The White Raven (fanfiction)
Chapter Three: The End of the Beginning, the Beginning of the End
The instant she was aware of the sounds of the night birds, Andriana realized she had fainted. She rolled onto her side, groaned, and reached to touch the sore spots, first on her head, which was more immediately pressing, then her shoulder, which ached more mildly.
For a fleeting moment, she was embarrassed for herself, but then everything that had led up to her passing out returned to her in one, sweeping rush of memory, and she almost fainted again. Could it really be true?
“You weren’t dreaming,” Lila said, as though hearing her thoughts. Andriana’s eyes ached as she tried to see her in the darkness.
“Oh gods… I was really hoping it was all a dream.”
She rubbed her eyes as Lila lit a candle and came over to her. Lila’d apparently managed to drag Andriana to the cot in the back room and had been sewing quietly in the darkness, watching over her during the hours she’d been unconscious. Lila now had a mug of water in her hand, which she offered to Andriana, and Andy watched her guiltily. She made as though to tip it against Andy’s lips, but Andriana took the mug herself. She hadn’t thought she and Lila were so very close as to warrant the intimacy of such a gesture, and she felt very sorry for honestly believing Lila wouldn’t do this sort of thing for her. It was just that Andriana had always generally kept to herself, and it simply didn’t occur to her that people thought of her as important enough to physically heave into a backroom and watch over.
Andriana sat up, still wrestling that guilty feeling, but feeling fair enough for someone who’d passed out not too long ago. She felt fine, really. She’d have to be fine, she realized - she was all she had now. Lila might take care of her if she fainted again, but she couldn’t help Andriana fight off an army. So now Andriana didn’t have Natan, or her father, or anyone at all. She’d have to deal with the situation herself. But, then she wondered -
“Where - mother?”
“She’s at the mouth of the mountain pass. They’ve stationed some of the younger men there, to send messages along the pass if needed. She’s waiting to hear from your father.”
Andriana eased her body to the foot of the cot, trying to look out the small, round window, the only one in the room. She looked out at the night, hoping to divine some answers from its deep blackness. The moon was high in the inky, cloudy sky, though, and she could see nothing in it but mystery. It did not look to be a good night, and Andriana shivered at the sight of a thin grey cloud pulling across the moon. It made the light in the tiny room seem pale and sickly. It was more than just the clouds, the light, the dark night that made her uncomfortable. She had snuck out to visit Natan on darker, stormier nights than this. It was something else, something in the pit of her stomach. As she looked out at that sallow moon, Andriana felt a pulling, like a string was sewn into her belly and someone was tugging at it. Something… something was not right.
“Lila…something feels… wrong.”
When Andriana turned to look at her friend, Lila’s hands rested in her lap, her sewing abandoned. She was staring out at the moon, too, her eyes shimmering with frightened tears.
“I know, Andy,” she admitted. “I…I’m scared.”
Andriana watched Lila with enormous, child-like eyes. Her fear was pure now, and nothing she told herself could convince her not to be afraid. Leaving them alone here, it was wrong, she had already known that, but now… Now she sensed it, like a butterfly landing on her skin while her eyes were closed. She felt it, something coming. Everything felt wrong, wrong like that sensation just before you fall, or when you know you’ve made a terrible decision. She knew this kind of feeling all right, and there was nothing at all good about it. She recalled a time when Natan had fallen out of an apple tree, and twisted his ankle in unnatural ways; Andriana had felt a tickling on the back of her neck, and some… feeling… led her straight to him. Or that time she’d felt the same, hot surge in her belly and come racing around her house to find a wolf dashing away with her pet rabbit. There were countless memories, countless times… Oh, she knew this feeling all too well. Every inch of her prickled in a kind of intense sensing and anticipation. Suddenly, her skin felt very tight on her body.
“Mother,” she whispered, and in the same instant she was up and running, out of the backroom, out of the tavern, tearing down the dirt path toward the entrance to the mountain pass, with a burst of unprecedented energy. She didn’t even hear Lila call after her - Andriana ran so hard, so fast, she could hear nothing but the sound of her heartbeat, swallowed by the oppressive silence of the night. It thumped in her ears, so hard she could practically feel the blood as it pumped in her temples. And even as each inhale began to burn, Andriana ran harder - she had to get to her mother. She had to get to the pass, something was wrong, something was -
“MOTHER!”
