Tiny Raven

The morning sun rose copper-bright over the encampment, gilding the spear-heads and turning the dust motes gold. But the usual bustle of breaking fast and sharpening blades carried a new discord. A muttered irritation rippled through the ranks like wind through wheat. Parchment had been nailed to the central command post, and word spread through the camp faster than plague.

New Ordinances Regarding Camp Security.

By midday the rules had settled over the tents like a wet wool cloak. Heavy, uncomfortable, and impossible to ignore. Soldiers grumbled as they formed queues at the quartermaster’s tent, where the previously open barrels of grain and dried figs now sat behind a cordon of armed sentries. Blacksmiths complained that their forges were being monitored. Scouts bristled at the notion of a curfew, arguing that darkness was their ally, not their enemy.

But the orders stood, carved into wooden tablets by the quartermaster’s clerks and bellowed by sergeants walking the lines.

Let it be known:

No man, woman, or child shall move between tents after the sun’s disk touches the western hills. Fire-watch only.

All civilians within camp perimeters shall submit to questioning by the Watch Captain.

Any not bearing the mark of camp service or royal seal must be escorted by armed guard when traveling from their assigned shelter to the latrines, healers, or food lines after dusk.

It was necessary. The thefts had drawn notice, and the Tharon lines were too close for comfort. Spies could be anyone.

Even a desperate mother with a sick child.

Logic made the rules iron. But logic did not make them light.

Inside the royal tent, the proclamation caused its own small tempest.

Stella stood with her arms crossed, lower lip jutting out in a pout, staring at the tablet Odrian held.

“But General Stonebelly needs to inspect the left flank at night! It’s when the crabs move! You can’t just curfew a general! It’s against the laws of war!”

Odrian pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Stella, my dear, terrifying general,” he said, his voice full of exhausted patience. “The crabs will have to move during daylight hours. Or perhaps General Stonebelly can conduct his inspections via proxy.”

“Proxy?” Stella’s eyes narrowed. “What’s a proxy?”

“It means I carry him,” Dionys grunted from his corner, where he was sharpening his spear with methodical, angry strokes. “Which means I have to file a request with the Watch Captain to walk twenty paces to the latrine with a rock.” He looked up, his eyes flat. “The rules are foolish,” he rumbled. “But they’re not wrong. Someone’s been thieving supplies, and Nomaros has ears everywhere.”

Alessia sat cross-legged on her bedroll, mending a tear in her tunic with small, efficient stitches. She hadn’t looked up when Odrian read the proclamation, but her needle paused now, hovering over the cloth.

“No unauthorized movement near stores,” she repeated dryly. “How inconvenient for a reformed thief.”

Odrian lowered the tablet, arching a brow at her. “You’re authorized,” he said. “Or did you miss the part where you and your daughter are now officially listed as ‘Protected persons placed under the protection of Othara and Kareth’?”

He waved a hand airily. “You’ve got a seal, I had it carved this morning. Very official.”

“And very annoying,” Dionys muttered, sheathing his blade with a sharp click. “I am the King of Kareth. I am the command tent. If I need to walk to my own stores, I shouldn’t need a guard to escort me.”

“But you will,” Alessia said, finally looking up. A ghost of a smile played at the corner of her mouth. “Because if the king doesn’t follow the rules, no one does. And if no one follows the rules…” she shrugged, then winced as the motion pulled at her stitches. “Then someone like me slips through. Or someone worse.”

Stella suddenly gasped. “Wait! Does this mean you have to ask permission to get honeycakes?”

Odrian and Dionys exchanged a look of two men who had been eating military rations for years and had recently discovered the addictive properties of stolen sweets.

“Yes,” Odrian said, his voice strangled. “Apparently, we require a signed token to access the honey stores.”

“That,” Dionys said, standing and shoving General Stonebelly back into his belt with more force than was strictly necessary, “is a declaration of war on common sense.”

