Page 62 of Raven's Dawn

Then tell me what you do think.

That I brought you all into this mess, and your experience here is on me. Good or bad, it’s on me. I nodded to Ezra. I wouldn’t have known he was going to handle this so well until I saw him smiling like a little kid. But you’ve been quiet, and that’s not normal for you, so I was worried you were upset. It’s not that I think you aren’t strong enough for this.

“Hmm.” The faintest smile teased the corners of her lips. Good answer.

I pulled her in, craned around the raven, and kissed her forehead.

Aside from Ezra, all three of us were battling something. Mine was my own incompetence and the weight of my obligation to protect the people who followed me here. Graham’s was dealing with his old trauma from this world.

Rain’s was us. The three of us, and her brother.

Supposed he was as much my problem as hers.

But the fact remained. She wasn’t incompetent. She wasn’t obligated to protect anyone. She knew what she was doing, and she was constantly being treated like a child despite the fact.

In my eyes, Rain had proven her strength, her adulthood, her intelligence, a thousand times over. She didn’t need to keep doing so. Yet, it was always there. This lingering archetype: the damsel in distress. No matter that, throughout our story, she had been the hero the most often. I had rescued her once, but she had saved all three of us just as many times.

Only a few steps from the archway now, that sense of unease got stronger. As Laila and Jeremy stepped through it, my stomach swirled.

But Rain carried on ahead. Her chin perched just as high as it had been, her shoulders just a square. Fearless.

With only the tiniest bit of effort, as if I was tapping into her thoughts, I reached for that feeling. It was as if my soul touched hers, and she had given me strength. Although, maybe strength was the wrong word. Passion. Preparedness.

When we made it to the entrance, the bird on Rain’s shoulder took flight. It retreated the way we’d come. I wasn’t sure if Rain sent it away or if it left on its own. She stood firm despite his vanishing act.

I didn’t know, but I knew that by the time I crossed the threshold, still holding her hand, I wasn’t afraid anymore.

Which didn’t seem to matter, since nothing was inside.

Nothing except a small circle carved out of the bushes. We were all shoulder to shoulder by the time Connor and Luci made it through.

Just as they did, a twinkling light shined at our feet. Before I could blink, it rose like a beam. Climbing higher and higher, cascading over our bodies, its heat rippled through me, as if I had just drunk blood fresh from the source.

It shot out from our chests in a three hundred sixty-degree radius.

The bushes moved with it, spreading out at least thirty yards.

Now, surrounded by that light, watching the bushes, it vanished into thin air, shrinking and growing in the distance.

Yeah. It felt like I was tripping.

“Whoa,” Ezra murmured, spinning around slowly to observe it all.

“I have a feeling it’s going to get a lot more intense,” Graham said.

Straight ahead, only a few feet in front of Laila and Jeremy, a lake appeared. Perhaps a pond was the better term, but it looked pretty vast from where I stood. Granted, so did Jeremy’s head, now that the light was shining on it. One second, it was normal-sized, and the next, it was bigger than a beach ball, and the next, barely more than a baseball.

A spotlight made anything interesting, I realized, as I watched the blueish moonlight pulse atop the water. For a moment, it didn’t look like water at all. It was like a mirror, reflecting all of us within it. Even that twinkling golden light that had risen from the ground and now trimmed the bushes.

In the center, the water rippled, breaking my reflective illusion.

Gradually, inch by inch, something rose from it.

Ezra jolted, grabbing hold of my bicep.

Rain only cocked her head to the side and watched.

Graham squinted.

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