Feathers So Vicious (Court of Ravens, #1)

by Liv Zander

“Maybe we are truly fated only to end in emotional tragedy…” “Little dove,” his whisper came with a salty kiss to my lips before he straightened and placed his own by my ear, “love is tragedy.” I hate that I love you.

“You see how fast that white seagull is?” My ears pricked at something in the tone of her voice, and I looked up and over at the sky that hung over the bay. Not a seagull… a white dove. Like her.

How could the goddess show me such a mesmerizing creature bearing the name of my personal demon? She’s a Brisden.

“Malyr, we need to go.” Lorn’s voice was a desperate whisper, but her plea fell on deaf ears. “Someone’s coming.” Yes. She was coming. To me.

Goddess help me, why was she so beautiful?

Whichever pathfinder had reported Domren’s sighting far outside the walls of Ammarett had caused me eight nights of roosting between frigid winds instead of between Galantia’s warm legs. If I found out who that blind fool was, I was going to pluck him bare! Because Domren hadn’t been there.

“Did I do it?” she asked with a cheeky grin. Malyr’s lips parted, and he ran his tongue along the upper corner of his teeth, making it look like he was about to bite, but no, it was an actual fucking smile. “Make a zé? No. But after five cups of wine, someone cross-eyed might let it pass as a gé.” Galantia laughed. Malyr laughed. What the fuck was going on here?

My mind went back to that day and how Malyr had brought up Domren. How he hadn’t made a single mention of the chance that the bastard might not even have been there, but how he had eagerly marked the map, anyway. How, all the while, his horse—which he rarely rode and never for the amusement of humans—had stood saddled and ready in the stables as if… Oh goddess, help me, what an idiot I was. “That bastard planned to take you there all along,”

“That kisses are special to your kind, since they’re reserved for one’s mate,” she said, which soothed my pulse into something less panicked, but only slightly. “We both know I can never be that for you.”

Malyr had to be a damn good kisser. So good, he’d actually managed to make her think this wayward dynamic between them was love—or, at least, something on the verge of it. Just like I’d feared.

Flying the distance between the southern stores and Tidestone took about five days. No amount of horses could pull that through snow and muck in the timeline she suggested. Which meant that something was going on here that required Malyr to cause strife between Galantia and me—something he kept me in the dark about. Luckily, now I knew exactly where to go looking.

“Little dove… why did this look as though you failed on purpose?” I glanced over my shoulder at him, finding his smoldering gaze going straight to my lips. “Maybe you need to rethink your punishments and stop making them sound like rewards.”

“You were not supposed to be quite so perfect, little dove,” he rasped, letting plumes of his breath rise between us as his eyes slipped to my lips once more. “Not only enjoying the pain but seeking it out, making me wonder if…” “If?”

“I can’t help but wonder if I am about to make a grave mistake,” he whispered between one kiss and the next. “Because the more you enjoy the things I do to you, the less I want to inflict them. And that is a problem.”

How Sebian had disappeared after, leaving me to spend the night on Malyr’s chest, but… somehow missing the weight and warmth of Sebian’s calf on my toes. The familiarity of his even breathing rushing in and out of his lungs, those tingling fingertips in my hair, that scent of soil and pine needles I loved so much. Gods, I’d wanted him to kiss me so badly that day…

“When something happened in the past that shouldn’t have happened, usually because one of us fates interfered, trying for a different outcome in the future. It twists everything that should have been, making it a fucking impossibility. Fates may see the future, but the goddess never intended for them to alter it. It only ever ends in chaos.”

“Yeah, that’s just my fucking luck, that I get to see your father’s henchmen rape my mate over, and over, and over again. See her tears, hear her whimpers. And there is nothing I can do because the past is written in stone.” I didn’t want it to, but a hairline crack slinked across my heart for her. “I’m sorry for the pain my father caused your people.” “I’m sorry for the pain your father caused you, little white dove,”

the goddess showed me this moment of your life so many times during your kjaer, it seems relevant enough to mention. I love you so much.” I arched a brow at him. “Pardon me?” “Your mother’s words to you shortly after your birth.” My throat narrowed to the width of a hair. “That doesn’t sound like my mother at all.” “She said it a dozen times as she gazed down at you, her bright blonde strand clasped between your chunky fingers,” he said and walked off, already having brought several steps of distance between us before he added, “Oh, and she said she’s sorry.” “Sorry for what?” I called behind him. He only shrugged.