In the ghostly light of the moon, Andriana’s bare feet skidded to a halt in the dirt path. At the entrance to the woods, she could see no further. How stupid of her, not to take the candle! The moon was at her back, enveloping her in its light, making her image nothing but an outline on dark shadow. She could not see by that light. Only her eyes shown out, darkly bright, shimmering like jewels in the night. The pale, warm darkness was all around her, trying to suffocate her. It was in her throat, in her lungs, drowning her. She could not move, she could not fight. What if it was too late? What if what she sensed - feared - had already happened?
Andriana heard rustling in the underbrush. She swallowed meekly and took a single, apprehensive step back.
“Mu…Mother?”
Out of the darkness, penetrating and deep, Andriana thought she saw a figure emerge, but she could not be sure. She locked onto the movement, a smooth gesture like liquid night moving through the trees. When whoever - whatever - it was broke the tree line, Andriana swallowed dryly around an immense blockage in her throat.
“Who… who’s there?” she stammered. Any hopes she had for sounding unafraid were dashed upon hearing the resounding crack in her voice. She asked, weakly, terrified, “Please. Please, whoever’s there, say something. It’s Andy.”
“Andy?”
Andriana became so still she thought she had stopped existing in time and space. Despite the cool night breeze, her head felt as hot as the sun, making her dizzy, as though a brilliant light had suddenly blinded her. That voice… she did not recognize it, and yet it held such a power over her as though she had been willing servant to it… for ages. It curled into her being like a live snake, and she felt it curving through her and into her veins, slithering and thick. She feared it with all her being, and yet waited with bated breath for it to speak again. When it said nothing for some time, she mustered the courage to speak again.
“Yeah… yes,” she managed. “Hu…Who…”
“Andy cannot possibly be your real name,” said the darkness, in a voice as haughty as it was certain and sure. Andriana shivered and thought she saw a glimmer of black movement as it spoke, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t hear any boots in the dirt, or the snapping of dry twigs, the crunching of leaves… how could someone really be there? Maybe… maybe it was a spirit, or… or a god! Andriana’s mind was racing overtime. What if it was a god? What mortal could make her skin tingle like cold fire, her mind quake as though it simply could not work, and her heart skip several beats at a time?
“Are you… are you a god?” she asked, and felt pathetic the moment the question had left her lips. Her mortification was complete when laughter as pale and dim as the moonlight rose out from the darkness.
“Some say I am,” the shifting night said, relaxing and amused. It was a woman’s voice, Andriana decided. Though throaty and deep, it was exquisitely womanly. A goddess, then, Andriana thought, her panicked mind grabbing onto the tiny bit of knowledge and trying to gain some footing in the situation with logic. The only gods that had temples nearby were in Eusthripia, and there were several temples, to many a god and goddess. If this was a goddess…Eusthripia’s patron goddess was…
“Athena?”
Even as the name came hopefully from her lips, Andriana knew it was not her. That same spine-chilling laughter rose once more from the night, even darker than before, going straight to Andriana’s blood, freezing it and rushing the thrilling and painfully icy fluid through her veins at the same time. She knew Athena, the wise and comforting goddess, could not produce such a sound as the heart-rending laughter coming from the moving night.
“No,” said the darkness, once the laughter had gradually ceased. “No, not Athena. I am no one so… tediously righteous.”
Andriana swallowed tightly. What goddess would so toy with a mortal? All of the goddesses that Eusthripia paid tribute to were virtuous and motherly, never the sort to slink about, wearing the night as her gown. She was reduced to asking:
“Then…who?”
Even as the words left Andriana’s swollen lips, red from biting at them worryingly, the curve of a face surfaced in the watery night. At first only a sharp, defined nose and gently sloped cheek emerged, then the sudden rose flush of thin lips, curled in what should have been a smile, but seemed nothing of the sort to Andriana. That feeling she had experienced to rush her from the house re-doubled, tripled, ten-thousand fold in every infinitesimal part of her as she watched, entranced, as a form seemed to be poured from the moon’s light into being. So pale was the skin, so soft the curves of the body…it could not be human. The light that came from that skin, it was so bright, so white as it emerged from the blackness that it appeared made of light.
It hit Andriana so hard she was nearly knocked over by her realization.
“The White Raven.”
