Chapter 33: Raven The Raven

ZAR DRACONIC EMPIRE

CAPITAL CITY: RUBION’S EYE

The streets of the city were nothing new to her. Their whispers had cradled her as a child, grown alongside her, shaped the woman she’d become. They had broken her more times than she cared to count, until all that remained was the potential that had been hiding beneath the wreckage all along. And now, years later, she had become both weapon and watcher.

They called her The Raven. How could they not? She was the last of her kind, after all — a singular weapon, deployable at the whim of exactly one person. Imperial Princess Elyvara.

Raven settled low against the rooftop she’d claimed as her perch, waiting. It would be a while yet before her target — a young noble lord of one of the draconic clans — finished his evening of fun with his friends.

She’d tracked the boy across the city from the moment the imperial academy let him out for the day. He did what lords his age did. Terrorized the feline servants and slaves scattered through the capital. Drank things no teenager had any business drinking. Fifteen was far too young to be living with this much freedom, this much cruelty baked into the habit of it. She scoffed, the words slipping out bitter and low.

"Not too young to die, though."

She frowned. Was that remorse, creeping in? It wouldn’t matter either way — it never had, never would. Her mistress knew Raven disliked killing children, regardless of how spoiled or entitled they’d grown into. But Raven was a tool first, and a person a distant second. It wasn’t her place to question how, when, or where she was used. Only to be used. That lesson had been beaten into her thoroughly, long before the organization had handed her leash over to the future Empress of the Zar Draconic Empire. And now here she crouched, preparing to kill a boy the exact same age she’d been the day that leash changed hands.

Raven’s gaze drifted back to the restaurant across the street. The young lord looked happy. Why wouldn’t he? He was having the time of his life, one arm wrapped around the waist of a classmate, her smile shy and uncertain — though Raven had already counted five times he’d struck her over the course of the evening.

His friends had toys of their own. Girls forced to endure the same humiliations as the lord’s companion. Every one of them — the boys, at least — came from Black Dragon nobility. Raven’s lip curled. A buried memory surfaced with sudden, bitter clarity, words she’d thought she’d scrubbed from her own mind years ago.

*All black dragons are divine. All black dragons are to be served.*

What a joke. There was a reason she stood as the last of her kind, in more ways than one. But she was still a tool, bound to work only within whatever parameters had been set for her. One body. Today. Tomorrow was a different conversation entirely.

She shifted her weight, dropping to one knee as the shadow of the bell tower opposite the restaurant swallowed her silhouette. This was the bare minimum she could manage — she despised working in daylight. Too few shadows. Too few places to vanish into. She was a Raven, after all.

Hah. Raven the raven. The last raven.

She scowled and rose to her feet. Her moment had arrived. The princess wanted spectacle — loud, unmistakable, a message broadcast to every noble house that she had done this, and that she could do it to any of them. Raven had no idea what, exactly, the "Noble Black Dragon " clans and families had done to earn Elyvara’s wrath this time. But whatever it was, the price demanded was steep. Raven’s list of names read like an intricate tapestry — deliberate, systematic, each thread woven to strip her enemies of power while leaving them technically, visibly alive. You didn’t want them gone entirely. You wanted them broken and kept beneath your heel. Elyvara intended to crack a few rotten eggs tonight, and Raven was the hammer she’d chosen for the job.

She reached up and plucked a single feather from her hair, wincing faintly — these only grew in one place, along the edge of her scalp. She brought it close to her lips, her skin pale as porcelain beneath the dark paint ringing her eyes, and her gaze rolled back as she began to chant.

"Whispered words, whispered words.

Make my feather fly with wind and darkness.

Make my feather hex with malice and sharpness.

Whispered curse, whispered curse.

Make my feather cut with darkness and wind.

Make my feather twist, and pull, on my hated one’s puppet strings of fate."

[The Raven’s Black Hex #1: Pinocchio’s Featheard Descent]

Raven watched the feather lift from her palm, caught on a sudden gust that carried it dancing invisibly through the evening air. Its path held steady as the young lord and his friends spilled out of the restaurant, waiting for their butlers to bring around the autolocomotives, their voices carrying loud and careless across the street. It was in the middle of that noise that the feather finally sank home — into the crown of his skull.

The young lord went rigid, his sentence dying mid-word. Raven leaned forward, nearly stepping clear of the bell tower’s shadow entirely. She wanted to witness this. Wanted every second of it burned into her memory — punishment and pleasure in the same breath, fuel for both her guilt and her hatred alike.

"Are you okay?" the girl asked — the same one who’d spent the entire day absorbing his abuse without complaint. Her voice carried across the street, and her question drew every eye toward him.

He was shaking now, clawing at his own skin with a sudden, frantic violence, already tearing his clothes to ribbons.

"Something’s wrong! I don’t know — I itch everywhere! ARGHHH!"

His first scream tore loose as he yanked his hand back. A single feather, hard as forged iron and sharper than any blade, had punched its way free of his palm — torn open by his own frantic scratching.