This had just become a whole lot more interesting. Because Asker didn’t know, either, did he? Malyr had kept both of us in the dark, scheming behind our backs alongside humans for who knew how long.

Malyr wasn’t going to feed Tidestone; he was going to attack it. And what in the name of the goddess had he promised Taradur to gain him as a trustworthy ally?

This was everything I’d wanted. The assurance of a dream, the confirmation of a future, and the validation of a love that was stronger and more profound than any pain.

“I beg of you, my lady, return my mate to me. My anoa is growing weaker by the day, eaten from the inside by the sheer agony and pain this separation is causing us. I have lost my daughter… I cannot lose my mate.”

“Those carts Malyr sent to Tidestone under the protection of Taradur’s soldiers…? There isn’t a single fucking piece of grain on them.”

“They’re disassembled siege weapons, Galantia. Taradur is marching on Tidestone as we speak.”

“You don’t understand. He loves—”

“No, he didn’t…” Sebian all but exhaled beside me. Cici spun around where she stood on a wooden pedestal by the window, red strands framing her wide eyes in the same way the fraying fabric of my sanity shaped around her hips. “Galantia…” “Oh dear,” Darien, the dressmaker, said where he knelt by the bottom seam of Cici’s gown. My gown.

And there, hidden beneath the fluff, a single white feather hidden between the same blackness that cast over my core. It was magnificent. Just like Malyr had said. But it wasn’t mine, was it?

“Did you truly think I would marry you? You? A Brisden? I have nothing but hate for you.”

“You… you don’t mean that.” “All this came at a cost. Obviously, Taradur only made a reliable ally by me promising him to take his daughter as my wedded wife.”

Little white dove, you were nothing but a distraction and a tight hole to fuck while I positioned my forces at your father’s doorstep.”

But that had been before. Before the ride to the cliffs, the kiss, the many times I had felt his love in the pain, in the pleasure, and in every unspoken word between us. It hadn’t been imagined. It couldn’t be… It was real!

“Did you really think that I could ever love you?” A faint laugh. “Yes, you did. Poor little Galantia, abandoned, ignored, utterly worthless. Never loved, and oh, so foolish.” Never loved. Oh, so foolish. Another crack in my heart.

“She’s so starved for attention, you said, a bit of kindness would get me a long way with her. Guess what? It did. Didn’t take much at all. A few kisses here, a few meaningless words there.” Empty. Meaningless. Another crack to my heart.

“Now you can… sweep in and save her.” “What?” “Marriage, Sebian,” Malyr said. “How about you take Galantia to wife?” When Sebian’s arm stiffened on me, a malicious smirk curled one corner of Malyr’s mouth. “No, you are not quite so heroic as to abandon your oaths, are you? Did you actually ever tell her…?” His eyes found mine. “Did he tell you, little dove?”

“My mate died in the fire during that night, Galantia, along with the rest of my family. She died because of me, because I didn’t protect her.” A stuttered gulp. “We were… we were bonded.”

What would it feel like to be loved with such intensity? Such unequivocal fortitude, not even death could impose conditions? I would never know. Not with either of these men, because one hated me, and the other had his love forever tied to a corpse. Not with anybody else, either. Nobody loved me. Nobody ever would.

“See, there is no love for you here—not from me, not from him. There is no love for you anywhere.”

“I told you I would break you like your father had done it with me, little white dove. And, oh, how delicious your tears are.”

With a storm of white wingbeats, my ravens carried me up to the flight hole, and out into the even whiter winter from there. Our plumage blended with the snow and the clouds. Our wings carried us east. Away from the pain.