The form before her chuckled darkly, smoothly lifting a delicate, slim hand to a well-shaped hip. Andriana’s eyes raced over a clearly powerful, but elegantly-molded body, clothed not in the dark colors of night, but in powerful, cool white. Andriana’s mind tried to take in the soft dance of a silhouette beneath the fabric, subtle hips, a nipped waist, a swell of breasts embraced by what had to be the only fabric in the world whiter than the breasts themselves. And…that face. A strong, sharp jaw, tightly set, beautiful but frightening lips, high, haughty cheeks, and a nose that seemed carefully pinched like the tended bud of a growing flower, all features setting up a sharp line to point straight to a pair of eyes so blue, Andriana felt she knew that this was the color blue was supposed to be. Only the ocean, which Andriana had never seen, could possibly hope to rival the beauty of those cutting ice diamonds. Even in the ultimate darkness of deep night, they shone so brilliantly that Andriana doubted vigorously that they were reflecting the moon’s pale light. Surely the blaze that flashed in them was something all its own, coming from the depths of this being. Could it be true? Could ‘The White Raven’ truly be… a god? A goddess?
“Yes,” the womanly creature said, sounding amused, but in a way that made Andriana’s skin tingle, with both fear and excitement. She was observing Andriana, and, she realized, allowing Andriana to observe her. Like a snake patiently watching its prey. It was thrilling… and beyond terrifying.
“Yes, The White Raven is a woman. What? Were you expecting something different?”
The amusement was suddenly gone from the throaty, lilting voice, and the apparent Raven took another step forward, fully into the moonlight. Andriana gasped: the Raven’s hair was pure white! Shortly cropped, sweeping in cloud-waves, one longer, flowing lock draping low over her left eye. Her eyebrows, too, arched as they were in minor annoyance, were the white of virginal snow.
If ever there was a time when Andriana truly would have not felt embarrassed to have fainted, this was that time. She was even happy to feel the dizziness, see the tiny white spots that sparked through her brain, and welcomed the feeling of her body going slack and crumpling helplessly. Just before she thought she was gone, Andriana saw a flash of white over her, and she prayed softly that the Raven would let her parents take her body, if this was to be the moment she died.
However, close to the end as she had melodramatically thought she was, an ungraceful grunt and the sudden realization that something was holding her up roused Andriana and made her realize she was not, indeed, dead, or dying at all. Though when she looked up into sharp blue eyes, she thought she might die anyway.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the Raven asked, in an oddly human, annoyed way, though still with a voice like a rough drink. No matter how she said it, Andriana had hardly heard her; she was too distracted by the Raven herself. The Raven’s arms were so strong for a woman - she had to be a goddess after all. And her scent - oh, she smelled of crackling winter fires and a long ride in a freshly oiled saddle, with an underlying earthy smell, of bathed and musky perfumed skin. Being in her embrace was nothing at all like anything Andriana had experienced before. More thrilling, even, than entire nights spent in the horse stalls with Natan. The Raven’s breath, even, was sweeter and softer, and comparing it to Natan’s hard breathing was like comparing wine and ale. She began to feel faint for entirely new reasons.
The Raven peered down at her in growing annoyance, waiting to see if she would indeed faint, like some pathetic, pampered city girl. She had thought village girls were heartier than this - actually, she had thought village girls were altogether… different from the girl in her arms. As she looked at the village girl, the Raven could not help but keep looking. This…Andy…whatever her real name was… was remarkable, unlike anything the Raven had ever seen. The East had been full of beautiful women, of course, but their eyes had been small, and curved, and black as night. Black-brown orbs, enormous and round, peered out from this girl’s face instead, dark and yet warm. And the skin all around those eyes was like poured milk, creamier and paler than even the most elegant and delicate eastern girl. The Raven’s eyes traced down the soft slope of the girl’s nose, and as she did so, felt the soft curves of the girl’s supple, healthy body, so much more substantial than the light, child-like bodies that had lain beneath her in the East. Her eyes settled on lips as full as a midnight rose bloom, startling the Raven with the urge to touch those lips with her own. Make no mistake, she had wanted - and taken - many in her time, but never, never had she been so assaulted by such demanding need. So strong was the urge that she had to force her fierce gaze to the girl’s eyes only, and resist the urge to drop her on the ground. Her desires could burn as bright as they wished; she had always had enough control over them to do what needed to be done. Besides - she could have the girl later, if she wanted to. For now, a different village girl was all too paramount in her thoughts for her to indulge then.
