Lord Maleficit Evervood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The raven flew low through the pines, wings cutting cold air. Maleficit kept the bird under the canopy and away from open sky. Eden's cottage waited past the ridge. So did the moss line he could not cross. He needed only to reach a window, to whisper through glass, to speak one true word she might answer. From there the ritual would find its shape again. He smelled the wolf before he saw the sign of him. Wet fur. Iron. A musk pressed into bark at shoulder height. The werewolf had marked a ring around the cottage, tree by tree, and the marks were fresh. Maleficit banked hard and settled on a high branch. Below, a paw print sank deep into black mud. The claws had split the print open. Kane. The white beast who guarded the girl. If the raven crossed that ring in the air, the wolf would smell blood and feathers and come running. Maleficit weighed the bird's small body. One clean run at the window. He pushed off the branch. A snarl broke the woods. Something huge moved through the ferns below, low and fast, pale hide flashing between trunks. The wolf ran on two legs and four at once, shoulders rolling, jaws already open. Yellow eyes found the sky. The beast had heard the wingbeat. The raven cut sideways through branches. A needle raked his wing. He lost height. The wolf leapt. Teeth closed on air a hand's width from his tail feathers. Maleficit shrieked in his own old voice and drove the bird up between two trunks too narrow for the wolf's shoulders. Behind him, wood cracked. The wolf hit the gap and bounced off, jaws snapping. Maleficit fled east. He did not look back until the trees thinned and the wolf's snarls fell behind. His wing burned. A feather dragged loose and spun down into the dark. He found a broken porch and dropped onto its rail. The cottage sagged under a rotten roof. Every window was shattered. The door hung open on one hinge. No smoke. No lamp. He had passed this ruin before and marked it empty. A black cat sat inside the doorway. Its eyes were pale blue and steady. It did not hiss. It did not run. It watched him the way the raven had watched him in the ruined nave, as if it already knew his name. "You are far from your throne," the cat said. Maleficit folded his hurt wing against his side. The red haze around his feathers dimmed to a bruise. He could not reach Eden through the wolf. Not as a bird. Not tonight. But this cottage stood outside her yard, outside the moss line, outside the cottage's listening walls. A dry place. A hidden place. A place with a spirit already in it who spoke to him without fear. "Then let us speak," Maleficit said, "about what I need."