Chapter Text
She had never known anyone like him. His chocolate brown hair, his sapphire blue eyes, the way he winked at her. How could one boy have such an effect on her?
No- no, it had to be the result of nearly a thousand years without male interaction. She had only just been released from her service to the Hunters of Artemis, where she had sworn off boys- and any form of attachment- entirely, for as long as she remained among them. After the last war, however, Artemis had practically made Raven leave. With the injuries she had sustained, the goddess had said it was a miracle she was still alive.
The worst of them had been the wound to her wrist. An enemy soldier had taken the very arrow Raven used to kill her own targets and driven it straight through her hand, pinning her to the wall. Under normal circumstances, her natural fae healing would have made such an injury insignificant, even in her mortal form. But this was no ordinary weapon- it was an ancient fae artifact she had brought from her home world to Earth, powerful enough to kill even someone like her.
Because of that, the other injuries he had inflicted- a torn ligament in her knee and a badly sprained ankle- had never healed. The arrow’s lingering magic ensured they never would.
Heart pounding, Raven leaned against the wall of a building at the corner of the alleyway. The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows across the gravel. That boy- Nairen, he had said- had killed a chimera with a flash of golden sunlight from his palm, reducing it to dust. He then winked at her, and handed her a folded up piece of paper.
She exhaled slowly, and took the paper out of her pocket. In neat, scrawled handwriting, it read:
ℳℯℯ𝓉 𝓂ℯ ℴ𝓊𝓉𝓈𝒾𝒹ℯ ℋ𝓎𝒹ℯ 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓀 𝒶𝓉 11𝒶𝓂 𝓉ℴ𝓂ℴ𝓇𝓇ℴ𝓌．𝒟ℴ𝓃'𝓉 𝒷ℯ 𝓁𝒶𝓉ℯ！
~𝒩𝒶𝒾𝓇ℯ𝓃 𝒮
Her hand trembled slightly as she read it. Once. Twice. Again. The boy whose smile still lingered in her mind wanted to meet her. Properly. Should she go?
Pushing herself away from the wall, Raven slipped into the shadows. Even as she vanished, her decision was already made.
She would go.
She would find out more about this Nairen- the one who had somehow managed to leave the daughter of night flustered with nothing more than a smile and a wink.