“But reasonable,” Odrian sighed, rolling the parchment and tossing it onto his field chest. “If someone is stealing from us—or worse, feeding information to those bastards across the river—then we tighten the line. Even if it means…” He looked at Stella, who was now looking at him with the calculating expression of a general spotting logistical weaknesses. “…even if it means bedtime comes sooner for certain rock-based militias.”

Stella opened her mouth to protest, but Alessia reached out, plucking the child into her lap and settling her chin atop the girl’s dark curls.

“We adapt,” Alessia murmured, her eyes meeting Odrian’s over her daughter’s head. “We’ve hidden in worse places than a king’s tent with a curfew. And as for the questioning…” She smirked, her sharp, dangerous expression returning. “I’ve got plenty of practice answering questions. Just let them try to catch me in a lie.”

“That’s what worries me,” Dionys said, although there was no real heat in it. He moved to the tent flap, pulling it back to reveal the heightened activity outside. Guards doubled at the picket lines, clerks scribbling on wax tablets, the afternoon sun already sliding toward the western horizon. “Sun’s going down in two hours. If anyone needs to move, it needs to happen now. Or you’re both stuck here until dawn.”

“I’m always stuck here,” Stella muttered. “It’s boring.”

“What sort of men are standing watch tonight?” Alessia asked.

“Our own.” Odrian said, as though that answered everything. Then he dropped to a crouch to meet Stella’s eyes, “Tonight, we shall endeavor to make it less boring. Perhaps a strategic review of pebble tactics. Indoors. By firelight.”

Stella’s eyes lit up.

“With honeycakes?”

“If,” Odrian said, rising and dusting off his knees, “someone with the appropriate seal signs the requisition form.”

“Proxy!” Stella shouted, pointing at Dionys.

Dionys groaned, long and low. But his hand found the stone at his belt, and his shoulders shook with silent laughter.

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Alessia sat near the tent flap, ostensibly mending a tear in Stella’s cloak, but her needle moved with mindless repetition. Her shoulder ached, a deep grinding throb that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She ignored it, instead watching the charcoal sketch of the evening sky through the canvas.

The new rules had settled over the camp like a burial shroud. She could hear the heavy tread of doubled patrols outside, the sharp challenge of sentries verifying seals and tokens.

No unauthorized movement after dusk.

The words echoed in her skull, iron-bound and uncompromising.

Stella had been quiet for too long.

Not the quiet of sleep. Alessia knew that heavy, trusting slump, the way her daughter’s small mouth would fall open, her breathing deep and even. This was something else. A stillness that prickled the base of Alessia’s neck, raising the fine hairs there.

She set the cloak aside, wincing as her stitches pulled tight, and moved to the bedroll.

Stella’s small body was curled tight, a tiny, trembling comma beneath the blankets. Her skin, when Alessia’s hand found her forehead, was hot enough to burn.

“Mama?”

The word slurred, thick and gluey, barely shaped by dry lips. She didn’t open her eyes. One small hand emerged from the blankets, grasping blindly before finding Alessia’s wrist with surprising, desperate strength.

The other clutched Lieutenant Pebble.

“…Cold,” Stella whispered, though her skin burned. “…Mama, I’m cold. I can’t… I can’t find the sky.”

Everything in Alessia went still. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird, but her hands moved with the smooth efficiency of long practice, even as her stitches pulled and screamed.

“Shh, shh, Starlight,” she murmured, her voice dropping into the low, hypnotic cadence she used in storerooms and under looms, when monsters prowled beyond thing doors. She gathered Stella up, bundling the girl against her chest despite the furnace-heat radiating from the small body. “You’re right here. Right here with me. You don’t need to find the sky yet. You’ve got too many adventures left, remember?”

She pressed her lips to Stella’s temple, and cold terror flooded her veins. The fever was back, higher than before, drying Stella’s skin to parchment while she shook with chills. Alessia’s mind raced, tripping over the new rules nailed to every post.

No movement after dusk. Escorts required. Detention for violations.

Odrian and Dionys were trapped in Council, sealed behind the curfew themselves, and she was here, alone, with a child burning alive in her arms.

