Ravenna Nightblade's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

By morning, Ravenna and Scarlett had walked far from the ravine. The dark wolf padded ahead, ears sharp. Scarlett led them toward a hollow den of earth and stone, where a mother wolf lay curled with her pups. "My master keeps a courier here," Scarlett said. "He carries the bounty orders. Follow him back, and we find the one who wants you dead." Ravenna stopped walking. She studied the trail Scarlett pointed to. It ran down through thick brush, a perfect throat for an ambush. "You know this path well," she said. "Too well. If you still serve your master, this is where you'd bury me." Scarlett's jaw tightened. "I lowered my bow. What more do you want?" "Proof." Ravenna drew her great sword and laid it flat across her palms. "Walk the trail first. Alone. If it's clean, I'll follow. If men wait for me, they'll take you instead." Scarlett stared at the blade, then at Ravenna's face. She did not argue. She stepped onto the trail alone, hands open at her sides. Ravenna watched her red hair vanish into the brush and gripped her sword. The scream came fast. Not Scarlett's. Steel rang below. Ravenna charged down the slope. Three men had risen from the ferns, blades out, and they had grabbed Scarlett from behind. One held a curved knife to her throat. "The heir comes for the girl," he laughed. "Just as we were paid to expect." So it was a trap. But Scarlett had walked into it first, and now she twisted hard, biting the hand at her throat. Ravenna's sword took the second man before he turned. A blue shape crashed down from the rocks above. The newcomer stood tall as a man but wore the shape of a wolf, blue and white fur over thick muscle. He seized the knife-man and hurled him into a boulder. Bones cracked. The last hunter ran. The wolf-man let him go and dropped to one knee beside the dark direwolf, pressing his forehead to its snout. "Fenrir," Scarlett breathed. "He guards the old menagerie roads. He answers to your wolf, not to me." Ravenna lowered her blade. Fenrir rose and looked at her, orange eyes steady. He said only, "Where the direwolf walks, I fight." Ravenna knelt beside the man Fenrir had broken. She searched his coat and found a folded order sealed in black wax. The seal bore a crest she knew, twin ravens crossed over a crown. Her family's crest. Someone of her own blood sat the throne and had signed her death. She closed her fist around the paper. Scarlett had proved true. The trap was sprung and survived. But the enemy was no stranger now. He wore her name. "We're not hunting a stranger," Ravenna said. "We're hunting kin."