“I’m certainly not carrying you back into town,” she said harshly, searching for what to say. Everything, her plans, her knowledge, her reason, had flown from her head. Cruelty was her only weapon left, and the easiest and most familiar for her to wield. “You village girls are too heavy.”
Out of anything the Raven could have said - I’m here to destroy your village, I’ve taken your mother prisoner, I’ve already taken Eusthripia - that was the quickest way for her to not only get Andriana out of her arms, but the fastest way to upset the girl. Andriana pushed against the Raven, more impulsively than boldly, and scrambled to her feet.
“I…I’m not…I’m perfectly normal!” she shouted, all too loud in the reigning silence. The Raven, remarkably, did not respond in kind. Instead, she suddenly appeared to become very calm and quiet. This, Andriana would come to realize, was far more frightening than the worst outburst ever could be, and she would fear the Raven’s soft voice more than the roars of the greatest giants.
“I don’t believe I asked for your opinion on the matter… Andy,” the Raven said coolly and so quietly that Andriana had to strain to hear her. “What is your name,” the Raven said, and though Andriana knew it was a question, it sounded more like a trap. She sputtered for a moment, and the Raven sighed and tossed an impatient hand, which now held a dagger. Andriana had no idea where the dagger had come from, and the sight of it did nothing to improve her abilities of speech. In fact, she felt quite mute as she watched the silvery blade swish through the night, looking so sharp she thought it very well could cut the darkness. The simple black hilt seemed to disappear into the night and the Raven’s hand, a frightening extension of both. It came to settle at the Raven’s side, and the Raven repeated the question to an apparently deaf Andy.
The Raven tapped her foot, her impatience becoming frustration, which never ended well. She didn’t need to hurt this girl, she just needed to get what she wanted, and quickly, but she most certainly would hurt her if the need became clear. The Raven was nothing if not practical. She was not above any action that achieved her objective. Oh, it was just as well, she thought. A bit of violence might be just what she needed to clear her head. And it wasn’t as if she had to kill the girl to get what she needed from her.
“I do not ask questions more than once, Andy,” the Raven said, her words sending a shiver down Andriana’s spine as once more the Raven made her name sound like a curse. The poised woman took a balanced, quick step toward her, the blade extended before her, and Andriana could do nothing but watch, mesmerized, like the snake under the charmer’s music. Before Andy could speak, that frightening blade was no longer in her sight - because it was against her throat. She hadn’t even seen the Raven move again. She hadn’t even the time to cry out. The only sound that escaped her then was a mild, tiny whimper of fear as the Raven pressed the cold metal against her pulse.
Looking up at her captor, Andriana saw the Raven’s eyes flash once more, but with something startling and hard now, and Andriana felt utterly different then than she had only moments ago, fully in the Raven’s strong arms. Now, with just the Raven’s one hand pressing uncomfortably against her back, the other busy stroking the horrid blade beneath her chin, Andriana felt the entirely opposite gamut of sensation and emotion. Bile was rising in her throat, her head was pounding, and all at once she was about to cry out when suddenly a voice shot from the darkness of the mountain pass behind the Raven:
“ANDRIANA! NO! DON’T HURT MY DAUGHTER!”
The Raven turned her head, surprised, and Andy struggled to breathe as the Raven’s hand absently pressed down on the blade. Andy watched the profile of her strong, etched face, wondering if that might be the last thing she ever saw, but as the Raven turned back to Andriana, apparently sickly delighted, Andy knew she was nowhere near finished with her. The Raven’s mouth pulled into the cruelest of smiles, and she regarded Andriana with a new hunger. Now the Raven was a hungry wolf, and Andriana would be the delicious deer laid before her for supper.
“Andri-ah-na,” she pronounced slowly, luxuriously, licking the syllables like fresh blood off her tongue. “Oh that’s much better.” She looked utterly pleased with herself, like the cat who’d got into the cream, while Andriana couldn’t help but feel like she was going to be sick. Behind the Raven there was a commotion and a blur of movement in the darkness, until someone was thrown bodily to the ground just feet away from Andy, which startled Andy enough to distract her from the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The moment she realized who it was, however, Andy immediately would endured violent illness to not see that face then.