She lunged for the water skin with her free hand, spilling half of it in her haste, and soaked a strip of linen. The cold cloth met Stella’s forehead, and Aleessia rocked her, a desperate, swaying rhythm.

Stella shivered violently, teeth chattering, her small fingers clutching Lieutenant Pebble so tightly the jagged edges cut into her palm, but she didn’t seem to notice. She burrowed her face into Alessia’s neck, skin scorching where it touched, breath coming in strained, panicked gasps.

“…Mama, I… I can’t see the mountain,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “It’s too dark. The fox ran away and I’m trying to climb but the rocks keep slipping…”

A wet, rattling cough shook her tiny frame, and she whimpered, pressing closer. When she spoke again, her words drifted, thin and reedy, lost between waking and the story world.

“Need… need the potion, Mama.”

Her grip loosened on the rock, hand falling limp for a moment before she startled awake again, eyes fluttering open.

“…Where’s the Owl-King? He promised… promised he’d show me the named ones first… Don’t leave me here, Mama. Don’t let me fall…”

Alessia’s blood turned to river ice, but her hands didn’t shake. Seven years of holding steady while the world burned.

She pressed her lips to Stella’s temple, tasting the salt-fever, and rocked her closer against her uninjured shoulder, ignoring the screaming pull of Dionys’s neat stitches.

“The Owl-King’s keeping his oath, Starlight,” she murmured into Stella’s damp curls, keeping her voice low. “He’s trapped in council. A terrible fate for any man. Especially one with important rock inspections to attend to.”

Her eyes were fixed on the tent flap, counting the shadows of the doubled patrols. Curfew. Dusk hadn’t quite fallen, but the bell would ring any moment, and she was standing there with a child burning alive in her arms and no escort. The rules were nailed to every post.

No unauthorized movement. Detention for violations.

Detained. While her daughter’s fever climbed higher than the mountain in her stories.

Alessia shifted her weight, hissing as her stitches threatened to pop. Dionys would have her head if he saw her moving like this. She snagged her satchel with her free hand.

She didn’t have permission. She didn’t have “the appropriate paperwork.” She had a delirious five-year-old clutching a jagged rock and a shoulder that felt like it was being torn open by hot needles.

“Listen to me, Stell,” Alessia whispered, urgent now, pressing her forehead to the girl’s. “I’m going to find the Sorceress. I’m going to get the potion that brings back the glow. But I need you to hold onto Lieutenant Pebble, and I need you to be brave like Little Star, alright? Can you do that for me?”

Stella shivered violently, pressing the jagged edge of her rock against her chest like a shield, her small fingers white-knuckled around the stone.

“Mm’holdin’ him… tight,” she slurred, her teeth chattering. “See? Not… not lettin’ go.”

She tried to lift her head, eyes fluttering open, glassy, burning, struggling to focus on Alessia’s face through the fever haze.

“S’cold, Mama. Dark. But… but I’m bein’ brave. Little Star didn’t cry when… when the potion tasted like dirt ’n’ bad dreams. I won’t cry neither…”

A wet cough rattled through her, and she whimpered, clutching harder at the rock, her voice dropping to a desperate whisper.

“Y’gotta run fast, though. Like the Fox. Find… find the Sorceress quick. ‘Fore the crabs come back.”

She reached up with a trembling hand, fingers blindly seeking Alessia’s face, smearing fever-heat across her mother’s cheek.

“Promise, Mama? Nose touch promise?”

Alessia leaned down, pressing her nose to Stella’s with the fierce gentleness of a vow sworn in blood and bone.

“Nose-touch promise, Starlight,” she whispered against her fever-hot skin, their breath mingling. “I’m going to find the Sorceress. I’m going to bring back the glow. And then I’m coming right back here to hold your hand while you drink the terrible potion, alright?”

She eased her onto the bedroll, tucking Lieutenant Pebble firmly into her grasp, her fingers lingering for one stolen second on her damp curls. The movement tears a wet gasp from her throat, the stitches screaming, white-hot needles dragging through muscle. She could feel the pull of Dionys’s neat work threatening to give way under the strain.

