Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2 by Hilari Bell Read Free Book Online

happened was suddenly a lot more complicated than telling him about a psycho girl luring Jase on and abandoning him. If he was hallucinating the whole thing—which he had to be, didn’t he?—he might as well go with it.
    “All right.” Jase tried to slow his racing heartbeat. “You can come closer. But when I say stop, you have to stop. OK?”
    The raven . . . he would have sworn it nodded.
    It hopped a few yards, then stalked the last few feet on scaly bird legs. Its feathers were glossy black, with white highlights where the sun struck them. It had round, solid-color animal eyes, and its beak wasn’t shiny like the feathers. Slowly, watching him, it spread its great wings and held them wide. Its wingspan had to be close to five feet, and the feathers on the underside formed an intricate pattern.
    “OK,” said Jase. “I looked. Give me the key now.”
    The bird took another step, then stopped when Jase flinched back. It croaked, and combed its beak through the feathers on its breast. Did it want him to touch it?
    The thought raised goose flesh on his arms. Suppose whatever had done that to the girl was contagious? Suppose after he touched it, he started melting too?
    “No way,” Jase said. “Don’t come any closer.”
    The bird flipped its wings and settled in to wait some more.
    Clearly, if he wanted the key he’d have to touch the bird. And if he
was
hallucinating, there was no danger. Right?
    Jase gave in and reached out tentatively to touch the feathers on its breast, wary for the first movement of that sharp beak.
    He must have guessed right, for the bird stepped into his touch, pushing his fingers through the stiff outer feathers and into the warm down below.
    Jase jerked his hand back and examined it. No oily blackness. No sign of melting. Yet.
    “OK, I get it. You’re a bird. Now can I have the key?”
    Its body had felt like a bird’s, thin flesh over bone under the soft coating.
    The raven hopped back and considered him. Then it began to expand, rippling and bulging disturbingly as it grew. The feathers bristled, then contracted into blackened flesh. The beak receded, forehead and chin emerged, the neck elongated and thinned. Then the oily darkness faded into warm brown, eyelashes and eyebrows sprouted, and in moments Raven the girl stood before him.
    She was completely naked.
    Jase didn’t care.
    “Are you going to let me go now?”
    “Not till you’ve listened.”
    She must have realized he wasn’t watching her body, because she stopped posing and went around the tree to pick up her clothes. And for once, the part of Jase that couldn’t help but notice all that smooth bare skin wasn’t dominating the rest of his brain.
    “If I listen, then you’ll release me?”
    “Yes.” She started putting on her clothes.
    “Then talk! I want to get out of here before . . .”
    Before a whole flock of bird people showed up, and shot him with space weapons that wiped his memory and turned him into a drooling vegetable. If this wasn’t a hallucination, he was pretty sure it fell into the “you’ve seen me so I have to kill you” category.
    “I intend to tell you everything, but first, where’s the medicine bag? I can sense that you’re not carrying it—and you should! You need to bond with it in order to use it.”
    “What med—That pouch? That’s what this is about? No, forget the stupid pouch. How did you
do
that? Who . . . what are you?”
    “I’m Raven.” She put on her pants and sealed them. “Just as I said. I haven’t lied and I don’t intend to. Lying didn’t work out, before. And I’ve already wasted too much time finding you.”
    “That doesn’t answer my question,” Jase pointed out. “And I don’t give a frack about the last time. What are you?”
    “I’m a shapeshifter from a dimension . . . well, not exactly adjacent to yours, but we share the same leys.”
    “
Lays?
Like, lay of the land or something? How does that shapeshifting thing work? It