The Raven and the Rush

2. He Haunts My Dreams

Chapter 2

He Haunts My Dreams

Rhosynora Ravenwood hovered at the end of her mother’s bed, awaiting her sentence.

High Priestess Naryssa Ravenwood kept the contents of her heart sealed. Predicting her response was as precise as deciding the weather.

“How long has your brother been doing this?” Her mother stood at the other side of the bedchamber, facing away.

“Months. Months now, he’s been haunting my dreams,” Rhosyn replied. “But this... this intrusion started even earlier than that.”

“Earlier? When?”

“The first time was after Arwenna’s Langenacht. When she showed no sign of quickening. He came to remind me who I am, he said. Who I will become if she doesn’t rise to her fate.”

“Arwenna will yet rise,” Naryssa answered too quickly. “She has two years to produce an heir from the time of the Langenacht. She has time.”

Rhosyn didn’t remind her mother of what they both already knew, painfully well. That the prescribed two years lingered just on the horizon, like a fickle lover who hadn’t yet decided whether to stay or go.

“Rendyr knows his trial will end soon if the two-year mark comes. More, he knows the role will fall to me if Arwenna cannot fulfill her duty. He’s determined, Mother. Determined to be the High Priest, not only as he is now, provisionally, but for all his days. He doesn’t care that he must earn it, as all men must. He’s prepared to demand it.”

“Rendyr does not decide the rules. He is just as beholden to them as all of us.”

“He doesn’t see it that way.”

“He tells you this when he visits your dreams?”

He shows me, she thought, but there were still some things Rhosyn kept locked in her own heart box. “Please let me go. Even for a short while. If I’m down there... his hold on my dreams won’t work from afar. His magic isn’t that strong.”

Naryssa sighed. She bowed over her dressing table, heavy with the weight of all of Midnight Crest. Rhosyn was often struck with an urge to comfort her mother in times like this, even though she’d come to Naryssa seeking exactly that for herself. She didn’t need to read her mother’s mind, though, to know what plagued her. The gods had lovingly chosen Arwenna, as they’d once lovingly chosen Naryssa, and her mother, Avadora. As they’d chosen all the firstborn Ravenwood women. And if they’d chosen them, then they’d also decided their failures, hadn’t they? If Arwenna did fail, and was cast down against the mountainside, wings clipped, then that meant the gods had decided her death was as inevitable as her birth, and where was the love in that?

Rhosynora had no love for the gods. No love for their restrictive and stifling ways. No love for any of it.

Her mother knew this, another secret she kept locked tight, for both their sakes.

“Mother,” Rhosyn said, rising off the bed. “He won’t stop. He’s already decided Arwenna has failed. I don’t even know if he visits her bed anymore. He tells me...” Rhosyn swallowed. She pressed a hand to her throat. “What he’ll do to me if I’m to have my own Langenacht.”

Naryssa spun around to face her daughter. “If you’re to be our next High Priestess, Rhosyn, and I very much hope you are not, for everyone’s sake, then he will have no choice but to return to the beginning, with the other men. He will have to compete once more and win once more. If he does not, then his power does not extend to you.”

Rhosyn crinkled her upper lip into a sneer. “I thought men had no power in Midnight Crest, Mother.”

Naryssa’s eyes flashed with frustration. “You know my meaning.”

“I know that what we say and what we mean are always at odds.”

“You’re exhausting, Rhosyn.” Naryssa approached her daughter with a weary look. “Yet I adore you, more than a mother should.”

“A Ravenwood mother, perhaps,” Rhosyn said, her tone cutting but her heart sad. “I’ve seen how the women of the kingdom are allowed to love their children.”

Naryssa scoffed. “In return, they are cursed to be men and women. Even the great ones are not meant for true greatness. Not like us.”

“Do you truly define greatness as this gilded castle high in the mountains that we cannot stray far from or risk our lives? As a world where the women are revered with one hand and subjugated with the other?”

“Rhosyn, why must you always be so dramatic? Why do you try me so? What would the others think if they heard me allowing you to speak to me this way?”

Rhosyn reached for her mother’s hands. “I’ll accept my fate if the time comes.” I’ll never accept it. I’ll die before I lay with another Ravenwood. I’ll kill Rendyr myself if he dares touch me. “But for now, can I have some peace?”

Naryssa looked down at their joined hands. She unlinked herself, as if her love for her daughter was a weakness. “You’ve always been so different.” She reached a tentative hand toward Rhosyn’s shimmering hair, tucking it behind each ear, one by one. Rhosyn was the only Ravenwood with silver hair, when all the others had hair that matched their raven feathers; a trait that was said to appear but once every few generations. Her mother said this made her exceptional, but it only reminded Rhosyn that she didn’t belong here. “My special one.”

“I don’t want to be special, Mother,” Rhosyn whispered. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth to stay the tears. “I just want to be safe. If only for a little while.”

Naryssa pivoted away, wrapping her arms around herself. “Oswin Frost has requested aid for his wife, who is in childbed once more. She’s quite ill like the last time.” She shook her head. “Foolish woman. She knew the risks. But we will do as we must and go to her. As with before, we must be prudent with our magic. We can assuage the worst of her ails using a whisper of our power, but if we use too much, we attack the child.”

“I know, Mother. It was me who saw her through the last confinement.”

“You and Arwenna, you mean. Naturally, your sister will not be there this time,” Naryssa said. “I was going to send Augustyn, as he’s not yet practiced his training on men, but if you think you can manage—”

“Yes! Yes!”

Rhosyn was already ahead of her mother’s words. The Frosts! It was more than she could have ever hoped for. She would get to see her beloved Morwen again. It would feel... it would feel...

Almost like freedom.

“Did you even hear what I told you?”

Rhosyn wrapped her arms around her mother from behind, peppering her lips against the back of Naryssa’s head. “Thank you, Mother. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Be prudent with your gratitude,” Naryssa said sadly. “For if the gods call upon you, there’s nothing more I can do.”

“When can I leave?”

“Now, if you wish.” She winced through a smile as Rhosyn squealed in delight.

“What will you say to Rendyr?”

Naryssa squeezed her daughter’s wrapped arms. “Nothing. Words would only stoke his cruelty.”

Rhosyn raced from her mother’s bedchamber, gathering speed with every spirited step as she made for the balustrades.

“Where are you going?” Rendyr called, his menace now so routine it no longer startled her. He hovered in the shadows, where he fed his strength and purpose. She wasn’t surprised he was there. She’d come to expect it. “Rhosyn!”

Rhosyn, grinning, stretched her arms wide and tilted her face to the sky. She erupted into feathers, settling neatly into her raven form. She could still hear her brother’s indignant screams as she caught the wind, aiming herself downward, toward Midwinter Rest, and freedom.