Chapter 100 — You Were Right

Chapter 100: Chapter 100 — You Were Right

~ Alaric ~

"For the third time, nothing is broken."

"You said that about my shoulder."

"I said your shoulder was bruised."

"It hurts."

"Bruises generally do."

Celeste frowned at the healer before shifting carefully against the pillows. "And my ribs?"

"They’re fine."

"My neck?"

"Also fine."

"I had a headache earlier."

The healer glanced down at the slate in her hand. "You’ve been examined thoroughly, Lady Blackthorn. There is nothing here that requires treatment beyond rest."

Celeste clearly didn’t like that answer. "I was thrown into a tree."

"I know."

"By one of those things."

"And you’re still fine."

Celeste frowned. "You don’t know that."

The healer looked at her. "I’ve examined you twice, Lady Blackthorn. You’re fine."

Celeste opened her mouth again, but Kieran shifted beside Alaric and she immediately turned toward him.

"What?"

Kieran raised a brow in defense. "What?"

"You think I’m exaggerating."

"I didn’t even say anything."

"You didn’t have to."

Kieran looked away, and a faint smile tugged at Alaric’s mouth before he could stop it.

Celeste turned back to the healer with another irritated breath. "The first healer barely checked my shoulder."

"Because the first healer also found nothing wrong with it."

"What if she missed something?"

"She didn’t."

"You don’t know that."

The healer went quiet for a moment.

Alaric had been watching the woman’s patience disappear slowly since they arrived, and judging by the way she tightened her grip around the slate, there wasn’t much of it left.

Celeste folded her arms, then winced and quickly loosened them again.

"There, you see? It still hurts."

"I never said it wouldn’t."

Celeste sank back into the pillows. "I still don’t feel right."

The healer waited.

"My head feels strange."

"You said you had a headache."

"And I’m tired."

"It’s nearly midnight."

"I’m more tired than I normally am."

"You were attacked today, Lady Blackthorn. Being tired afterward is hardly unusual."

"Exactly. Which is why I should stay here."

The healer lowered her slate. "Lady Blackthorn, I have four students in the east ward who genuinely require my attention."

"Then go and see them."

"I intend to."

Celeste gave her a pointed look. "After you’ve signed me in for the night."

Silence stretched between them.

The healer looked at Celeste, then briefly toward Kieran and Alaric. Alaric could almost see her deciding whether another argument was worth the trouble.

Apparently, it wasn’t.

With a quiet breath, she signed the slate.

"One night."

Celeste immediately settled more comfortably against the pillows. "Thank you."

The healer turned toward the door.

Celeste adjusted the pillow behind her, frowned, and called after her.

"And could someone bring me another pillow? This one’s too flat."

The healer didn’t turn around.

Celeste settled back against the pillows with the satisfaction of someone who had won something.

She has, Alaric thought with a faint smile. She has won a bed she doesn’t need for a night nobody will remember.

She was asleep within ten minutes.

The infirmary quieted after that, or came as close to quiet as it ever did. Somewhere beyond the partition, a Velkarin was arguing with an academy Warden, their voices low and tired.

Alaric stayed where he was.

The Hunt had already become a political mess.

House Ashbourne had sent a formal demand to the academy within the hour. The other Great Houses were not far behind, each wanting to know how Valerius had allowed its own Ward to be breached with their heirs trapped inside.

House Blackthorn had sent its own formal demand before Alaric even reached the infirmary.

His father wanted a full account of what had happened, how the Ward had failed and why his daughter had been left inside when it did.

Normally, Alaric would have been following every response and every development closely.

Tonight, he found he didn’t care.

Celeste was only a few feet away, asleep now with nothing worse than a bruised shoulder.

She was safe.

The Ward had reopened.

The academy would investigate what happened, and every House involved would spend the next several weeks demanding someone be held responsible.

None of it held Alaric’s attention for long.

Because every time his thoughts drifted away from the Hunt, they returned to a certain white-haired servant.

That was what irritated him most.

Raven had spent eighteen years being easy to dismiss. Even when she became troublesome, she had still been understandable. Angry. Proud. Reckless when pushed too far.

Except now she wasn’t.

Alaric had seen enough inside that Ward to know there was something about her he did not understand, and he hated that more than he cared to admit.

It was the way none of it fit together.

Raven should not have been able to do what he saw inside that Ward, yet she had done it, and everyone around her had reacted like they had witnessed something they could not explain.

Alaric hated things he could not explain, and Raven had become one of them.

What exactly was she?

That question had been sitting beneath everything else since the Hunt, but one detail kept dragging him back to it.

They had come for her.

