Starsinger

Ravine

If Aaron dreamed, his dreams were as fractured and terrifying as his waking. He had watched the snaps of red lightning until the horror of it made him numb, until it all disconnected from reality.

He remembered Gavran shuffling out of the sequoia in the icy pre-dawn air, a heavy dark shape in Aaron's blurred gaze. "You can wait with her," he murmured. "Until the sun rises. I must sleep." Jace corralled them into the workshop as Gavran hobbled toward the edge of Delia's protective circle, towards his nest. Raelyn lay still on the raised table. They waited.

Aaron didn't remember falling asleep, but now he felt the sun on his face and he opened his eyes to see the first pale rays of dawn, streaming in around the edges of the thick skin that covered the mouth of the sequoia. Raelyn.

Aaron shifted and the hard edge of a crate jabbed into his back. His companions leaned against the piles of disarray that lined the workshop, splayed in the uncomfortable positions of people who fell asleep without meaning to. Delia sat half in a crouch, her braid coming undone. Jace's hands were tightly folded in his lap. When he saw Sapphire curled around her injured arm, Aaron wanted to wake her, to yell, to demand an explanation.

Not yet. Raelyn.

He stood quickly. It was dim and dusty but there was just enough early light to allow Aaron to step through the piles of clutter to the table where the princess lay.

She was breathing evenly as she slept, and the glow had returned to her cheeks. Aaron could scarcely breathe as he moved to inspect the wound. He peeled back the bandage folded loosely around her thigh to see that all that remained of her festering injury was a faint scar.

He did it. Aaron lowered his forehead to the table and choked out a laugh, flooded with relief. Whatever else this night has been, it is not the end.

He considered waking the others, but his mind was still swirling with unanswered questions. We need answers. Answers he suspected Sapphire and Raelyn would rather he not find. No more secrets. Aaron peered out from under the animal skin flap and noticed once again the swirled nest a few yards away.

He had reached the edge of the scorched protective circle when the hairs pricked up at the back of his neck. He glanced down. A few yards outside the charred line of Delia's spell, the grass was matted, dirt overturned, deep gouges cut in the earth. A struggle.

Aaron drew his bow and notched an arrow, holding the tip low to the ground as he sidled forward, following the tracks. It had been a tumbling, rolling fight, pitched towards Gavran's nest. Flowering vines hung down from the nest's twig walls, tickling Aaron's nose as he drew near. There was a strange coppery scent in the air.

He stepped quickly around the side of the nest and saw the old avian sleeping half-upright, slumped against the nest's arched opening, his precious book tucked under his wing. He had lost more feathers in the night, his plumage so thin now that patches of pale, wrinkled skin peeked through. The feathers that remained were shot through with white streaks.

Aaron crouched by the avian's sleeping form. "Gavran." When Gavran didn't stir, Aaron placed his hand tentatively on the avian's feathered shoulder. Cold.

Then he noticed the blood.

Aaron scrambled back. There was a black-handled dagger buried deep in Gavran's belly. A pool of dark blood had collected beneath him, staining the grass and matting his underfeathers, running in slow, thick rivulets through the dirt. Too much blood.

Gavran was gone.

A quake of fear and loss rippled in Aaron's chest. Where the eccentric old avian had been, now there was only a body. A heavy, empty, monstrous thing. Images of death swam up from Aaron's subconscious and threatened to drag him under.