Page 9 of Faeling
“What is it?” he breathed, familiar now with the process of her visions.
Pulling in a breath, Ravenna fussed at the folds of her cloak as she gathered her thoughts. She had trained long enough with her father that she could call a vision forward and aim its focus.At least for others. Visions of her own future still only came to her suddenly or in her sleep. Though, Ravenna wasn’t sure she wanted to know her own fate any more than she already did.
“They will bow to you,” she confirmed, “although not without some dissent.”
“Hm.” He eased back in his chair, pleased with the news. “As long as they bow, I don’t care what comes before.”
She hoped that was true. Even if life was easier with her handsomeazaiout of the city, she still worried for him while he was gone.
Before the night grew too late, Ravenna sabotaged her own strategy and let him win. He knew this, of course, and while he might always like to win, she enjoyed that it annoyed him to know she’d let him.
“After all this time, I still cannot decide if you’re a master attalfonor horrible at it,” he mused before bidding her goodnight.
She couldn’t say, either, only that it pleased her to play with him. And that she and her mother had spent long hours playing the game, wiling away the days when her father was away.
As Ravenna retreated down the dark corridors of the royal quarters, she couldn’t help musing that she now spent her life much as her mother had—waiting for herazaito return.
It was a life Ravenna had resented. Aine was all goodness and kindness and patience. Her love was vast, warmer than the blankets she knitted and sweeter than the cakes she baked. They were often left alone in that seaside cottage, her and her mother, and together they got up to all manner of things.
Aine taught Ravenna about the moon and tides and how to weave a net. They hunted for abalone and sea glass together,keeping the shells to decorate the path up the cliff to the cottage and the sea glass in little bottles on the windowsills to catch the light. They spun yarn and darned socks and knitted caps, and Aine taught Ravenna how to embroider the cloth with every color of thread.
Aine made everything she touched beautiful. It was no wonder that her goodness had caught the likes of a fae warrior.
Ravenna still hadn’t forgiven Maxim for sacrificing such goodness.
They didn’t have to die.
Since foolishly voicing her vision of Amaranthe falling, Ravenna’s life had been honed into a sharp blade for survival. Maxim had insisted that one day, Amaranthe would find them. He hadn’t needed Ravenna to see that the Queen would destroy any in her path to foil the prophecy and procure herself a seer.
In so doing, Maxim made his own prophecy, one he fulfilled himself. He readied Ravenna for life as a fugitive. He readied himself and Aine for sacrifice.
“One day, she will come for you. We will stop her.”
Ravenna had pleaded that this didn’t mean her secret must die with them. They could all go away, far away. Make lives somewhere new, where the fae and their magic could never hope to reach.
But Maxim thought this impossible.
He planned and prepared. Many days he sat at the cottage’s kitchen table with Aine and his old friend Allarion, detailing how Ravenna would be made safe.Planning how they meant to die.
And so it was decided. Ravenna would be hidden away when the time came. Maxim and Aine would defy the Queen and lose their lives.
Done. Sorted.
Ravenna refused to accept that still.“It is the only way,”her mother would say, but she didn’t believe it. She didn’tseeit.
Her mother, soft and beautiful, deserved better.
Better than to be left waiting for months at a time as Maxim visited the Illyinia lands to keep up the ruse and throw off suspicion. Better than to be kept with a foot in the human world and the other in the faelands, never to be accepted by either. Better than to be slaughtered like a lamb in sacrifice.
Ravenna would avenge her mother.
And she would have revenge on her father, too. All his plans, his own sacrifice, for nothing.
She never wanted to walk the path he’d set her upon, and so she meant to make her own. That that would lead to her own ruin, well…even better.
You’re being morbid again.
Ravenna rolled her eyes under the cowl of her cloak.And you’re eavesdropping again.
