That harsh expression. Those cold and distant eyes. The tilted hunch to his shoulders, weighed further down by the glare of the raven still perched there so intently that its claws have pierced the leather vestments my brother wears. Dots of blood ring its black talons.
Drew is like my father was when he returned to us on that cold morning. He has the face of a man I know, I love, my family, but it is not the man I know occupying the flesh. Drew has been taken over by something evil. Something far more sinister than even Ventos’s stolen visage.
“Drew?” I say softly, hoping to see a glimmer of someone I recognize within him. I reach for my pinky ring to spin it and its absence sends a pang of longing through me. “Drew, it’s me.”
He slowly lowers the cane and, for a brief second, I see my brother. He blinks several times. “Flor?”
“Drew, I—” I don’t get to finish.
The cane clatters to the ground as he grips his head, screaming and writhing. Drew stumbles back. Ventos rises, lunging for him.
“Don’t hurt him!” I race forward. But I’m not fast enough. Ventos reaches him before I do, but he doesn’t grab for my brother. He grabs at the raven perched on my brother’s shoulder at the same time as Drew.
“I will not…hurt…her…” Drew grinds out, ripping the bird from his shoulder. Ventos holds it with his strong hands as the bird tries to fly away.
“Let’s see if you’ll show your real self before I pop your bird brain right off,” Ventos growls. I don’t pay attention to him. My brother needs me.
I’m at Drew’s side as his knees collapse. I brace myself, allowing him to fall into me, easing him all the way onto the floor.
“Drew!” I don’t know what’s happening to him, but I didn’t come all this way, we didn’t fight and struggle for our lives, just to have him die now on me.
A flurry of feathers slaps my cheeks. Talons rip at my skin. The raven has escaped Ventos’s grasp and tries to gouge my eyes out.
Ventos slashes for the bird with his sickle, catching right where its wing meets its body. But the sickle I made him was for show. It’s too dull to cleave wing from body in a single strike and the bird can still fly.
The raven soars into the rafters, raining bloody plumage. It tilts its head back as if it’s going to speak. As though it would wake the whole fortress with one mighty caw. But instead a sharp voice strikes me right between the temples, causing my head to throb.
You will pay in blood, like the rest of your forsaken kind. I will have the throne I earned, and my vengeance for Loretta.
Its cryptic message given, the bird flies into a far corner—a vent shaft, as far as I can tell—and disappears.
