Tiny Raven

Alessia woke to the sound of something metallic scraping across a whetstone. Slow, methodical, precise. She didn’t open her eyes immediately.

She focused on the feeling of a small body pressed against hers, still too warm but cooler than she had been. Stella. Alive and sleeping peacefully.

She could feel someone beside her. Watching.

“Awake,” Patrian said. Not a question.

Alessia cracked one eye open to glance at him.

He was sitting beside her, sharpening a bronze scalpel, hands clean and tools laid out in order beside him.

Waiting.

“Barely,” Alessia said.

“Good. Then you can answer questions.” Patrian said as he laid the scalpel down.

Alessia shifted, testing her shoulder. She gasped as pain lanced through her.

“Don’t do that again,” Patrian said. “If you reopen that wound, I will stitch it again. Less gently.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Alessia assured him.

“Why did you hide the wound?”

Alessia paused, thinking.

Fear, pride, distrust.

“Didn’t seem important at the time,” she said softly.

“It was infected,” Patrian said bluntly.

“I noticed,” Alessia said.

“You waited days.”

“I had other priorities,” Alessia said, looking away from him, down at her sleeping daughter.

“Your daughter,” Patrian said with a nod. “You prioritized her treatment over your own, and in doing so, nearly ensured she would lose you.”

Alessia’s eyes snapped back to him with a glare.

“I kept her alive.”

“Barely,” Patrian said. “You were weakening. Fever rising. Your judgment impaired. You would not have survived another two days.”

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Odrian hadn’t meant to listen. He had stepped out of the tent to give them some privacy. But the canvas was thin, and Patrian didn’t lower his voice.

“You would not have survived another two days.”

The certainty caught Odrian off guard. He had known the wound was bad.

Not that bad.

He clenched his jaw.

Alessia said something too soft to catch. 

“You don’t. You need judgment.”

Odrian exhaled softly.

No anger, no raised voice, just finality.

He’d seen men command armies with less authority. 

“You don’t know what it’s like. Out there. If I stopped–if I slowed down–”

“You’d die,” Patrian said, cutting her off. Softer, he said, “And now you understand why that is unacceptable.”

Odrian huffed, soft and humorless. He almost pitied her.

Almost.

He shifted his weight, leaning against the tent post and folding his arms loosely across his chest.

He should walk away.

He didn’t.

“… You’re infuriating,” Alessia said.

“Correct.” Patrian agreed.

Odrian’s mouth twitched despite himself.

Yes. Yes, he was.

Another beat of silence and then Patrian spoke again, measured and relentless.

 “You will report injuries immediately.”

Odrian closed his eyes. He’d given that order before, in a dozen different ways. None of them had landed like this.

Because he argued. Explained. Justified.

Patrian didn’t.

He stated. Expected the world to comply.

“You will not attempt to treat infections alone,” Patrian continued. “You will not prioritize short-term survival over long-term viability.”

“… Fine,” Alessia said.

Odrian blinked. She didn’t sound cornered. She sounded convinced.

A quiet shift. Small but important.

“Good.”
Odrian pushed off the post, straightening. He had heard enough.

As he stepped away, Patrian’s voice carried one last time.

“You did well keeping her alive as long as you did.”

Odrian paused mid-step.

He hadn’t expected that part. He glanced back at the tent, something unreadable flickered across his expression.

Respect.

And something sharper.

Then he shook it off and kept walking.

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

The next time Alessia woke, it was to pain.

Not the sharp heat of a raging infection, but the steady ache of a wound healing clean. Stella was gone, but Dottie had been left behind.

Alessia smiled at the small act of comfort.

Odrian was at her side in an instant, clearly having been hovering nearby. His hand landed on her shoulder–steadying, not restraining–before she could try to move.

“Don’t sit up,” Patrian said from somewhere behind Odrian as he ground something in a mortar. 

“Easy,” Odrian murmured as he pressed a waterskin into her hands. “Your little tyrant is with Dionys. She’s fine. You, however–” He nodded pointedly at the fresh bandages peeking from under her tunic, his expression somewhere between irritation and admiration. “–are under strict orders not to tear your stitches. Again. Unless you want to test whether Stella’s lung capacity can shatter pottery.”

He paused before adding, dry as the Tharon plains in summer, “It can, by the way.”

“‘Again’?” Alessia echoed. “I don’t remember tearing them before.”

Odrian’s eyebrow arched as he leaned back on his heels, his arms crossed.

