Chapter 73 — This Is My Fucking Head

Chapter 73: Chapter 73 — This Is My Fucking Head

~ Raven ~

Raven did not answer him.

She was too busy checking the white around them.

It stretched in every direction exactly as she remembered it, with no floor she could see, no ceiling, no edge anywhere. Only this time, it was empty.

No chains across the ground.

No enormous white shape standing over her.

No silver eyes watching from behind her.

The last time this thing had come for her, her wolf had put itself between them and driven him out. Raven had spent every day since trying to convince herself that the entire thing had only been a dream.

Now she understood it wasn’t and saw what was missing.

The wolf was not here.

Her body seemed to realize it before the rest of her did. Her shoulders tightened, and something cold settled low in her stomach.

"You’ve gone quiet."

He slowly started toward her.

Each step was measured, almost leisurely, as though he had already decided exactly how calm he intended to look and refused to give her anything else.

"Do you know how many minds have ever kept me outside?"

Raven said nothing.

"None."

He came several paces closer before stopping.

She could not see his expression, but she could feel the contempt in the way he looked her over.

"You’re Nascent." He made the word sound like something unpleasant he had found on his shoe. "I have walked through minds stronger than yours without so much as knocking."

A pause.

"And somehow you have doors."

His voice sharpened on the last word.

He seemed to hear it at the same moment Raven did, because his shoulders tightened before he forced them loose again.

"I reach for something you don’t want me to see, and it closes."

Raven frowned.

He took another step.

"I push harder, it closes again. I go around it, find another way in, and somehow that shuts too." His voice rose before he caught it. "Do you understand how fucking irritating that is?"

He went still for a second, then continued more quietly.

"I don’t get shut out."

Raven’s back had gone cold.

"I don’t have to ask permission. I don’t have to search for another way in. People don’t get to decide which parts of their mind I can touch." Another edge slipped into his voice. "But you do. Every fucking time."

Raven said nothing.

She still had no idea what he was. She didn’t know how much of her mind he could actually reach, what he wanted from her, or what would happen if he finally forced his way through whatever kept stopping him.

But she knew one thing.

The last time she had been trapped here with him, she had not driven him out.

Something else had.

Her eyes flicked behind her before she could stop them.

He saw it.

"Ah."

He sounded delighted.

"Looking for your mutt?"

Raven’s attention snapped back.

He took another step.

"It’s just the two of us now."

Another.

"No mutt between us."

Raven stepped back.

She had not meant to. Her body simply did it for her, one short step across ground that made no sound.

He noticed.

Worse, he enjoyed it.

She saw the satisfaction run through the set of his shoulders before he lifted one hand toward her head.

The cold came immediately.

Raven sucked in a breath.

It was worse than she remembered.

It did not crash into her mind. It slipped in quietly, spreading along the edges of her thoughts with horrible patience. She felt it brushing against memories as though he were testing doors to see which ones would open.

Raven’s breathing turned shallow.

"There," he murmured. "That’s better."

He moved through her mind so easily that the ease frightened her more than the cold did. There was no strain in him. No hesitation. He wandered through pieces of her life with the casual entitlement of a man walking through a house he believed already belonged to him.

Raven braced herself for the moment he started tearing through the memories.

But then his own words came back to her.

I don’t get shut out.

Not Nascent. Not weak. Not whatever he thought she had been three days ago.

He could call her nothing as many times as he wanted, but none of that explained why his voice kept slipping whenever he talked about the parts of her mind he could not reach.

Or why he had come back after the wolf threw him out the first time.

Raven stared at him.

He wasn’t angry because she was weak.

He was angry because someone he believed should be weak had stopped him.

And he still didn’t know how.

Some of the fear loosened its grip on her chest.

A laugh slipped out before she could stop it.

It was one small sound, and she did not entirely mean to make it.

His hands went still.

"What," he said, "the fuck is so funny?"

Raven looked at him properly for the first time.

She still could not make out his face, but the rest of him was suddenly much easier to read. His shoulders had gone rigid. The hand he had lifted toward her was clenched now. Even the easy way he had been carrying himself had disappeared.

All because she had laughed.

Another chuckle escaped her.

His head tilted.

"You," Raven said.

"What?"

"You’re funny."

His hand tightened.

Raven felt her heartbeat thudding against the pressure inside her skull, but her voice came out steadier than she felt. "You keep telling me how weak I am. Nascent. Nothing compared to everyone else you’ve done this to."

"You are."

"Then why did you come back?"

He said nothing.

Raven stared at him.

"You said nobody keeps you out. Nobody makes you ask permission. Nobody gets to choose what you can touch." She gestured between them. "Then I did."

"Don’t flatter yourself."

"I’m not."

She took a step toward him.

It was small, but he noticed. She saw it in the slight shift of his shoulders.

"I’m trying to understand why you’re so fucking angry."

He went very still.

There.

Raven felt something inside her settle.

"You’re scared."

A laugh came from him, empty of amusement.

"Of you?"

"No."

The answer left Raven before she had completely worked it out.

His laughter stopped.

Raven looked around at the endless white and then back at the blurred shape of him.

"Not me."

She took another step.

"You’re scared of whatever keeps stopping you."

The air changed.

Barely.

A faint grayness began gathering at the edges of the white, so distant Raven might have imagined it if his fist had not closed at exactly the same moment.

"You come into people’s heads and take whatever you want," Raven continued. "Then you came into mine and something told you no."

"You have no idea what you’re talking about."

"Neither do you."

His head snapped toward her.

Raven smiled.

That one landed.

"You don’t know what keeps shutting you out." Her fear was still there, sitting cold beneath her ribs, but now there was something else beside it. "That’s why you came back."

The gray at the edges deepened.

"Careful."

"You wanted another look."

"Rivers."

"You wanted to know what the fuck happened."

The pressure hit her.

Raven’s knees buckled.

She caught herself before they touched whatever passed for ground in this place, one hand dropping instinctively as pain drove straight through the center of her skull.

Cold flooded after it.

Not around her thoughts this time.

Into them.

Raven sucked in a breath as memories shifted under the intrusion. The kitchens flashed behind her eyes. Celeste’s hand. The Blackthorn gates. He reached for one, met resistance, and shoved harder.

Pain burst behind Raven’s eyes.

"Still think I’m scared?" he asked softly.

Raven tried to straighten.

The pressure increased.

Her vision warped, white folding over white as something cold forced itself deeper into a part of her mind that did not want it there.

And suddenly Raven was furious.

Not because she understood what he was doing.

She didn’t.

She still had no idea what this place truly was, how he had brought her here, or what he would find if he managed to force his way through.

But those memories were hers.

The things she had survived and the things she had buried because surviving them once had already been enough.

He did not get them simply because he could reach.

Raven planted both feet and forced herself upright.

His pressure bore down harder.

She straightened anyway.

"This is my fucking head."

Something in the cold hesitated.

Raven felt it.

"My memories. My dreams. Whatever this place is." Her breathing was rough now, but she kept her eyes on him. "It belongs to me."

His voice came quieter.

"You think that matters?"

"I think you’re standing inside my mind without being invited."

"And?"

Raven’s jaw tightened.

"And I want you out."

He laughed.

This time there was no careful warmth in it. No performance. The sound came out rough and angry.

"Wanting is easy."

Raven stared at him.

"Get out."

He spread his hands.

"Make me."