Page 3 of Echoes of the Raven
“Save you?”
“Yes, danger lurks. I can feel it in the air.”
Those words. Someone else said them to me. Cold fingers slide down my back, and my chest tightens as a terrible feeling of dread saturates me.
“Where is it?” she asks. “Please, I don’t want to be here anymore. You have to help me.”
“I… I…It’s in the…” A knot forms in my throat.
“Find the princess! She escaped!” The order echoes through the long corridors I left behind. They’re coming for me.
“They’re almost here, daughter. Hurry,” my mother urges. “Tell me where it is, and everything will be all right.”
“It’s in the Re…”
Don’t tell them. Don’t!a voice screams inside my head.It’s a trick. It’s all a trick.
“C’mon, dear, you can trust me,” Mother tries to touch my free hand.
“No! You’re not real.” My other hand tightens around the torch.
“But of course, I’m real.” Her face flickers in and out as she says this.
“Liar!” I jump back and shove the flame in her direction.
She screams in pain, covering her face with her hands.
Oh, gods! What have I done?!
“Mother!” I reach for her.
She jerks away and reveals her features. Her left cheek is raw, skin melting, only glistening tissue left behind.
I cry out in horror and keep crying until my voice is hoarse, and my throat aches and I wish I could die. I’m thrashing, struggling against rough bindings around my wrists, turning away from a blinding light that pierces all the way into the back of my skull.
“Fucking human!” a familiar voice that I despise growls.
My cries turn to small sobs as I remember where I am, and what is happening. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction to see me suffer.
“You’re pathetic,” my torturer sneers, Calierin, Rífíor’s sorceress.
Her espiritu fills my throat, toxic fumes turning the taste in my mouth into acrid ash.
It takes all the strength I have left, but I bite my tongue and go eerily quiet, refusing to let this bitch know how much it hurt to see my mother and believe—if only for a moment—that she was still alive.
Laughter begins in the pit of my stomach and slowly bubbles out of my mouth until I’m throwing my head back, and the tears rolling down my face are of a different, bitter kind. Through wet lashes, I peer up at Calierin, her fae features sharp as blades, and give her a hateful sneer tomatch her own. She stands over me, menacing, while I sit on the damp floor, hands tied to two spikes staked to the ground at my sides. My arms are outstretched like wings, kept so taut it feels my shoulders will pop out of their sockets.
“We have to use the amulet. Where is it?” I say in a high-pitched, mocking voice. Abruptly, I stop laughing and through clenched teeth tell her the only truth that lies in my heart. “I’m never going to tell you where it is. NEVER!”
“Mallachtdorch!” Calierin curses. “My hands are tied, Rífíor. I’ve already told you thisshytorture is a waste of time.”
Rífíor, my captor, pulls away from the shadows, the scarred side of his face catching the light from the nearest torch, causing the gash that runs across his right eye to look like liquid silver. His raven-black hair gleams in the torchlight. He’s so tall the top of his head nearly hits the ceiling of the cramped alcove. I can’t help but stare at his pointed ears and sharp fae features. He is Bastien, and yet… he is not.
“You need to let me do this my way.” Calierin unsheathes a dagger from her belt and places the tip under my eye.
I lean back until my head hits the wall. The blade pierces my skin. A trickle of blood slides down my cheek. My gaze locks with River’s—or Rífíor, whatever he’s called.
“You’re a coward,” I tell him. “Come do this yourself.”