She ignored it.

She had to.

She picked up the cloak Odrian had loaned her, wrapping it around her shoulders. The tent flap loomed ahead, guarded by shadows and the heavy tread of patrols still circling. Curfew hadn’t officially fallen, but the sentries were already jumpy, already sharp.

No unauthorized movement. Detention for violations.

He shoulder burned like she’d been stabbed all over again, and her vision swam at the edges. But her hands were steady.

They had to be.

She pulled the hood of the cloak low, shadowing her features, and reached for the tent flap. The leather ties scraped like a whispered betrayal. Beyond lay the camp, sharp with spearheads and sharper eyes, a labyrinth of new laws designed to catch spies and thieves.

Let them catch me, she thought, her hand closing on the flap. Let them drag me to the whipping post. It won’t be the first time I’ve been chained for trying to keep Stella alive.

The bell hadn’t rung yet. The light was dying, but it wasn’t dead.

She slipped out of the tent and vanished into the tightening dusk.

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

The dying sun stained the western hills amber and rose, painting the camp in warning colors. Alessia moved through the gathering twilight like a wraith, her breath uneven, her injured arm clamped tight against her ribs to keep the stitches from tearing. She clutched a small clay vial against her chest, the bitterroot tincture within sloshing dangerously with each hurried step.

The healer had barely looked at her face, too busy measuring drops and muttering about dosage, but he’d seen the token she’d slammed onto his table and had moved with alacrity bordering on fear.

Now the bell began to toll. Deep, bronze notes that shuddered through the ground and into her bones, marking the death of the day.

One… two…

The curfew was falling, a net of law drawing tight across the camp.

Three… four…

She was three tents away from safety when the sentries caught her.

“Halt!”

The spear crossed her path in a blur of bronze, its edge catching the last light. Two guards materialized from the shadows, bronze greaves scraping against the hard-packed earth. They wore the heavy wool cloaks of the night watch, faces hard beneath their helmets. “No movement after dusk. You know the rules.”

Alessia stopped, her heart hammering against her ribs, vision swimming at the edges from the effort of running. The vial was slick in her palm, precious as blood. She pulled the hood back.

The sentries advanced, bronze spear-points gleaming in the failing light. The taller one—a veteran with a scar bisecting his eyebrow—eyed the carved token in her hand, then the heavy wool cloak draped over her shoulders. Recognition flickered, but the new orders were bronze-bright in his mind.

Question everyone. Detain the suspicious. No exceptions.

“That’s a royal seal,” he grunted, not lowering his spear. “But the curfew’s fallen, and you’re running like a thief with the hounds behind her. What’s in the vial?”

“Medicine, for my daughter,” Alessia’s voice was ragged, her shoulder screaming with each breath. She stepped forward, offering the token with her free hand. “Please. She’s burning alive in the tent. The healer gave me this, I have permission—”

The shorter guard—a younger man with nervous hands—stepped forward, reaching for the clay vial. “Stolen supplies is what it looks like. Curfew’s curfew, and no civilian carries a royal seal without escort. Hand it over.”

“No.” The word cracked like a whip. Alessia jerked the vial back against her chest, sheltering it in the crook of her elbow as if it were Stella herself. “You don’t understand, she’ll die without it—”

“Seize it.”

The older sentry’s fingers closed around her wrist, bronze-hard, wrenching her arm outward to expose the vial. Alessia twisted, not to fight but to flee, her body acting on maternal instinct. She drove her shoulder into the space between them, a desperate, feral surge toward the tent line.

The younger sentry reacted badly. His spear, meant to block her path, caught her side as she spun, an upraised shaft that stabbed forward in panic rather than malice.

The bronze edge sliced through wool and linen and into the soft flesh along her ribs, a shallow, ragged tear that spilled blood hot across her side.

Alessia gasped sharply, but momentum carried her forward. She stumbled, blind with pain, the vial still clutched in white-knuckled fingers. The ground rushed up to meet her.

Her temple struck the corner of a supply crate.

