The Raven Wars, Book Two: Chapter 4

Below is a chapter rewrite from Book 2: The Raven Wars of The Raven Dreams Trilogy. If you’d like to read the original series, you can get it here.

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Book 2: The Raven Wars

Chapter 4: Isaak

The burning started before he reached the Hollow. Something in the scars the Tempests had carved into his back woke up whenever he moved and didn’t settle until he was still. The Hollow had become a sanctuary for him to be alone.

When he arrived, the spiraling sensation alive within him gave a soft hum.

He let the fire move through his fingers, the only thing that seemed to quiet the pain. His hands moved without his direction, tracing shapes into the wooden walls of his makeshift hideout. The symbols came without thought. He watched his hand glide over the wood without the full awareness that he was even here.

The Hollow began with three large oaks that grew close enough together to make a natural wall on one side. He had done the rest, cutting and stacking the wood himself, lashing the beams, and fitting a low roof from branches and bark. It was rough around the edges, but it was his. Every surface inside held marks burned into the grain in patterns he couldn’t have drawn from memory if asked.

Everyone else had found their way back to some sense of normalcy. Isaak watched it happen from a distance. The rebuilding, the routines returning, people picking up their lives where they’d left them. And yet, he couldn’t find any resemblance to his old life.

Minu had told him he was brave and pure, one of the few who could withstand any measure of evil. Isaak wanted to believe that. Minu and his certainties, his tangerine eyes, and his absolute faith in things that Isaak couldn’t quite grasp. He envied that faith. The lack of it in himself made his blood boil.

Just as he always did when Isaak’s thoughts crept into darker places, Thrae came to him like a ghost at the back of his mind, eager to watch him suffer alone in the dark corners of his own mind. You’ve got the darkness in you, same as me.

A chill ran down Isaak’s back, his scars flaring again.

He remembered how good it felt to end Thrae—the sword digging deep, squelching through his organs—and he wondered if Thrae was right. Maybe he did have darker things within him that fed off the pain of others. He pressed his hand harder into the wood while he savored the memory, and the fire burned stronger from his fingertip.

“Isaak.” Aron’s voice drifted through the trees and pulled him back to himself.

He blinked. The light filtering through the gaps in the roof had shifted from white to the amber of late afternoon. He’d sat down that morning with no intention of staying long. Hours had passed without him knowing.

He got to his feet, and a sharp sting shot across both palms. Burns, red and raised, mapping both hands from fingertip to heel. He stared at them for a moment, then closed his fists and followed her voice out toward the edge of the forest.

Aron was standing where the trees thinned, her red hair catching the last of the afternoon light. The relief on her face when she saw him lasted only a moment before her gaze dropped to his hands.

“What happened?” she asked, reaching for them before he could pull them back.

He let her take them. “I lost track of where I was,” he said. “Ended up further in than I meant to go.”

She looked up at him. He could tell she didn’t believe him. She never quite did anymore, and he couldn’t blame her. He leaned down and kissed her gently. She kissed him back, her hands moving to his face, holding it. When she pulled back, she was still looking at him, searching for something.

“Your eyes are changing,” she said. “Isaak, they’re losing their color.”

He looked away from her. He couldn’t help it. “That’s not possible,” he said.

The words came out quieter than he intended. Aron didn’t push. She waited, her hands still on his face, and that was almost worse. He knew what it meant when darkness moved through a person and left its mark in their eyes. He’d stood over Thrae and seen it.

“It can’t be possible,” he said again, more to himself than to her. “Because if it is, then it isn’t over. And I can’t—” He stopped. He pressed his jaw shut and looked out into the trees.

Aron stepped into him and wrapped her arms around him.

“I know you don’t just go out there to walk,” she said quietly. “I’m not asking you to explain yourself. But Isaak…” She pulled back to look at him. “After everything we’ve been through. Losing my parents. And now finding out we can’t have children together.” She paused. “I need you to be here with me still. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.”

Tears welled in his eyes. He wanted to tell her everything. How much he loved her, what had been eating at him, all of it. But when he reached for the words, something stopped him. Not just fear. Something heavier, sitting in the center of his chest, that wouldn’t budge no matter how hard he tried.

“You did it at the gathering too,” she said quietly. “Stood there and let Hazel be angry at you and said nothing. She didn’t need to know we’d just heard from Sol that we can’t have children, but she did deserve an answer.”

She looked up at him. “I’m not made of glass, Isaak. You don’t have to carry the hard things alone, so I don’t have to feel them. I’m already feeling them.”

He said nothing. She was right. He didn’t argue.

Aron looked at him a moment longer. When Isaak didn’t respond or make eye contact, she changed the subject.

“Eva came by today,” she said. “She was looking for you. She seemed shaken.”

Isaak shook his head. “She’s probably just tired,” he said, and headed back through the garden.

Aron followed without a word. Inside, the house was dim and warm; the fire in the corner burned down to embers. He lowered himself into the chair by the window and leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling. Aron lit the lamp on the table between them, the small flame throwing soft light across the room, and took her chair across from his. She tucked one leg beneath her and looked at him with the quiet of someone who had been patient for a long time and was still choosing to be.

“It’s over,” he said quietly. “The darkness has to be gone.”

Aron said nothing. She reached for his hands and turned them over, looking at the burns. She got up and came back with the herbal salve from the cabinet, pulling the low stool up in front of his chair. She took his hands in hers and began working the mixture into the burns with careful fingers.

He watched the top of her head. Her red hair fell forward over her shoulder. He wanted to reach out and touch it, but his hand didn’t move. When she’d covered both palms, she held his hands still for a moment longer, her thumbs resting lightly in his.

“You don’t have to carry all of this alone, you know.” She waited. He didn’t answer.

She recapped the jar and stood up. She looked at him from across the small distance between them. He looked back. Neither of them said anything. She went to the back door and opened it, pausing with her hand on the frame, and then stepped out into the garden. The door clicked shut behind her, and the room felt emptier than it had before she left.

Book One of The Raven Dreams rewrite is complete.

• Read all the chapter shares and behind-the-scenes from Book One and Book Two here.

• If you’d like to read the original version of The Raven Wars to see how the story evolves and changes in the rewrite, you can get a copy here.

If you’d like to explore my dark feminine novels, you can do so here.

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Some journeys ask us to go deeper than we expected. If you’re in one of those seasons, I’d be honored to sit with you through the cards.