"What is this?! What is— ARGHHH!"

A second feather erupted from his ear, the pain sharp enough to drag the entire street’s attention down onto him. He turned toward his friends, desperate.

"Help me!"

They didn’t. Instead, they scattered backward, horror written plainly across their faces, abandoning the same boy they’d sworn blood loyalty to not ten minutes earlier.

The only one who didn’t flee was the girl he’d spent the entire day treating like garbage. His eyes locked onto her instead, fury boiling up even as more feathers tore their way free of his skin, shredding what remained of his clothing into a ruined, bloody mess.

"You! You did this to me! You bitch!" He lunged, fingers closing hard around her wrist.

"No! Let go — ARGHH! It hurts! Please, I didn’t do anything, young lord, let me go!"

Her pleas landed on nothing. For one suspended second, Raven was tempted to intervene. No — not tempted. She wanted to move, wanted to pull the girl free. She was innocent in all of this; if anything, the lord’s death stood to benefit her more than anyone. Then a feather burst from the girl’s own arm, directly where his hand gripped her wrist, and her scream rose higher than his.

Raven froze. No one understood this spell better than she did. Now that the girl has been touched, she too will be cursed. She forced herself to sit back instead, chewing her lip slowly as she watched the cursed feathers continue their work on both of them — their screams and pleas tangling together into something like a grotesque chorus.

By the end, there wasn’t a single patch of skin on either of them left untouched. Their insides lay on full, obscene display for the gathered crowd — an art exhibit of sorts, the two of them its centerpiece, a bloom of black feathers slicked dark with blood and guts. By the time the lord’s family arrived on scene, Raven was already long gone.

But the city heard. It shook, all the way down to its foundations.

A dragon cub had been killed. And everyone — high blood, low blood, half-blood alike — understood immediately that someone was going to pay for it.

<<<<<<>>>>>>

RUBION’S EYE.

IMPERIAL PALACE.

IMPERIAL PRINCESS ELYVARA.

Raven knelt with her head bowed at Elyvara’s feet, grief for the innocent girl sitting heavy and unseen beneath her composure. No trace of it ever reached her face. The only thing she allowed herself to feel openly was deference to her mistress — Elyvara’s will outweighed everything else. There were larger stakes in play, and Raven was only ever a tool. The girl had been collateral. A necessary evil, nothing more.

"Don’t punish yourself over it. You couldn’t have known that would happen. Besides — she chose to keep company with nobility. A girl her age isn’t a fool; she understood the risk that came with it. But if it eases your conscience any, I’ll see her family taken care of properly, for the loss."

Raven nodded. "You are most gracious, my princess. Thank you." Elyvara waved the gratitude off absently, sifting through a stack of papers on her desk before drawing one photograph free from beneath the pile.

"Here." She held it out. Raven accepted it, and found herself looking, for the first time in her life, at the face of Kren N’kora Blackmane.

"You’re assigning me a new target? You gave me a kill list, my princess, I—"

Elyvara raised a hand, cutting her off. "I know how much you hate loose ends and Inefficiency. So I’ll let you move quickly on this one. Every name on that list — I want their names in the morning papers. Afternoon editions at the latest, if you need the extra hours."

Raven blinked, genuinely caught off guard by the sudden free rein she’d just been handed. She looked back down at the photograph in her hand. "You’re accelerating this because you want this particular man dead as soon as possible, and indulging my preference for efficiency along the way. My princess, I am your tool. You needn’t—"

Elyvara cut her off again, palm raised. "Dead? No, Raven. I want you to protect him. That’s the assignment — observation, and protection. You won’t travel as my assassin this time. You’ll go as my envoy, my voice within the newly reinstated N’kora king’s court. Given his father’s past crimes against this empire, the imperial house feels it prudent to keep a trusted set of eyes within the Black Lion court — to ensure no further treasonous acts take root there."

Raven arched an eyebrow. "Why are you really sending me to protect him, Your Majesty?" She was one of the very few people in Elyvara’s life permitted to ask such a question outright, and skip straight past the formalities.

Princess Elyvara leaned back in her chair, something distant and wistful settling over her expression before she turned her gaze back to Raven.

"Believe it or not — he saved my life once. And then the little bastard promised me that when he grew up, he was going to marry me." A flash of something indignant crossed her face, catching Raven entirely off guard. "He was such a cheeky little boy. Mischievous. Innocent, in a way I’d never seen before." She brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"The idiot’s clearly forgotten. So I’m going to remind him. Because when he saved me, I saw something in him I’ve never found in anyone else since. So I made myself a promise too — one day, I’m going to bring that man to his knees, and he would be begging to keep the promise he made me. And when that day comes, he will belong to me. And me alone."

Raven said nothing further. It wasn’t her place to question her mistress’s will, only to carry it out. It seemed the streets of Rubion’s Eye would run red again tonight — the air thick with the cries of the living, mourning the dead.