“You cauterized your own stab wound, Thief. With no herbs to dull the pain, I assume. And then you stitched it with what I can only presume was fishing line.”

His tone dripped with clinical disdain, but there was a flicker of something else beneath it. Something impressed. “Frankly, I’m amazed you lasted as long as you did.”

He nudged the waterskin toward her again, insistent.

“Drink. Unless you’d prefer to pass out again. Stella needs another reason to scream for my head.”

He shot a pointed glance at the tent flap, where distant, gleeful shrieks suggested Dionys was losing at some game involving sticks.

“Horsehair,” Alessia said as she finally took the waterskin from him. “Not fishing line.”

As though that were better.

“And I didn’t tear those stitches.”

Odrian paused mid-nag, blinking at her.

“Horsehair,” he repeated, his voice flat with horror. “Horsehair.”

His hand twitched toward his own collarbone, pained on her behalf just thinking about it.

“Did you at least boil it first?” He sighed. “Well, that certainly solves the mystery of the state of your stitches,” he admitted grudgingly. “And the sheer audacity it took to survive them.”

He muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘Someday I’ll meet a woman with sense’ before he shook his head. He tossed her a small packet wrapped with waxed linen.

Alessia opened to find dried figs, flatbread still warm from the fire, a hunk of goat cheese, and a small honey cake.

Luxury. More than she’d had in years.

“Eat,” he said. “Then you can tell me exactly how you ended up with a Tharon dagger in your shoulder without running to the nearest healer.” He paused, narrowing his eyes. “And don’t say ‘luck’.”

Alessia took a careful bite from one of the dried figs, hopeful her stomach wouldn’t rebel.

“It … wasn’t Tharon,” she said softly. Her hand drifted to her shoulder.

Odrian’s fingers, which had been tapping against his belt, froze.

So did the rhythmic sound of Patrian grinding herbs.

The shift was immediate. There was no visible tension, but something deeper changed. The amused exasperation drained from Odrian, replaced by quiet, clinical intensity.

“Explain.”

No theatrics, no nicknames. Just a single word, firm as bedrock, as his gaze bored into her.

“Because if some Aurean bastard stabbed a half-starved woman–let alone one dragging a child through war rubble–then he and I are going to have words.

‘And those words will be screamed through broken teeth’ went unspoken, but Alessia heard them anyway.

“Stella wasn’t with me,” Alessia said after swallowing the remainder of the fig. “She started getting sick a few weeks ago. Mostly coughing fits, but occasionally she had fevers. They always broke within a few hours, so I wasn’t panicking, but you saw where we were living. I didn’t want them getting worse.” She sighed, tearing off a piece of flatbread as she gathered her thoughts. “About a week ago, I approached the Aurean camp–the southwest gate, toward the river. Stella needed a healer, and I didn’t know where else to find one.” She looked away from Odrian, self-conscious. She knew she’d taken a reckless risk, approaching the camp as she had. “I tried to do everything right. I was unarmed, clearly surrendering, clearly not a threat. I went in the morning, when the light was good, in the middle of the shift, so the sentries had time to settle and weren’t as on edge. I kept my hands visible … ” She trailed off with a bitter laugh, “For all the good it did me. I was desperate.”

Odrian went still. For three heartbeats, the only things he could hear were the dull roar of his blood in his ears and Stella’s distant laughter.

“Ah.” His voice was a thin veneer over something blisteringly cold. “Let me guess: They didn’t ask what you needed before attacking you.”

His fingers curled into his palms, hands fisting. He didn’t need to clarify who they were. There were only so many men who would drive a blade upward under a surrendered woman’s collarbone.

Only a fraction of those men would have left her alive.

“They saw Tharon clothes and heard my accent and assumed I was a spy.”

Odrian closed his eyes, just for a moment, physically bracing himself against the wave of fury threatening to crest. When he opened them again, his expression was dangerously blank.

“Names.” The demand was deadly quiet. “Now.”

If he had to guess, he already had a pretty good idea. He knew which factions within the Aurean alliance treated surrender as sport. Who would see a pleading woman as a target.

But confirmation changed things.

Confirmation made things personal.

“I don’t know their names,” Alessia said. “We didn’t exactly exchange pleasantries. But their shields–the heraldry on them–One was a golden lion, and the other was a crimson rooster.”

Odrian’s breath hissed from between his teeth in recognition.