“Mother!” Andy cried out, but the hard, cold blade in the Raven’s hand pressed firmly against her throat and reduced her voice to nothing but a strangled cry. Andriana could almost feel the steel - for it was steel, beautiful, strong, deadly - breaking the delicate skin of her neck. Andriana’s mother tried to get up from her knees, reaching a hand out to her daughter, but suddenly a large man kicked Andriana’s mother back to the ground, and pinned her there with once enormous, booted foot.
“No! Mother - please, don’t hurt her!”
For all the pain it caused her to speak, it seemed to get her nowhere. The Raven’s eyes were dancing with laughter, so cold and heartless that Andriana could call it nothing other than evil. What’s worse, she didn’t even understand why this… demon (for no goddess, to Andriana, could be so cruel) was so ecstatic. What had transpired in the last ten seconds to change the anger in the Raven’s eyes to a lusty pleasure?
“So this…” said the Raven, tracing Andriana’s throat with the dagger, “is the daughter of the town’s leader.” She continued to look down at Andriana hungrily, moving the dagger lazily, ignoring Andriana’s meek whimpers of pain whenever it happened to cut her. Andriana was shaking like a tiny animal the Raven had caught in her talons. So that was it - she was after her father. This answered some things (for instance, why a dagger was at her throat) but created as many questions as it answered.
“How did you --”
“Know who you were? The little boys you had set up at the pass were all too willing to tell me anything I wanted to know… before I removed their tongues.” The Raven smiled, just one corner of her mouth turning up. Nearby, the immense warrior lifted Andriana’s mother to her knees. Andy looked at her in fear, seeing the tears streaming down her face, and the red splotches on her cheeks where she had undoubtedly been hit. She had refused to tell them what they had wanted to know, Andriana guessed. Well, if her mother could stand it, so could she.
Andriana turned back to the Raven, staring her down with all the courage she could muster. The Raven met her gaze with intensity rivaling that of the raging ocean her eyes resembled.
“Oh, it’s not as though I let them suffer,” she shrugged lightly, “…long.”
Andriana struggled in the Raven’s arms, wanting to cut her tongue out - preferably with that gods-damned dagger she wielded so casually. It was probably worth more than every weapon in her entire village, and yet she treated it as though it were just as usual as a butter knife. Andriana had never in her life felt such passionate hatred, never had the sweet young woman thought herself capable of such furious loathing. Never had she thought herself capable of killing, but if she got the chance…
“Don’t worry,” the Raven said, oblivious and uncaring of Andriana’s thoughts, “I won’t hurt you.” She smiled down on the girl, and a flash of cool lightning lit up her demonic face. A resounding crack of thunder rolled far off in the distance, echoing the rumbling fear in Andriana’s belly.
“You’re too valuable,” the Raven continued, drawing a painful, light line along Andriana’s throat with the tip of the dagger. She seemed to enjoy every shiver of fear, responding with ever-more terrible delight on her face. Every time Andriana gasped or quivered, the Raven’s thin lips twisted into a horrible smile of enjoyment. She dragged the dagger down Andriana’s neck, along her collarbone, and down into the valley of Andriana’s breasts, sighing as the steel progressed down the girl’s body. A shiver ran through Andriana’s body, and she was sickened by the flash of feeling that flared between her legs as the Raven pressed the cold metal to her soft flesh. What troubled her even more, though, was the shameless, unhidden want painted in bold strokes across the Raven’s sharp features.
“I’ll need you to negotiate with your father,” she said, though she sounded as though she needed Andriana for something far different from “negotiating”. “That is,” she mused, “After I’ve taken the mountain pass.”
As if on cue, screams erupted from further along the pass, so piercing in the night that even the echoing rolls of thunder could not silence the sounds of agony. Andriana stiffened in the Raven’s arms, eyes wide in terror. Her mother struggled in the arms of the beastly man, but they all knew she would not get free. Andriana knew it was equally futile to struggle against the Raven. The Raven simply held her still as they listened to the sounds of death together, the Raven shutting her eyes and throwing her head back in a disgusting display of ecstasy.
“You’re…you’re not a god,” Andriana whispered, eyes seeing nothing but the blank sky and the Raven’s cold face, her mouth open softly, the sound of the screams of the men killing all else in her mind, “You’re…a monster.”
