Read Raven's Strike for Free Online

she had not dreaded returning to the duties of a Raven, she would never have accepted his offer of marriage.
    He’d always felt that he’d helped to save her from something terrible, but she didn’t look like someone who needed rescuing.
    She held her hands palm down over the well: tension flowed up her body from toes to fingertips, and the sharp, sparkling feeling that was magic brushed over his skin in anuneasy caress. With a hollow boom that shook the ground he stood upon, flame boiled suddenly out of the well in a searing wave of destruction. The roof caught fire first, then the walls of the sheltering building, the frail strands of weeds that surrounded the well house, followed an instant later by the post Seraph held on to.
    Heedless of his damaged knees, Tier dove through the flames and caught Seraph around the waist, jerking her off the well and away from the fire. He had her on the ground and rolled her over twice before he realized that her clothes had not kindled and she was laughing.
    He released her abruptly, but she sat up and kept her hands on him, brushing over his sleeves and quenching the smoldering fabric.
    â€œI overdid it,” she said, with a grin he recognized as the expression of action-drunk joy that sometimes caught warriors in the height of battle. He’d never seen her look more lovely.
    He’d never been so angry with her, either—she could have killed herself.
    There was a sharp crack of sound behind them, and Tier jerked around to see Seraph’s flames whoosh out of existence as quickly as they had come, leaving the shed that protected the well blackened but unharmed.
    As Hennea lowered her hands to her side after quenching the fire, something dark and smoking slipped over the rim of the well. It darted past Tier in an attempt to reach the nearby woodland; its pace so rapid he was left with scattered impressions of sparse wiry hair over wrinkled skin and sapphire eyes. The wolf who was Jes was only a little slower.
    â€œThe wight!” shouted Benroln.
    An arrow intercepted the beast before Benroln finished the last syllable of its name. The thing rolled end over end several times, and Jes was upon it.
    Dust and fur and darkness tangled until Tier couldn’t tell one creature from the other. But evidently Lehr had no such problem. A second arrow found flesh, then a third and fourth.
    Jes separated himself, then shook his fur to rid it of dust and dried grass. The mistwight struggled weakly for a few seconds more, three of Lehr’s arrows stuck up from hip, neck, and rib. A fourth, broken off a handspan from the tip,protruded from its eye. Its ribs rose twice more and stilled.
    Dead, it seemed to take up much less space than it had alive.
    Seraph lay back down and laughed. She turned to Tier, and the smile slid from her eyes. “What’s wrong, Tier?”
    He forced a smile and shook his head. She didn’t deserve his anger. It wasn’t her fault that she enjoyed the spice of danger—he knew the feeling himself, but it unsettled him to see it in his wife. Not just because she had risked her life, either.
    â€œNothing, love. Let me give you a hand up.”
    This is what she had been born to do, he thought, as they strode back to the smith’s hut like a small triumphant army after Hennea disposed of the mistwight’s body with another bout of flame.
    He could feel her outgrowing the home they’d forged together. He’d tried to ignore the changes in her since she and their sons had ridden to his rescue, but today had forced him to face them head-on. To save him, Seraph had taken up the mantle of her Order again.
    He couldn’t see how she’d ever pull herself small enough to live on the farm and be nothing but a farmer’s wife again. Even if she tried to set her power aside a second time, he wasn’t certain if he could allow it, not remembering the joy on her face as the well lit with flames.

C HAPTER 2
    â€œNo