He didn’t need her to say more. The sigils were enough.

Nomaros.

Lauthen.

And their men, ever eager to emulate their kings.

His fingers tightened around the pommel of his dagger.

“You’re certain,” he pressed–not doubting but needing certainty before he did something reckless. “A lion and a rooster, no other markings?”

“Just decorative meanders,” Alessia confirmed with a nod. She winced as she shifted to sit up straighter, her hand instinctively pressing against her bandaged wound. “They were … eager for an excuse to hurt me. I know I’m lucky I made it out alive.”

Her gaze darkened at the memory, the way they’d laughed at her screams. How the sentry had pushed the knife in slowly, deliberately drawing out the pain.

The way both of them had relished in hurting her.

She exhaled sharply, pushing the memory away with prejudice as Patrian left the tent in silence.

“Stella was safe,” she said, quiet but firm. “She didn’t see it happen. She knows I got hurt, but not how.”

She only knew that Mama had come back bleeding. That Alessia had sobbed as she’d sutured her own wound closed, like stitching one of Dottie’s seams.

Alessia hadn’t told her what happened. Who had hurt her.

Odrian’s knuckles were white around his dagger. For a moment, he was completely motionless, save for the muscle feathering in his jaw. He sat down beside her, moving slowly and deliberately.

“Listen to me,” he said, his voice low, measured, and lethal. “Those men won’t see another sunset. But for now, neither you nor Stella leaves my protection. Not alone.”

His gaze bored into her, uncompromising.

“Understood?”

Then, softer but no less intense,” And if anyone in this camp so much as looks at you wrong, you tell me immediately.”

“I will,” Alessia said with a nod.

Odrian studied her for a moment, searching for something. A tell that she was lying.

Then he jerked his chin toward where Stella’s laughter rang out in the distance, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth despite himself.

“Now,” he said in an infuriatingly cheerful tone. “You’re going to tell me not only how you survived but how you convinced both Dionys and me into letting two Tharon thieves camp with us.”

“I survived mainly by luck,” Alessia admitted. “You found us before the infection set in.” It was the closest she would come to admitting that he saved her life. “As far as how I convinced you … I assumed it was my charming personality.”

She grinned and fluttered her eyelashes, sarcasm clear in her voice.

Odrian snorted, a loud, inelegant sound utterly undignified for a king.

“Charming?” he echoed as he leveled her a look that somehow encapsulated both complete exasperation and reluctant amusement. “You. You threatened Patrian with a broken piece of pottery the first time he tried to check your stitches. Is that the charm you’re talking about?”

“If there was broken pottery within reach while I was delirious, that’s your fault.”

Odrian laughed, sharp and sudden, before flicking her forehead with entirely unearned familiarity.

“Between you and Stella, I’m starting to believe Tharos breeds little terrors just to vex Aurean kings,” he said conspiratorially.

“That’s their winning strategy,” Alessia whispered back. “They’re going to annoy their way out of the siege. Stella and me? We’re just the advance force.”

Odrian clutched at his chest in mock horror. “I knew it. This was a Tharon plot all along. First you steal our supplies, then our healer’s patience, and now–now–you’re after our very peace of mind.” He swept a hand toward the tent entrance, where Stella’s shrieks of delight still echoed. “That child already has Dionys wrapped around her tiniest finger, and you’ve gotten me to fetch you honey cakes.” He lifted a hand to his face in mock despair. “At what cost, Alessia? At what cost?”

Alessia burst into laughter, clutching her injured side even as she winced. “Oh no. You uncovered the grand plan. We were this close to total Aurean surrender–just one more honey cake, and I would’ve had you all at my mercy.”

Odrian sprawled dramatically across a nearby chest. “Dionys!” he called toward the tent flap. “They played us. This woman lured us in with tragedy and emergency surgery–and it worked!”

Dionys’ long-suffering sigh sounded from beyond the tent walls. Stella’s delighted giggles followed.

“You’re lucky I don’t charge royalties for these performances,” Odrian said.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Alessia said gravely. “Thank you for not taking all of my nonexistent drachmas.”

Odrian pointed at her. “Ah-ha! You admit the nonexistent funds!”

He narrowed his eyes. “Let me guess. Your empire’s treasury consists of three rocks and a pinecone. Stella’s doing, no doubt.”

“Oh no,” Alessia said, a hand over her heart. “You’ve caught us. Except no pinecones. They don’t hold up well with all the rocks.”