They had breached a Ward that should have been impossible to breach, passed students from some of the strongest Houses in the academy, and kept moving until they reached Raven. Most of them had died inside that forest. The one Cassian managed to leave alive had somehow killed himself inside a warded cell before anyone could question him.

Nobody spent that much to reach someone who did not matter.

And then there was the timing.

Nothing this serious had happened at Valerius since the ugly business two years ago.

Alaric still remembered how quickly the academy had closed around that incident. There had been rumours, angry families and enough sealed conversations to make it obvious something had happened, but almost nothing useful had ever reached the student body. Even now, depending on who was asked, the story changed.

And now Valerius had been breached again.

This time for Raven Rivers.

For most of her life, Alaric had been certain she didn’t matter.

She had been difficult, certainly. Proud when she had no reason to be, quick with her mouth and forever testing exactly how far she could push before someone reminded her where she stood.

But dangerous?

Never.

Alaric had been certain she didn’t matter.

Now that certainty was gone.

"You’ve gone quiet."

Alaric glanced at Kieran. "I’m always quiet."

"Not like this."

Kieran had his boots propped against the empty bed opposite, looking entirely too comfortable for an infirmary. The healer would probably have something to say about that when she returned.

His gaze flicked toward Celeste. "You worried about her?"

"She bullied a healer into admitting her overnight. I think she’ll survive."

Kieran snorted, the sound brief enough that Alaric almost smiled again.

Instead, he stood. "I’m going upstairs."

That changed something in Kieran’s face. The amusement faded, replaced by a look Alaric knew far too well.

"Right."

Alaric paused beside the bed and glanced back at him.

Kieran had already looked away. "Nothing."

There was plenty in the word, but Alaric had no interest in dragging it out here.

He left anyway, and the irritation followed him into the corridor.

Kieran had been like this for years.

Every private conversation with their father, every sealed letter, every responsibility Aldric placed in Alaric’s hands became another thing Kieran believed had been denied to him.

As though any of it were a privilege.

Kieran could be reckless and let someone else consider the consequences afterward. He could hate somebody without first calculating what that hatred might cost Blackthorn five years from now.

Sometimes Alaric would have traded places with him without hesitation.

There were days when the life he wanted was embarrassingly small.

Some forgotten noble title. Enough money that he never had to think about it. A house somewhere warm, good wine, and a wife whose greatest demand of him was showing up for dinner on time.

No sealed letters. No House waiting behind every decision. No one depending on him to make the right one every single time.

It was a stupid thing to want, and Alaric knew it.

He pushed the thought away.

Wanting another life had never produced one.

By the time he reached the Blackthorn rooms assigned to them on the fourth floor of the east tower, his mind had circled back to Raven.

Again.

That irritated him almost as much as everything else.

Alaric was not a man people occupied easily.

Yet Raven Rivers had somehow become a problem he could not put down.

Alaric locked the outer door behind him and pressed his palm against the inscription beside the frame. Warmth spread beneath his hand before the sounds from the corridor disappeared entirely.

Only then did he cross to the communication mirror.

He pulled the cloth away but didn’t activate it immediately.

There was still the option of waiting. Watching Raven longer. Finding something concrete enough that he could bring his father an answer instead of another question.

That was how these things were supposed to work.

Except waiting had already gotten him nowhere, and now half the academy had watched Raven become something none of them understood.

Then there was Celeste.

When everything inside the Ward had fallen apart, Raven could have run.

She hadn’t.

Celeste had been among the students behind her, and whatever else Raven was, Alaric could not ignore the fact that his sister had come out of that forest partly because Raven had stayed.

That made calling her a threat considerably less simple.

He disliked that most of all.

Alaric pressed his thumb against the mirror’s frame.

For several seconds, his own reflection stared back at him.

Then the glass rippled.

Aldric Blackthorn appeared on the other side.

His collar was open, colour high in his face, his hair slightly out of place. Alaric noticed and dismissed it.

"Alaric."

His father straightened. "Your sister?"

"Bruised. Nothing more."

"And you and your brother?"

"Untouched."

Aldric nodded once. "Then this is about the Ward."

"No."

A pause.

"The board? If Valerius has—"

"It’s about Raven."

That stopped him.

Only for a moment, but Alaric saw it.

Aldric said nothing.

"You told me to watch her," Alaric said. "You never told me why."

"No."

"And you still won’t."

His father’s expression gave him nothing.

"Say what you called to say."

Alaric stared at him through the glass.

Then, quietly,

"You were right."

For the first time, Aldric did not answer immediately.

Alaric let the silence sit between them.

"Raven Rivers is a threat."