Andriana expected the Raven to kill her then, despite her saying otherwise. What did she need her for? Her father could do nothing against this demon, not even with the entire force of Eusthripia behind him. What they were trying to do, to fight her, it was an exercise in futility. Decent men could not find indecent ones, because the indecent ones were always willing to do things just another step beyond what the good man would do. They could not win against someone like the Raven, a woman who would go even one step beyond the indecent men.
She did not feel the cold blade piercing her flesh, however. Instead, the Raven yanked Andriana to her feet and pushed her before her, toward the path back into town. Andriana staggered and nearly lost her footing, but a strong hand somehow encircled both her wrists at once and pulled her to standing. She could feel the tip of the dagger being pressed into her back, the pressure of it making her very nervous that it would pierce her meager clothes. Suddenly, though, she could think of nothing but the warm breath on her neck, and the lips dancing over her skin, lighter than a kiss, more cutting than the dagger, as the Raven spoke against her bared throat.
“I am a monster,” the Raven said quietly, dangerously. “Don’t ever forget that, Andriana.” Andriana did not need to be told; she was certain that this moment would be forever burned into her memory, an encapsulated scene as sharp and clear as the icy words of the Raven, burning her mind as she shivered in the night air. All her mind could grasp was the way her body tingled whenever the Raven’s lips brushed her sensitive skin, how her flesh whispered back to her in spite of herself, how her legs quivered when the Raven’s fingers flexed around her wrists. The body remembers what the mind cannot, and there was nothing to interrupt the imprint of feeling on her being. There was nothing but black night before her, the moon the only light and witness to the moment. Andriana’s very soul cried quietly as it sank to the depths of her being, shrinking from the touch and words of the Raven that she would never be able to make herself forget.
“I am not a god,” the Raven said, saying it as though the fact should be a bit surprising. “I am not a mortal,” she hissed, pressing her surprisingly warm body against Andriana’s back, molding unsettlingly against her form, perfectly. “I am more than either,” she said, with a certainty and a mild arrogance tempered by that certainty. “I am more than anything that has ever been. I am the best at what I do, Andriana. Because I will do whatever needs to be done. I will do anything to get what I want.”
The Raven shoved Andriana forward, and the young woman chocked on a cry as the tears fell from her face like rain off the edge of a roof. The Raven forced her forward, the dagger never leaving its painful place in the middle of her back. Her voice was low, hypnotic, almost as though she were in a trance, the words coming through her from another place.
“I will do anything for what I want, Andriana.” She pressed indecently against her, the dagger-holding hand sliding up Andriana’s thigh. “You’ll understand that very, very soon.”
She pushed her once more and Andriana stumbled onward, the sounds of battle behind her and the promise of a longer fight before her. The Raven licked her lips and breathed deeply, chest as swollen with triumph and anticipation as with breath. She watched the soft curves of the village girl sway in the darkness and she licked her lips again, with an entirely different sense of anticipation. Things were going to be much more interesting than she could have hoped.
As the Raven’s tongue traced her teeth like a hungry wolf watching its dinner, Andriana trudged forward, despairing at every step she had to take. She was certain that she was walking towards the end of her life. And perhaps this was so. What she did not consider at all, however, was that idea that what awaited her did not wait her alone. What neither she nor her captor realized was that this was indeed a journey for two. Most of all, though, she did not realize it was not the end of her life, laying in wait in the endless darkness.
She trudged on, though, reluctantly, toward what she thought was an end. The Raven, though blind to the entire picture that Fate had painted, could see this much more than Andriana: It was not the end. She could not stop the satisfied smile that curved her lips at the knowledge. No, this was not the end. It was only the beginning.
The beginning of what, though, neither would truly realize until Fate had so intertwined the threads that they would have no choice but to cut their way out to maintain their freedom.
The irony of freedom, though, is that sometimes we choose to surrender it. We make decisions we never thought we would, for the sake of ourselves and others. We change things, begin and end parts of our lives in ways we never would anticipate.
Perhaps they were both correct - it was both the beginning and the end.
The Raven pushed Andriana down the dirt path, and Andriana walked forward, unknowingly pressing them forward towards their Fate.
“You’ll understand,” the Raven said, not knowing she was speaking to herself as well.
“Very soon… you will understand.”