“Gods below,” Odrian said. “A rock smuggler. Here I thought you were merely a menace to my sanity and rations, but no! You are a geological threat!” He paused. “… Show me her collection later.”

Alessia chuckled. “I’ll let her show you. She can explain what makes every single rock special. I only know some of them are ‘sparkly’.”

Odrian lifted his chin in regal suffering. “I shall endure the lecture with all the dignity befitting my station.”

Then his eyes narrowed, more thoughtfully than before. “You trained her, didn’t you?”

The question was light, but Alessia flinched.

“She’s just naturally that way,” she said, trying for ease. “She gets real into her interests. Right now it’s rocks. A few months ago, it was crabs. She still draws them sometimes. Or maybe they’re spiders with claws. Or rocks with legs. It’s hard to tell.”

Odrian caught the tension and let the joke soften it.

“Well,” he said quietly. “If she’s anything like her mother, I’m sure whatever she turns that focus toward will be exceptionally annoying for her enemies.”

He let that sit only a moment before adding, “Gods help us if she combines them. The next thing we know, she’ll have an army of crab-rock-spiders marching on our supply lines.”

From outside came Dionys’ groan, Stella’s delighted “Oops!”, and the unmistakable sound of something collapsing.

Odrian smiled at Alessia.

“Ah,” Alessia said softly. “The sound every mother fears–the delighted ‘oops’.” Then, quieter. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

For once, Odrian didn’t joke.

“She gets to say ‘oops,’ he murmured, leaning forward slightly, “because you made sure of it.”

Odrian nudged her uninjured shoulder.

“And because I generously allow my camp to be terrorized by her geological conquests. My magnanimity knows no bounds.”

From outside the tent, Dionys called flatly. “She’s winning. I don’t know how.”

“I EAT MY ROCKS!” Stella declared cheerfully.

Alessia and Odrian exchanged a look.

“A menace,” Odrian said solemnly. “A geological menace.”

Alessia laughed. “Someone should probably go check on them before she actually tries to prove how strong her teeth are by chewing on gravel.”

She shifted to get up. Odrian was on his feet in an instant, one hand outstretched to stop her.

“Oh no, absolutely not. You are bedridden until further notice. By royal decree. As punishment for repeated theft.”

A beat.

“And general insubordination.”

Alessia snorted, but settled back.

At the tent flap, Odrian paused and glanced over his shoulder. “If you need anything–medicine, food, a blade to hide where bastards won’t find it–ask. No more crawling off to cauterize your own wounds like a cornered fox.” His mouth twitched. “Unless, of course, you enjoy giving me heart failure.”

Alessia laughed. “No, no. While it is fun to watch, I’m not sure it’s worth the pain. I suppose I’ll just have to find a different way to cause it.”

Odrian froze.

“By the gods,” he said. “Are you flirting? While recovering from infection?”

Alessia stilled too, then took a deliberate bite of honey cake to hide her blush.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Odrian leaned in just enough to make it unfair.

“I would,” he murmured. Then he motioned toward the food. “Eat. I prefer my… distractions conscious.”

He was gone before she could answer, though not quickly enough to hide the faint pink in his ears.

Alessia stared after him, then muttered into her bowl.

“Asshole.”

It lacked any real bite.

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Outside the tent, Stella was dragging a rock toward Dionys’s feet. She froze at the sound of Odrian’s laugh.

“You’re blushing,” she accused with all the gravitas of a tiny general assessing an unexpected variable on her battlefield.

Odrian didn’t deny it. He tugged at one of her braids as he dropped into a crouch beside her.

“And you,” he countered, “are committing acts of geological warfare against my fellow king.”

“He started it,” she muttered.

Odrian held out a hand. “Truce. I’ll smuggle you two honey cakes tomorrow if you tell me which rock is your favorite.”

Stella considered, then slapped her palm into his.

“Deal! But you have to carry General Crunch.”

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Alessia chewed the last of her honey cake, listening to the commotion and not bothering to stifle her grin.

Stella’s triumphant giggles. Dionys’s exasperated groans. Odrian’s smug voice encouraging it all.

Her shoulder ached, a dull, steady pull, but she barely noticed.

She had been hunted. Starving. One mistake from death.

And now–

Laughter.

Honey on her fingers.

Men with lions and roosters on their shields still prowled.

Walus still hunted.

But… Her daughter was laughing.

And for the first time in years, so was she.

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