Tiny Raven

Content Warning:

This chapter contains themes of past abuse, threats made toward a child, intense fear-based coercion, discussion of a parent preparing a fatal “backup plan” for herself and her child, references to severe mistreatment by a former captor, and strong emotional distress. Please be safe while reading. A summary of events is included in the post-chapter author note.

Alessia sat by the fire, watching the flames dance as she worried at the wax seal of the small unguent jar.

It was among her last secrets.

Odrian spotted her by the fire, a silhouette against the flickering light. For the first time all day, he was quiet.

“That look usually precedes either confession or arson,” he said as he plopped down beside her.

Dionys appeared on her other side like a shadow given form. Silent, sudden, there. He didn’t ask about the jar, just stared at it like it was a blade pressed to her throat.

He wouldn’t push. If she said nothing, he would walk away.

If she said everything, he would burn the world.

The choice was hers.

Alessia turned the jar over in her fingers.

“Three years ago,” she said, voice quiet, “I tried running after Walus hurt Stella. Didn’t even get as far as the city gates before one of his lieutenants caught us. That’s when Walus put the shackle on me. Restricted my movement. I was under constant guard, only allowed a handful of places in the villa.” She took a deep breath, her hand clenching around the jar. “Those weren’t my only punishments.”

She rolled the jar in her hands, feeling the substance inside shift with the movement.

“He gave me a warning,” she continued. “Told me if I ever tried running again, when he caught us he’d kill Stella. You know what he does to prisoners. Traitors. He told me those would look like mercy compared to what he would do to her. He said he’d make me watch.”

She swallowed hard and focused on the jar in her hands. “I stole jewelry when we ran. I traded some of it for this almost as soon as we were out of the city. I… I had to be sure.”

Dionys moved before she could finish, kneeling in front of her, his hands braced on her knees.

“Alessia.” His voice was rough, blistering. “What’s in the vial?”

He already knew. Gods, he already knew. But he needed to hear her say it.

“Hemlock,” Odrian breathed. Not a question, but a verdict, his voice stripped raw of its theatrical lilt. He shifted closer, his shoulder pressing solid and warm against hers, countering Dionys’s intensity with a different kind of anchor. His hand covered hers where she gripped the jar, his fingers threading through hers to still the tremor. “Or nightshade. Something… irreversible.”

He didn’t flinch from the implication. He looked at the fire, then back to her, his eyes dark and unguarded in the flickering light. “You kept it for her. If he found you. If the steel wasn’t fast enough to spare her the chains.”

He squeezed her hand, gentle but immovable around the clay.

“But you didn’t use it,” he whispered, fierce and low. “You ran instead. You fought. You chose to live in a battlefield rather than surrender to him.” His thumb traced the wax seal, unbroken and pristine. “Give it to me, Alessia. You don’t need an exit strategy anymore.”

“Poppy,” Alessia confirmed softly as she let him take the jar from her hands. “Painless… I didn’t want her to suffer. Just… sleep.” She swallowed hard. “There’s enough for a child and an adult.”

He closed his hand around the jar and tucked it into his belt pouch with deliberate care, as if handling a holy relic. Then he turned to face her, taking her other hand in both of his, his thumbs pressing steady circles into her palms.

“Poppy,” he repeated, the word barely audible above the fire’s crackle. He swallowed hard, his throat working against the image of Stella, small and trusting, drifting away in her mother’s arms rather than facing the Butcher’s knives.

“You were going to sing her to sleep. Tell her stories. Hold her until…”

He broke off, his voice cracking. He lay his forehead against her hands like he was steadying himself against the relief of it.

Dionys didn’t move his hands from her knees, but his grip tightened, fingers pressing into the muscle hard enough to hold her to the earth. When he spoke, his voice was stripped bare.

“Brave,” he said. Not a compliment. An assessment. “Carrying that. Preparing for it.”

He exhaled sharply through his nose, glancing at where Odrian tucked the vial away. “Gone now. That exit. You don’t need it.”

