does. He does, because he knows what it felt like to lie beneath them, completely powerless, while they—”

“I would rather suffer The Endless Ache than watch my mate endlessly suffer me. You, however, will.”

Behind the doors, the familiar scent of honeysuckle climbed into my nostrils. Also lemongrass. Because Malyr leaned with his shoulder against the stone archway, one leg lazily crossed behind the other, hovering a deep purple prune in front of his mouth as if he’d forgotten it was for eating. Secretly watching Galantia.

he’d given her a bracelet that was absolutely meaningless. Did his anoa have an unhealthy obsession with shiny stuff? Of course. But it sure as fuck weren’t buttons…

“Every Raven boy in Deepmarsh will think you’re bonded and pull their tail feathers out over it.” Galantia gleamed at me as if I’d saved a kitten from a tree, mouthing a ‘Thank you.’ ‘Whatever it takes to make you look at me like that,’

“You’re no longer ovulating.” “You must know,” she said, grabbing my hips and pulling me between her needy legs. “After all, I woke to your tongue between my legs.” “Because you’re fucking delicious.”

“I met Cici in the corridor,” I said as I let myself slump into the armchair by the window, my voice biting even to my own ears. “What was she doing in here, leaving your chambers at the hour of the rooster?” Malyr didn’t bother looking up from whatever he was writing, and merely continued to run the quill over the parchment, allowing the black ink to form fancy letters. “Playing at politics.

I’d told myself I would protect Galantia, be it from his shadows, the worst of his moods, or whatever was going on here. Something didn’t feel right…

“If there was any part of me that still hoped to bond one day, it extinguished the night of the kjaer when I spoke oaths to a woman who will never truly be mine. But I will not gift her any of those treasures my anoa has been piling up for years to impress my mate. Some things are meant to stay with what could have been. What should have been, had life not interfered.”

“The time a man has to wait before he can kill his enemy is well spent between the legs of his enemy’s betrothed, don’t you agree?” His eyes found mine once more, one cheek bunching up at his lopsided smirk. “Or his daughter.”

“Remember the night you rolled your hips like a bitch in heat with my cock nudged at your cunt, begging me so nicely to breed you, little dove?” I rolled my eyes. “No, I’m afraid I can’t recall.” “A shame, considering I cannot get it out of my head how you tempted me.”

One tug on the rein, and Liual shifted left, forcing the raven by his feet to flutter and drift upward on a warning caw. A rolling laugh bubbled from my chest until it distorted into a squeal when claws dug into my hair, giving a little pull before the raven above me somersaulted through the air to a string of croaks as if he was laughing back at me.

“Little dove, I have watched you dozens of times, from rafters, dark corners, through windows.” His words hushed across the shell of my ear, sending a lovely shudder down my neck. “Just because you cannot see me does not mean that we cannot see you. And how we love to observe your excitement when you explore merchant’s wares, read by the window, or twitch your lips in delight at the sight of blackberries.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why watch me?” “Presume it is something as simple as the fact that you are beautiful,” he said. “Except when you fight me… then you are stunning.” “Careful now.” The words came slowly, breathily. More warning to myself than him. “You promised not to be on your best behavior.” “Oh, but I happen to love how it flusters you.” His chuckle came with those fingers that gently combed through my hair before he nuzzled my temple. “And if you run from it this time? Little dove, there will only be one set of arms left to run into. Mine.”

“At two days old, she shifted in her cradle. By the time her flight feathers came in around three or so, servants were instructed to keep the windows, doors, and flight holes shut at all times. Yet she still managed to get out somehow. I found her toddling through the weapons room, dragging an aerymel sword behind her shortly before the siege. No doubt she would have swung it one day.” His smile wavered, trembled, then died. “If only she’d gotten the chance to grow taller than its sheath.”

“You loved her very much.”

“I should have said this much sooner, but… I regret the hand I played in Harlen’s death, Malyr. Deeply.”

“Come here.” Malyr rolled onto his side, propping one hand under his head in support while he patted the quilt with the other. “I want my wife closer.” I lowered myself down to face him, resting my head on my arm only a few inches away from him, taking in his scent of lemongrass, letting his body heat seep under my skin. “I am not your wife yet.” “You accepted my gift, the food I fed you, our dance beneath the stars, did you not?” He lifted his hand to cup my cheek, letting the warmth of his palm caress my wind-whipped skin. “Among Ravens, you are my mate now. The wedding is merely a symbolic act to pacify humans and their customs.”