White burst across her vision.

Clay shattered.

The bitterroot tincture soaked into the dust, dark and wet, smelling of herbs and copper.

Alessia lay crumpled against the crate, blood pooling beneath her head and spreading across her side in a spreading stain of crimson. Her breath came in wet, shallow hitches. The token lay in the dust beside her, Owl staring blindly at the darkening sky.

The sentries froze. The younger man’s spear clattered to the dust, his face draining of color as he stared at the blood darkening the front of his chiton.

“Zeus’s thunder,” he breathed, the oath barely audible. “She’s—that’s the king’s cloak. That’s his mark…”

The veteran dropped to his knees, scarred fingers scrabbling for the wooden token in the dirt. The Owl of Othara stared up at him, accusatory and absolute.

“Run,” he snarled to his companion. “Fetch Dionys. Fetch the King. Now. Move your worthless legs or I’ll hamstring them myself.”

But the camp was already waking to the alarm. Voices rose in the dark, curious then sharp, as soldiers milled from their tents, drawn by the commotion. Someone had lit a torch, and in the guttering flame, the scene revealed itself in brutal clarity.

Alessia lay crumpled like a discarded rag, her dark hair pasted to her temple by a slick of blood. The spilled tincture spread in the dust. Her breath bubbled faintly at the corner of her lips.

The stab wound along her ribs pulsed in time with her fading heartbeat, soaking the wood of Odrian’s cloak, turning the grey fabric to violet and black.

From the tent, a thin, terrified wail cut through the night.

“Mama? Mama!”

Stella had woken alone.

Boots hammered the earth, a cloak flaring like wings in the torchlight as Odrian arrived, Dionys half a step behind him, both men still wearing the dust of the war council. They pulled up short at the sight of her, the King of Othara’s face going slack with horror.

He moved before thought caught up. One moment frozen in the torchlight, the next kneeling in the dust with her blood soaking through the knees of his chiton. The cloak he’d given her, the wool dyed the deep ocean blue of Othara, drank up the darkness spreading from her side and turned it black.

“—the hell did you do?”

The question tore from him rough and ragged, stripped of all theater. His hands hovered over her, suddenly clumsy, afraid to touch where she was broken. Blood pulsed from the gash along her ribs in a rhythm that was too fast, too desperate. It dripped from her temple, coursing down her cheek like tears. He could see the white of bone where the spear caught her… Shallow, survivable, but bleeding everywhere.

His fingers found her wrist, searching for a pulse that fluttered thin and moth-like beneath his thumb.

“Alessia. Thief. Look at me.”

She didn’t. Her eyes were half-lidded, fixed on nothing, her breath hitching in wet catches.

“Don’t you dare.” The words tear from Odrian, raw, ragged, stripped of every flourish. His hands finally stopped hovering and moved, one pressing hard against the gash along her ribs to staunch the pulsing blood, the other cradling the back of her head, fingers coming away sticky and dark. “Don’t you dare do this. Not after I finally—”

He cut himself off, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth. The smell hit him: bitterroot and willow, sharp and herbal, rising from the shattered clay and dark earth beneath her.

Fever remedy.

His gaze snapped to the shards, to the stain, and the realization landed like a spear to his gut.

She’d trusted his camp long enough to step outside alone.

“Dionys!” His voice cracked like a whip across the chaos, hoarse but absolute. “Get Patrian and Askarion! Now! Drag them from their beds if you have to. Tell them it’s a gut wound and head trauma.”

He shifted his weight, ignoring the way his knees sank into the spreading blood, and pressed his free hand harder against her side, feeling her breath stutter beneath his hand.

“Stella,” he rasped, not looking away from Alessia’s slack, pale face. “Dionys, once you’ve sent for them, Stella.” The child’s wail cut the air, thin and terrified. “She’s alone. She’s sick. Check on her before—” He swallowed hard, his thumb brushing Alessia’s bloodied cheek, trying to will her eyes open. “Just go. I’ve got her.”