He lifted a hand to cup her face, his thumb tracing her jaw. Light and careful, nothing like his usual brutal grip. His eyes caught the firelight, reflecting it back at her like steel heated in a forge.

“If he comes,” Dionys said, “he dies. Not you. Not her. Him.” His thumb stilled against her cheekbone. “You chose the harder path. You ran into the fire instead of closing your eyes. Remember that when the dark thoughts come.”

He dropped his hand back to her knee, grounding her.

“Stella sings because you chose to fight. Keep choosing it. We’ll kill everything else.”

Odrian pulled the jar from his pouch, worrying it in his hands before he stood, walking to the fire. For a moment, he just stared into the flames.

Then he tossed the vial in.

The wax seal blackened.

The clay cracked.

The poison burned.

He didn’t turn back right away. Just watched it crumble to ash before exhaling roughly.

“No more contingencies,” he murmured, half to himself, half to the night. “Only us.”

Alessia was shaking. Not from fear, but from something raw and aching and hopeful. Tension she hadn’t realized she was carrying bled from her shoulders.

They burned it.

They burned her escape.

Some tight, hidden knot inside her finally began to loosen.

The fire crackled, the last of the vial’s remains collapsing into embers, and something in her chest unfurled.

“…Okay,” she whispered, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

It was surrender. Trust.

Dionys didn’t move from his knees in front of her. He watched the fire consume the jar, watched the tension bleed from her shoulders, and felt something dangerous and warm settle in his chest.

He reached up slowly, giving her time to pull away, and brushed the tears from her cheek with his thumb. Rough skin against salt water.

“Okay,” he echoed back to her, voice gravel-rough but steady. He dropped his hand to cover hers, resting on her knee, his fingers lacing through hers with firm, grounding pressure. “That’s the word. You say it when you need us. When the memories come. When you’re scared. Just… okay. We’ll be here.”

He glanced toward the tent where Stella slept, then back to Alessia, his gaze direct and unyielding.

“No more carrying the end alone. Not while we breathe.”

He squeezed her hand once, hard enough to bruise, before settling back onto the sand beside her, close enough that his shoulder pressed solid and warm against hers.

“Rest now. I’ll watch the fire.”

Odrian turned from the fire, ash from the vial still swirling in the updraft, and crossed the space between them in two strides. He didn’t kneel like Dionys. He dropped onto the sand beside her with a graceless exhaustion that spoke of walls crumbling, and immediately reached for her free hand, the one Dionys wasn’t holding. His fingers were warm, calloused, and as they tangled with hers, he pressed something small and hard into her palm.

A silver ring. His own signet, cool against her skin.

“Hold that,” he murmured, his voice stripped of its theatrical lilt, reduced to something rough and sea-worn. “As collateral. I get it back when you’ve let us prove—really prove—that you’ll never need to reach for poppy or whatever other exit strategy that bastard trained you to keep in your boot.”

He brought their joined hands to press his forehead against her knuckles, his breath warm against her skin. When he looked up, his eyes were fierce in the firelight, and he looked, for once, completely unguarded.

“No more secrets, Thief,” he said, softer still. “No more poison. No more preparing for the end. You’ve got us now. We’re insufferably stubborn about keeping people alive. Especially people who owe us language lessons.”

His thumb traced a scar on her palm, then he tightened his grip with the fierce certainty of a king making an oath.

“Sleep. He won’t touch you again. He’ll break himself trying. That’s not a promise. That’s a fact.”

Summary

Alessia sits by the fire after putting Stella to bed, turning over a small sealed vial—her last and most desperate contingency. When Odrian and Dionys join her, she finally admits what the vial is: something she acquired long ago as a final escape if Walus ever caught them again. The revelation hits both men hard—Dionys with raw panic and fury, Odrian with a quieter but just as devastating grief. They burn the vial, making it clear that she doesn’t need that kind of plan anymore, not with them.