“When I fed you from my lips, little dove. It is the kiss of the raven, but a kiss nonetheless, reserved for our mate and no one but her. It is why we guard them so.”

“Little dove, the wrong ones we kiss are considered, but the ones we never bother to kiss…? They are forever rejected.”

Was that why Sebian never kissed me? Because, deep down, he knew that I could be many things—bedmate, distraction, revenge. Heavens, perhaps even a sense of redemption whenever he took care of me, saved me, protected me. But never his mate. Never worthy of his death-defying love. Anguish flooded my chest, making me close my eyes against the threat of tears over how nobody ever truly wanted me. Not my father. Not my mother. Not Sebian. Why was I never worthy of love? Never worthy of a kiss? Never worthy of—

“So pale all of a sudden, little white dove?” My pulse fluttered so wildly at the base of my throat, nausea once more rose, faster when I scrambled out of Malyr’s embrace and sat up. “Just a dizzy spell. I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine. I was falling.

“Even at a walk, I seemed to have landed myself in your arms, just like you said.” With a click of his tongue, Malyr commanded Liual into a walk, steering us away from the cliffs. “And is it such a terrible place to be?” “No.” All day, there had been a sense of safety in his arms that shouldn’t have been there. Should not be there. “Not until they will hurt me again.” “As they will,” he said. “How else could I reconcile how I kissed you, hmm? How my body longs for yours? How I brought you pleasure with my mouth on your cunt? How I spend… way too many hours watching you, annoyingly fixated beyond sense or reason?”

“The longer you make me look at you, little dove, the harder it is for me to remember what you are. And I fear that, if I look too long… I just might forget who you are."

Could there be love in pain? The creepy-crawly pinpricks on my scar intensified. How far would I go to find out? To feel loved? Would I bruise for it? Hurt for it? Bleed for it? Yes. And who did it better than Malyr?

“Don’t make me wait because my patience for the moment you finally come to me started wearing thin long ago.” You came to me. The resonance of the words Malyr had breathed in the night I’d negotiated our betrothal echoed in my skull as my shaky fingers clawed the cotton of my shift, fervently pulling it up and over my head, forcing him to release my throat. He had waited for me? But… why? “Since when?” I asked. His hand gripped my throat once more, tilting my head just enough to expose the side where he nipped along a tendon strung tight. “Longer than you can imagine, little white dove.”

“Since the day Sebian brought me to that forest, when you first saw—” His hand closed around my throat, suffocating my words, robbing me of air until a black veil spread across my vision and my thoughts blurred, then he growled against my ear, “Longer.”

“You didn’t see me, but I saw you.”

“Come to me, just one more step, I begged that day where I hid in the underbrush along the cliffs, with my fingers so stiff, ready to choke the life out of you.”

“Now I finally have my fingers wrapped around your little neck, yet I cannot seem to close them tightly enough to end you. You should have died a dozen times at my hands. Why haven’t you, hmm?”

“I will tell you why,” Malyr heaved by my ear as if he, too, had been suffocating alongside me, clasping my chin and turning my gaze back to meet his. “Because you’re my little dove, astonishingly beautiful, so fucking perfect with how I can strangle you to within inches of fainting and make you come all the harder for it.”

you will take me there without making a fuss, and you let me rut you like a good little slut. That’s what you are when nobody is looking past the silk and shadowcloth I provide you. My little whore wife, so fucking perfect with how she begs me to hurt her, the way you whimper and moan will make fate itself blush.”

“I should redden your hide for making me desire you the way I do. For robbing my sleep. For making my cock twitch, overly eager to come like a fucking untried youth.”

“See, little dove, the only way I can possibly reconcile how much I want you, long for you, find myself annoyingly drawn to you like to no woman before in my life… a Brisden, no less,” fingernails dug into the scar tissue on my chest, straining the puckered skin until it ached, “is by hurting you just a little bit more.”

Don’t you dare fucking move those hazel eyes from mine when I make you come on my cock while my shadows feast on your cunt.”

He was… concerned about me waking stiff and sore? The gods fetch him, this man never failed to confuse me by being a walking, breathing conundrum.

And there I sat, on a queen’s throne beside Malyr, while I held my husband’s hand, donning black feathers that perfectly matched the midnight hair of the little boy sitting on my lap. One who gleamed up at me from gray-brown eyes, causing such a twinge in my heart, longing filled my chest. Could we ever be that?