The Raven Girl

Prologue

Hello there! Thanks for taking the time to read this. I have recently done some 'extreme gardening' and have rewritten the prologue completely to give you a more useful start to the story and will continue to edit the other chapters whilst finishing the story. This is probably a really bad idea for somebody who is a touch lazy, but oh well. You'll be able to tell the edited from the non-edited by the little notes I leave at the top :)

Hopefully this is a more interesting start to the story but please, by all means, leave your opinions. I would love to hear them!

Winter 1177,

Dagny is dead.

Dagny, my sister, is dead.

She has been these three nights. These three awful, sleepless nights where nothing but my thoughts distract from the exhaustion, the knowledge that my beautiful sister was gone. And why was she gone? Why was she dead? I had spent the last three nights asking myself the exact same question.

They had written to me. The crown had written to me, expressing their deepest sympathies for my loss, that she had died in an attack upon her horse, that her attackers had fled with all her jewels and even the dress she had been wearing that day. She had been stripped of her dignity, they had said, and it was all they could do to return her poor, broken body to me thereafter and let me grieve in peace.

It was all too easy.

It was all too convenient for them, all too easily tied up and boxed away, out of sight and out of mind.

I had warned Dagny not to stray from home. She, the happy, free spirit she was, had gone all the same, despite my words of caution, for the winter festivities held in the capital and I, the conceding brother, had permitted her to with no further questions asked. When her letters were brought to me telling of the beauty that came with the snow and the castle and the feasts and the music, I had smiled to myself and the worries I previously held faded. I had in fact almost envied her after confining myself to a quiet winter about the castle, dealing with tenants' complaints for hours on end. That was, until she had notified me she was to return – a day later, she died.

She arrived home with a fearful expression written in her pale, dead face and grey eyes, silver hair splayed everywhere and covering the majority of wounds done to her sweet head. She had been the only one in our family to own such striking features and father had often joked that was because she was not his, though in reality he knew this not to be the case – she was as much of him as I, if not more so, for she had within her his character. And now, those features are marred with dried blood and fractured bones and bruises so deep I can barely stand to look at her because they told of her pain, they told of her suffering, but look at her I do.

I have to. I have to remember the way they'd mutilated her, have to remember that she is dead.

No. Not just dead. She had been murdered, taken before her time.

I will never rest until I punish who did it and avenge the life that was taken from us, the vibrant life, the happy life that kept my family sane through the darkest of times. When father died, she had been the one to fill his place if it ever could be filled, the one to remind us that he was still present, still with us. She had kept mother smiling but now she was gone and so was mother's smile.

Liss is watching me as I write this, our baby balanced on her lap, and I can see the concern in her deep blue eyes. She worries about me. She probably worries about my sanity, more likely, for I have been sitting in this very desk these past days and will not move. I have a life to avenge and cannot possibly rest until it is done.

She asks me to come to bed, to say goodnight to baby Magnus, but I refuse to move. She doesn't understand. Whatever she asks I will answer, but she never cares for my reply and so I don't know why she even bothers.

"Amund, please get some rest," she says, always appearing somewhat exasperated at my refusal despite it being the only rational thing for me to say. How can she expect me to do anything else when I had not protected my little sister when she needed me most?

"Then at least tell me what it is you're doing," she begs, running her hands through my greasy hair. Sighing, I replace the documents I've been scanning the last few hours on the desk amongst its other pages and turn to her, taking that small, fretting hand to my lips. Liss deserved the truth from me –that much was true – but Dagny also deserved the truth and my wife was wasting valuable time. It was selfish, really.

"Finding the murderer," I say and that's when her hand turns cold and she drops it from my mouth.

"You don't know that," she whispers. Oh but I do though. "For all you know, it could have been a commoner."

"That's what they'll have you believe, Elisabet. They hope we'll take that story and nothing more will be said. I just need enough proof, that's all."

"Please, Amund," she begs again, more desperately this time, and clings to me until I find I'm swatting her away like a moth at my candle flame. "You're becoming obsessed and it's scaring me."

She's scared? She is scared? What about Dagny? Dagny must've been terrified out of her mind when her horse was stopped and her clothing torn and ripped from her flesh and a knife pulled out at her throat. As I said: selfish. All Liss could ever think of was herself. But I wouldn't let her selfishness dictate my actions; I would fight for my sister's tragic tale to be told as it should be, without lies to cloud what really happened.

I don't reply to her at that point, won't listen to her treacherous words. If it'd been her sister, she would have shown more remorse. I couldn't look at her properly when she was like this. It made rage bubble beneath my skin like nothing ever had and, when I look back, I realise just how close I was to doing something I would deeply regret, the anger and heat of the moment pounding in my fists. I'm not an angry person. I never feel this way towards Liss.

"Amund, listen to me. They didn't have any reason to hurt her."

"That's what you think," I snap, barely recognising myself at that moment. The tears form in my eyes and threaten to fall for my poor, dead sister, but I won't let them. Not while scornful Elisabet was still lurking. "You won't take any interest in the facts though, so I shan't share the reasons I've found."

"You've found something?" she asks, genuine interest beginning to prickle her senses, but she had waited too late.

"Yes. I found something. But you didn't."

Her face falls and I see her pick up Magnus, the dear boy I had once loved but now felt so detached from. I wasn't his father anymore, I realised, because his father was halfway to his grave battling all kinds of demons for the life of the child's aunt. Firmly, I tell her, much as she had told me earlier on, to go to bed, only Liss knows not to argue with me. Despite being fairly lenient with her, valuing her views and the like, she is still my wife and I her husband. She knows my word was final.

She hoists Magnus over one shoulder and I see him staring at me with those wide, curious eyes, their blue pigment appearing almost sorrowful and abandoned as if he knows I am avoiding him, as if he knows his father is already gone. For a minute, a thought crosses my mind. A thought of regret for a child who will not know his father like I did mine, but almost immediately after I remember Dagny's cold, dead fear and that the boy's suffering is nothing compared to hers.

Besides, he'd have his father back when the murderers were dealt with. Once their tyrannous heads are shoved on a pike and displayed on full show at the riverbanks outside their precious castle, Dagny's life will be avenged and he will have his father back, if only I can gather enough compelling evidence to have the lords side with me.

I shake my head. The sooner I find that evidence, the sooner I can visit her grave without a swelling guilt rising in my stomach like bile. I bite my lip, adjust my candle and take a swig of my wine before delving deeper into the stack of documents on my table.

When I find that evidence, Dagny's ghost will cease to haunt me and the anger will fade, I just know. Her ghost will cease to exist and I will finally be free.