Ravensong

For Lauren, first and forever CHAPTER ONE The girl with her arm in a sling didn’t look like a god. She could have been any other teenager eagerly counting down the days until graduation. The busted arm might’ve been from a sports injury, or an unlucky fender bender. No one would suspect that she’d hurt herself fighting a demon.Well. They might start to suspect something when they saw the silver sword held tight in her grip. Newgrange Harbor High School didn’t have a fencing team, and even if it did, a blunt fencing foil could never be confused with the weapon Neve Morgan held with practiced grace, like it was an extension of her arm.The sword’s weight was familiar, the leather-wrapped pommel perfectly molded to her grip, and for the hundredth time this week, Neve felt a stab of annoyance that it had been relocated to the armory, instead of being under her bed where it belonged. Besides her bedroom, the armory was where she kept most of her weapons anyway, but it was the principle of the thing.Despite her aggravation, Neve felt the muscles in her neck loosen the moment her sword was back in her hand. The armory smelled like burnished steel and the oil she and her sisters used to maintain their blades, but more than that, it felt safe. Their weapons were ancient—as old as they were or older—held together by magic and a strict maintenance regimen, but only about a third of the collection was still used in battle. The rest were mementos. Tokens from battles long past, both lost and won. Neve wasn’t allowed to know their stories, not yet, but sometimes she liked to imagine the glory of it. Why that longsword? Or those arrows? What had been strong enough to chip the blade of the double-bladed axe in the corner?It was a game she’d played since she was little, one she used to play with her sisters, until they both grew up and left her behind.Tonight, however, Neve wasn’t interested in telling herself war stories.“Mab’s tits, Nee,” said a voice at her back. Neve jumped at Mercy’s sudden appearance, as if she’d been caught sneaking out past curfew, not handling a blade that had seen more than a thousand years of bloodshed. “If Daughter Aoife finds you in here, she’s going to lose her shit.”“I’m bored,” Neve complained, her shoulders tensing slightly. Lying to her sisters was always hard, but at least it was Mercy and not Bay. Mercy—the second-oldest and a middle-child stereotype in more ways than one—could often be persuaded to look the other way when Neve broke house rules. Rules that forbade Neve from handling her weapons when she was injured because no one trusted her not to overdo it, even when she was supposed to be on bed rest.Bay was different, though. Lying to Bay was impossible.Neve heaved a sigh. “Mer-cy,” she whined. “It’s been a week.”She wasn’t the only one hurt in the fight, but she was the only one who’d taken a nasty demon bite to the shoulder and, to add insult to extremely painful injury, the only one still healing. Oh, the joys of being under eighteen in the Morgan household.“Next time, remember how this feels before you break formation,” Mercy said, rolling her eyes. Neve glowered. Right, like she’d wanted a demon to turn her shoulder into shredded beef.“I had an opening,” Neve insisted, falling into the argument they’d already had a half-dozen times since last week. “I saw a chance to kill the stupid thing and I took it.”Mercy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yeah, and how’d that go, genius? You’re still seventeen.”You’re still seventeen. You’re still mostly human. You haven’t manifested yet. Neve had heard those excuses hundreds of times, whenever her family needed a reason to leave her behind or keep her in the dark or baby her like she wasn’t just as much a part of the triad as Mercy or Bay. Like she wasn’t just as much a god.Except she wasn’t part of the triad or a fully-fledged god yet, not really. She was still underage, and until her birthday in eight months she was stuck in the bullshit liminal space between humanity and divinity, separated from the memories of her past lives, her powers, and her sisters, who insisted that she needed to be protected.Neve ground her teeth. She didn’t need to be protected. She was Morrigan. She did the protecting.“I can still fight,” Neve insisted. She knew she should drop it. This wasn’t an argument she could win—history had proved that dozens of times over—but gods, she just wanted someone to listen to her for once.“You absolutely can,” said a new voice from the doorway, and Neve stiffened as Daughter Maeve swept into the armory, her customary black cloak trailing behind her. Maeve was using her High Priestess voice, which was appropriate since she technically was the High Priestess of the Order of Danu, the sect of nuns who had devoted themselves to raising and protecting the Morrigan for lifetimes. Neve straightened her back in anticipation of a lecture.“No one doubts your ability to fight,” Daughter Maeve went on, adjusting her veil. The Daughters never wore them over their faces inside the convent, but it was still part of the daily ensemble. “But we still worry about your safety. If you die before…”Neve stiffened, a chill crawling up the back of her neck. She didn’t want to have this conversation anymore, but Daughter Maeve and Mercy were blocking the door. “I’m not going to die.”“No, you’re not,” Maeve agreed, and for a brief, beautiful moment Neve thought that the conversation was about to turn in her favor. “Because we’re going to keep you safe until you turn eighteen. It’s only eight more months. Be patient.”I don’t need to be kept safe! Neve wanted to scream at both of them. Her arm twinged, a cruel reminder that despite her protestations to the contrary, she was still breakable.“You