Page 1 of Raven's Dawn

1

RAIN

June 2003

This was a fantasy.

Standing on the cottage stoop, I gazed up at the snowcapped mountains in the distance. Orange sky surrounded them, dragons circling their peaks. The scale of it was mind-boggling. At a glance, the dragons looked like tiny birds—like my flock of ravens flying just overhead. But one dragon took up nearly a quarter of the mountain’s peak.

“You’re gonna freeze out here.” Graham adjusted the duffel bags on either of his shoulders and struggled past me. “Go put some clothes on.”

With furrowed brows, I glanced over myself. Jeans, T-shirt, and baggy hoodie. It was chilly, but I was comfortable. “In what world is this naked?”

“This one.” He tossed the duffel bags onto the floor just inside the curved wooden door. Turning back around, he gestured toward the mountain range. “Storm’s coming in. You need your boots. And your coat.”

“We’re not meeting up with everybody for a little while.” Naomi struggled around Warren and Ezra’s suitcases at the foot of the stairs. Specifically, all their clothes that had spilled from their suitcases in the portal. Adjusting her backpack, she walked past me, saying, “You don’t need to change yet. But yeah. That’s practically naked here.”

I grunted my annoyance, then gestured to Warren and Ezra. “Well, if I have to change, so do they.”

After all, Warren was wearing jeans and a hoodie as well, and Ezra was in slacks. Why slacks and a button up when he knew we were coming to a war-ridden world to defeat Angels and soul eaters? Because anything Ezra did, he had to do in style. And there were no stylish snowsuits.

“We’re Vampires.” Warren waved a dismissive hand at me, collecting his clothes into the suitcase. “We can handle the cold better than you.”

“In that case, you can handle your mess better than me, too.” Propping my hands on my hips, I gave him a narrow-eyed smile. “I was gonna offer to help, but it’s all on you now.”

“We can handle some spilled luggage.” Meeting my gaze, Ezra glanced at Graham. You worry about him.

Graham was… not his best. He tried to hide it, of course. The only part of him that gave it away were the dark circles beneath his eyes. If I hadn’t slept beside him last night, feeling him toss and turn, hearing him grumble indiscernibly when he did finally fall asleep, I wouldn’t know how difficult this was for him.

But I did know, and I knew I had to be there for him.

So, like a little duckling, I followed Graham into the cottage. The interior was just as idyllic as the exterior.

The walls were some kind of rock material, almost like concrete, but softer to the touch. I had to imagine it was a type of mud mixture that had been dried in the sun. Four windows allowed in light, a layer of two inch thick glass on each. Small wooden shutters—open, despite the forty-degree weather—framed every one.

In the far-right corner, there was a little space that I best equated to a kitchen. There was no faucet for the sink, but an Elvan ore basin. On either side, more Elvan ore sat atop wooden cabinets as countertops. To the left, there was a staircase, and behind it were two doors. All of the floors were wooden, but bare wood, not finished with polyurethane or stained any particular color.

I made a mental note to not walk around barefoot.

Graham stood at the fireplace in the center of the room with Jake, my brother. Kneeling, he shoved something inside that did not look like wood. It was black and cylindrical, roughly the size of my palm.

“That’s not coal, is it?” I asked. “I thought coal was shaped more like a rock.”

Chuckling, Graham gave me a smile over his shoulder. “No, mo stoirín. It’s not coal.”

“Ah, shit.” I wrinkled my nose. “Do I want to know?”

Another laugh. “You just answered your own question.”

I cocked my head to the side. “What?”

“It’s shit,” Naomi said, walking past me. “Trees don’t grow here. The ones that do, it would be a waste to cut down.”

“Aye, so we take manure and compress it into patties,” Graham said. “That’s what we burn to keep our houses warm. Dung patties.”

“Yummy,” I said under my breath. “Is there a bathroom here?”

“You think we’re animals?” Connor asked, coming in behind me. “Of course we have bathrooms.”