Feathers So Vicious (Court of Ravens, #1)

by Liv Zander

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.

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 prince escaped with that… evil magic of his.” Prince?

“Your son lived but a short while, looking content one moment, only for his breaths to fade into silence the next… just like the others.”

“If a wife cannot speak ill of her husband, then what joys are there left for her in marriage?”

“Spoiled at your command, Mother,” I said. “Surely you will not blame a daughter for her parents’ poor choices where her childhood rearing was concerned?”

After all, Tidestone remained the last stronghold between the Raven’s ruthless revenge and Dranada’s capital, Ammarett. Whereas some human lords had sworn fealty to the usurper who led those black-haired warlocks and witches now, Father remained steadfast in fighting off their attacks. What better way to keep the Lord Brisden loyal to King Barat than to join houses?

“She’s the one the fate wants, you fucking idiot.”

“Brisden’s daughter. Take her to Malyr while I try to track those soldiers who escaped with the golden bitch.”

“My job was to track you down, capture you, and bring you before the fate. Alive and unharmed were his words, which is the only thing left standing between me and a warm meal. If I take Brisden’s daughter to Malyr… well, sweetheart, we might find ourselves struggling with the unharmed part.”

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?”

Every gift came at a cost. Mine? Brain-stabbing headaches.

He’d looked positively spellbound even before her name had come into play. A rarity, given how most women left him indifferent. “Not what you expected, hmm?”

“Depending on how much or how little Brisden knows, he might be willing to release Marla in exchange for his daughter’s safe return.”

Malyr would never deny me a piece of her. Ever since I’d dragged him out of that river all those years ago, feverish and emaciated, I’d had his back. And he had mine, regardless of how many times we butted heads or bickered—which happened more and more often lately.

I suddenly found myself staring at his black tailored vest, the front adorned with a large sigil that flattened the breath in my lungs—a silver raven sitting on a skull cracked from temple to cranium, one claw curled into an eye socket. The sigil of House Khysal? Impossible.

“If you believe death is the worst I can give you, then clearly, you haven’t experienced much of life.”

“Because of your father, I am a million shattered pieces, put back together all wrong. Now get that damn knife away from me before you accidentally hurt yourself. Only I get to hurt you.”

The motion let his black strands fall away from his face on one side, revealing a birthmark that sat beneath his earlobe. Black. Round.

“You father had someone needle it under my skin with ink so he may identify me should I ever escape those damn dungeons, forever leaving his mark on me.”

Compared to Malyr, Sebian seemed to be the lesser evil, but he was still a Raven. The one who’d captured me. I couldn’t forget that.

“Life marks us all in one way or another.” Sebian dunked the cloth into the water. “The only scars truly ugly are usually the ones on the inside, anyway.”

“You’ve got a mouth on you. Lots of ways to put that to good use, so I like it. Malyr does not. Better mind your tongue around him.” Said mouth turned dry when my brain finally caught up with what he’d just said.

“Ravens have fated mates, chosen for us by our goddess herself to bond with for eternity.” Woman. Wife. Mate. Equally worthless to Father.

“Asker answers to Malyr, not the other way around.”

“He’s a Khysal.” “The last one.” Sebian dipped the clean side of the rag into the water, then set to work on my chin. “He’s King Omaniel and Queen Elnora’s son.”

“He will do it,” Harlen answered in my stead, my brother ever so eager to practice his role as heir and future king, but I heard the tension in his voice. Saw how he raked his palm over his three black braids with a single, nervous motion. “Will you not, Malyr?”

My gift. My curse. One that had brought about three days of feasting once I revealed at age seven. Father had held a speech about how proud he was, having a deathweaver in the Khysal line once more.

Freed at last, they cloaked my parents in blackness, swallowing them whole until their shouts faded into silence—a silence that soon spread across all of Valtaris, turning kingdom to crypt. “Malyr…” Asker’s voice broke through the quiet behind me. “What have you done?”

“The raven that carries our gift is called anoa.” Brush put aside, she clasped one of the pins and skillfully twirled a strand of my hair around her finger. “It is said that, at our birth, our anoa flies down from the moon carrying our gift. A heavy burden for a raven, so it can take many years until we receive it… unless it’s the gift of void.” A shrug. “It’s empty, so it weights nothing.”

“But without my anoa, I will never find my mate. The goddess makes one gift call for the other.” One’s mate seemed to be a treasured thing among Ravens indeed, which somehow caused a pinch in my chest.

“Aerymel.” A metal so hard and ungiving, weapons made of it never broke, never dulled, yet light as a feather. “Father has an amulet set into aerymel, but I’ve never seen so much of it.”

“Do you truly not know that the city of Valtaris, almost the entirety of the kingdom of Vhaerya, really, is sitting beneath a veil of shadows? Has for many years, ever since the city fell.

“Most noble Raven houses were decimated right after Valtaris fell, it’s true,” Cici said as she leaned into me, her voice low. “Prince Malyr established new ones; he handed out titles, lands, and occupied strongholds among his most devoted and powerful followers. They congregated around him the moment word of his survival spread. King Omaniel, Queen Elnora, his sister… They all died in Valtaris.”

“As for the daughters… don’t trust a single of these titled whores. They’ll conspire against you, scratching your eyes out before they turn on each other again. It’s what they do with every new girl that represents competition.” “What are we competing for, exactly?” Again that arched brow that made me feel stupid. “For Malyr, of course. After all, he is the prince.”

“He has not found his mate,” Cici continued, “so the pressure for him to take a human wife is growing. As things stand, he’ll need a strong, reliable human ally who won’t stab him in the back to win this war.”

“You have no kingdom, no crown. If you call this farce a court, then I can only assume that you’re its fool.”

Well, pluck my feathers and call me a chicken.

Bonding one’s mate was more and more a strike of luck. Many of them hadn’t survived the war, leaving their fated other half with no other choice but to make do with another pairing. Or remain untethered. Forever alone. Like me.

When Lady Elnora thanked him, King Omaniel was forced to his knees by her voice. So taken was he by the sound of it—like notes strung together by the goddess herself and written into a melody of the life they ought to share by fate—he knew that he had, at long last, found his mate.

That’s how we long for our mate once revealed. An established bond only amplifies it, along with the strength of our gifts when we are close to each other.”

What would it feel like to be loved with such intensity? Such unequivocal fortitude that not even death could impose conditions? I wanted to experience such a love so badly…

How could someone be infuriating one moment and kind the next? Fickle bastard.

“Maybe you can’t give us Valtaris, deathweaver, but you still have plenty else to give us instead. Hold her legs. Keep her from bucking.”

Her name was Lorn. She’d told me through the hole shortly after Lord Brisden had caught us somewhere along the border of Vhaerya and thrown us into the dungeons.

“She’s been here even longer than us.” Harlen released my face and sighed. “I doubt she can still shift.” But what if she could, this girl behind the hole who’d told me stories of home, offering a sliver of light in this endless dark? I couldn’t just leave her. That was not right.

“Lord Brisden is a… merciful man. All he wants are those damn shadows gone around that cursed city of yours, and the two princes can die old between some whore’s legs in exile.”

As far as gifts went, there existed four major types of Ravens: weavers, fates, pathfinders, and voids. Except for the pathfinder, all came with variations, such as voids who could absorb other’s shadowsgifts, temporarily wielding them as their own. They called them echos—a rare gift, but not nearly as rare as its third variation. The thief.

“It means The Endless Ache. Right in here, remember?” A tap against his chest. “It’s where our anoa longs for our fated mate, to a point it can be physically painful.”

The instinct to survive is too strong for our primal to ignore, no matter how scared some children are of their first conscious shift.”