Tears of Raven

3

Stomping echoed in the forest. Leaves gave way under the sound of heavy boots and Raven could perfectly recognize it. They had attempted to catch her many times in the past without succeeding. Zeus whistled in warning and Raven was already up on her feet. She had no time to retrieve her rope, he was too close already. He was quick like the night and cleaver as a crow. She had managed to stay one step ahead of the royal guard since she was a child. She had escaped the castle and even the military force once or twice. Winter was terrible in Roylat. So cold even her soul froze in December and she was reduced to a sad copy of herself, eating everything she could find when her winter stock would fall short.

But one day, she had dragged her stiff bones near the city walls forced to seek shelter in one of the alleys. When she had woke, barely alive the next day, she had no way to go back to her forest on her feet. There was not enough life in her to drag her through the city walls. She needed food desperately, hadn't eaten in almost four days and she had no human currency to pay for it. the last resource was the less honorable, but there is no way you could reason with a heavy stomach.

Raven was not a small pretty girl, she was tall and slender. Someone would call her fairly-proportioned; she would refer to herself as a scarecrow on good days and as rotten beat on the very bad ones. Having not lived with humans for most of her life, she had no sense of beauty.

Afterall, pretty hair didn't guarantee you survival in the real world but very sharp knife did.

So when she had set foot in the royal city, she thought she would pass unnoticed but as much as the animal world, not even the civil realm thought of her as someone that was normal.

She was an anomaly to both and worst of all, was that she had no idea about it.

Raven had pulled the hood up over her forehead and with dancing feet, she had tiptoed to the first food stand she had the chance to see. The vendor, a very heavy man with dirty nails and an even messy apareon was serving a woman who had a child in her arms and was trying to have him lower the price on some kind of baked good.

The man wasn't having it.

Raven encircled the table and passing her long fingers over the glazed cinnamon buns, she dragged one under her sleeve and moved forward. The smell was unraveling and terribly distracting. If she had not been terribly malnourished, Raven would have noticed that someone, far back into the market, was eying her carefully and had seen her every move.

A velvet maroon cape lift into the wind and was instantly at her side, without her noticing. She was trying to steal another bun when a very silky hand wrapped around her wrist and begun squeezing. Raven didn't panic. She was about to faint, but if she showed her face, people would know she had been a royal slave, having a very bright red circle around her throat: the symbol of slavery. It was drawn to her skin when she had come into this world, right after she was left her mother's womb.

This way, she thought, no one would ever have the time to believe to be something other than an object royalty will use as they please.

But Raven had never been the well-behaving kind of girl. Not even now that she was five and twenty. And you could blame it on the ways she had decided to live with the wildlings but she had never conformed to the royal etiquette and sure as hell was not going to do it now.

The wrist begun to bruise.

Raven had felt the warmth eradiating from the body of broad shoulders man.

"We punish stealing very severely here in Roylat, boy." Raven smiled. Clearly, he had not had the chance to look at her and that was good news. For once her tall stature had proven something useful.

she had felt it before he even knew it. his hand reaching for her neck to uncover her dark curly hair. Raven, as fast as a bee sting, reached for the man's hand and twist it until she was behind him and pressed his arm deep in his back.

The height different was not enough to intimidating her and she placed her chin on the man's shoulder. The smell of earth was strong and engulfed her. she took one deep breath before pushing the soldier with her foot so that he would end up on the floor, but what she had not anticipated was that, the man was not any soldier and she understood it too late. When the entire royal guards begun pouring from any single alley there was.

"Your Highness!" someone screamed.

"The Prince!" another yelled. "The Shadow Prince."

She eyed the man. His scarlet cloak, the stash of black and gold on his chest signaling he was more than a soldier. He was so huge she had mistaken him for a grown man. Now looking into this musk eyes, and the way his light wavy hair fell on his forehead in tender spirals, Raven's glare bore into him. She had met it just once in her life before and since then he had grown so much, she hardly recognized him.

If Raven had lived one more day in the human world, she would have recognized him as gorgeous but amongst animal, Raven never cared for such a silly thing.

And she knew she had fucked up and needed to get away. If they discovered she was a slave that had managed to flee, they would hang her and Raven had no intention to set foot on that damn castle.

She bowed theatrically and with a big grin over her lips, she pursed her lips together and whistled for Zeus. The howl nosedive on the prince that was now getting up and beaked him on the cheek, giving time for our clumsy protagonist to lift herself up on the market tents and wobbly made her way up on the wall and out of the city, not after managing to steal another bun she quickly stuffed in her breast.

From that moment, he had made his life mission to find what he believed to be just a boy. Some sort of cast away kid who had grown up outside of society with the sole purpose to return her back where she belonged.

Raven didn't know much, but she was sure it wasn't his good heart that moved him. He wanted to lock her up because she had embarrassed him in front of every one of his folks. She caught his eyes and the way they had burnt like a pond full of algae ready to drown her.

She could read the death sentence on his lips. He would never forgive her. She couldn't imagine what would happen if he discovered she was in fact a woman and most of all, a slave he owned.

Luckily, also this time, she managed to slip away and climb on one of the tall oak before the soldiers irrupted in the clearing breaking everything they put their hands on without any regards.

The way they acted as if the forest was the outsider, something that was in the way, more than the sole queen of the place, made Raven's blood boil. She was supposing to jump away to the next tree and be done with it, but the moment the maroon cloak showed up, she knew she needed to stay and listen. It was important, she felt it in her stomach.