He didn’t wait for the nod he knew would come. He was already sliding one arm beneath her knees, the other supporting her shoulders, lifting her with a grunt of effort that sounded embarrassingly like a sob.

She was too light, fragile as driftwood in his arms, his blue cloak black with her blood and dust.

His cloak.

His protection.

Worthless as wet papyrus.

“We’re moving,” he announced to no one, to the terrified sentries, to the gathering crowd. “My tent. It’s closer, and I’m not letting her bleed out in the dirt while we wait for permission.” He clutched her tighter against his chest, feeling the wet warmth spread across his own ribs, and began to run. “Stay with me, Thief. That’s an order.”

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Dionys didn’t look at the sentries. He looked at the shattered clay, smelled the sharp, wasted bitterroot on the air, and understood.

The child.

He pointed at the scarred veteran. “You. Run. Fetch Patrian and Askarion. Gut wound, head strike. If they stop to piss, drag them by their hair.” His eyes flicked to the younger guard, pale and trembling, and his voice dropped to a lethal whisper. “Don’t move from that spot. We’ll finish this later.”

He was already turning, shedding his heavy cloak as he strode toward the tent where Stella’s screams had turned desperate, breathless. He tore open the flap.

Inside, she lay half-crawled from the bedroll, Lieutenant Pebble clutched to her chest, her fever-flushed face streaked with tears.

Then she saw him. Saw the blood on his hands, his armor, his beard.

She whimpered, shrinking back into the shadows.

Dionys dropped to his knees. He did not reach for her. Instead, he laid his bloodied palms flat on the earth between them, showing her that he held no weapon, no threat, and he held the wool cloak out like an offering.

“Stella,” he rasped, the gravel in his voice softened only fractionally. “Come here, I’ve got you.”

He waited, the King of Kareth kneeling in dirt and gore, arms open, while outside Odrian ran through the camp with Alessia bleeding in his arms.

Stella stared at the blood on his hands, dark, wet, and wrong. Her grip tightened on her stone until the jagged edges bit into her palm, but she didn’t feel it.

“Mama?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Where’s Mama?”

She looked past him, toward the tent flap, searching for the familiar silhouette, the sound of her footsteps. But there was only the copper scent of blood and the distant shouting.

“She went to find the Sorceress,” Stella said, her lower lip trembling. “She promised. Nose-touch promised.” Her eyes fixed on the blood again, wide and terrified. “That’s… that’s too much blood for a potion. That’s…”

Her small chest hitched. She dropped Lieutenant Pebble and launched herself across the space between them, her small fists clutching at his tunic, burying her fever-hot face against his chest.

“Is she broken?” Stella asked, her voice muffled and small against him. “Like Queen Dottie? Can we… can we sew her back together?”

She was shaking violently, part fever, part terror, and when she looked up at him her dark eyes were swimming with tears she was too proud to let fall.

“Don’t let her glow go out,” she begged. “Please. Don’t let her fall off the mountain.”

Dionys gathered her up, one arm sliding beneath her knees, the other cradling her back, lifting her slight weight against his chest. He shifted her so her fevered cheek rested against his shoulder, his beard rough against her temple, his heartbeat thudding steady beneath her ear.

“She’s torn,” he rumbled, the words vibrating through his chest. “But not broken. Not your Mama.”

His hand, still stained with Alessia’s blood, found Stella’s small fist where it clutched his tunic. He curled his scarred fingers around hers, pressing warmth into the chill of her shaking.

“We’re sewing her back together now,” he said, low and graveled. “Like Queen Dottie. Like you said. We sew what tears.”

He pulled back just enough to look her in the eye, fever-bright and terrified.

“The Sorceress is coming with the potion.”

His thumb brushed her hot cheek, checking the fever he knew was spiking again, and his jaw tightened. “But you hold on, too. No falling off mountains. Not tonight.”

He settled back against the tent post, tucking her into the curve of his body like a shield, his eyes fixed on the flap where the torchlight flickered and shouts echoed. Waiting. Holding the line.

“Nose-touch promise,” he whispered against her hair. “Both of you. Safe.”

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