Chapter 101 — Wrong Door

Chapter 101: Chapter 101 — Wrong Door

~ Raven ~

"Sooooo..." Thalia started. "I’ve got four."

"Four what?"

"Four versions of the stories."

She dropped onto the end of Raven’s bed with her legs folded beneath her and set her slate face-down beside her, which meant she intended to recite.

"Two years ago, like we all know, something happened."

Thalia lifted one hand and swept it vaguely through the air.

"Version one—shadow wolves got into Valerius and the academy covered it up."

She let that sit for a second before raising a finger.

"That’s from a fourth-year in Ashbourne."

Raven looked over. "He was here then."

"Exactly." Thalia pointed at her. "Which is why I kept asking."

"And?"

"And he suddenly became very interested in not saying anything useful." She rolled her eyes. "All he’d admit was that there were shadow wolves involved, people got hurt, and afterward everyone was told to stop talking about it."

Raven frowned. "That’s it?"

"That’s all I could drag out of him."

Thalia raised a second finger.

"Version two. It didn’t happen here."

She leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice even though there was nobody else in the room.

"It was a House. A powerful one. Somebody’s family was attacked, and Valerius shut its gates afterward."

"For a month," Tessa added from the floor, still scrolling through her slate.

Thalia pointed at her. "Exactly."

Raven looked between them. "And whose family?"

"That’s where it gets useless."

Tessa turned the slate around briefly. "I’ve seen three different Houses named so far."

"Three?"

"Three."

Raven frowned. "Which one is right?"

Tessa lowered the slate again. "If anyone knew that, they aren’t posting it."

Thalia let out a long breath and dropped her hand into her lap.

"So that’s version two. Something happened to somebody, somewhere, and apparently that is all anyone is willing to agree on."

She raised a third finger.

"Version three. Something happened during a sanctioned academy event. Not the Hunt, obviously, but something close enough that people keep comparing the two."

Raven had been straightening her collar in the mirror.

She stopped.

"And apparently the records from it were sealed afterward."

Raven looked over her shoulder. "Apparently?"

Thalia made a face. "That part gets vague."

"So nobody actually told you they were sealed."

"No. Just that after the incident, nobody could get anything official out of the academy."

Raven turned fully now. "That’s not the same thing."

"I know. That’s why it’s still a version."

Thalia dropped her hand, then raised a fourth finger with considerably less enthusiasm.

"Version four is that nothing happened at all and everyone is mixing it up with the year Hale Wing came last."

From the good chair, Brielle turned a page.

"That did happen."

Thalia looked at her.

Brielle glanced up. "Hale Wing came last."

"Yes, thank you. That’s exactly the problem."

Thalia let her hand fall into her lap.

"Something definitely happened that year. Nobody agrees on what, so every rumor gets to borrow a piece of something real."

Wonderful.

Raven turned back to the mirror.

Two days out of the infirmary and this was their progress: four contradictions and the discovery that Hale Wing had once been embarrassingly bad at something.

"Ask an instructor," Tessa said.

"I asked Berry."

"And?"

"She told me to concern myself with my own year."

Tessa finally looked up. "Ask an older student properly, then. Preferably one who isn’t trying to impress you."

"That’s most of them, Tessa."

Brielle closed the book around one finger.

"It’s not that nobody knows."

The other three looked at her.

"Most of them do know something," she continued. "They just stop talking when you ask."

Raven frowned. "How do you know?"

"My mother does the same thing. I mentioned the rumours once at home. She changed the subject before I’d even finished."

"Changed it how?"

"Badly."

Raven considered that for a moment, but before she could put it away with everything else she did not understand, Thalia went still.

"Wait."

Raven looked at her.

Thalia’s eyes had narrowed slightly, the earlier theatrics gone now.

"Shadow wolves. A House getting hit. Valerius closing its gates. Some kind of sanctioned event nobody could get an official account of..." She counted the pieces off more slowly this time. "What if those aren’t four different stories?"

Tessa finally looked up from her slate.

Thalia continued, quieter now. "What if people are telling different parts of the same thing?"

That made Raven pause.

Because the date mattered.

Melissa had used it too.

Just like what happened two years ag—

Raven remembered the way Melissa had stopped herself. How quickly her expression had closed afterward.

Forget that.

So whatever had happened two years ago, it wasn’t just academy gossip.

There was something there.

And Raven had absolutely no intention of forgetting it.

Raven looked back at Thalia. "Your cousin was here two years ago, wasn’t she?"

Thalia’s expression changed slightly. "Yeah."

"And?"

"I asked her."

That got Tessa’s attention too.

Thalia picked up her slate but didn’t look at it. "She told me there are some things at Valerius you’re better off leaving alone."

Raven frowned. "That’s all?"

"Pretty much. I pushed. She stopped answering."

Brielle glanced over from her chair. "So the people who were actually here don’t want to talk about it."

Thalia nodded.

For a moment, nobody said anything.

That was becoming more interesting than any of the rumours.

People disagreed on what had happened two years ago.

But apparently they agreed on one thing.

They didn’t want to talk about it.

Valerius had gone back to lessons, but things were still far from normal.

Raven counted six Wardens between Hale Wing and the lecture halls that morning, which was five more than the corridor had ever needed before the Hunt.

Two stood permanently at the arcade doors now, watching everyone who passed through. The southern bridge had been closed with a plain notice and no explanation, while much of the Hunt grounds remained sealed behind posts that gave off a low hum whenever anyone wandered too close.

The administrative building had been worse.

There were carriages outside it every day.

Yesterday Raven had counted four.

This morning there were seven.

One of the carriages bore a crest Raven didn’t recognize, but the students slowing to look at it told her enough.

Whoever had arrived was important.

And judging by the number of carriages outside the administrative building lately, they were far from the only angry family demanding answers.

Raven had begun avoiding the busiest routes.

Leaving Hale Wing before the corridors filled helped. So did eating between the main refectory rushes and learning which staircases nobody used unless they had a reason.

It wasn’t hiding.

Hiding would require admitting that was what she was doing.

Students still watched her.

Just not as openly as before.

The first day after the Hunt, people had practically opened a path whenever she approached. Now it had settled into something quieter.

Heads turning.

Conversations dipping when she passed.

A first-year looking at her, then quickly finding something else to stare at when Raven noticed.

That part she could handle.

The rest was harder.

There were currently two people at Valerius Raven had decided she could simply never speak to again.

Cassian was the first.

Raven had called him Mate in front of practically the entire academy.

Then she had woken in the infirmary with him beside her, endured the painfully awkward conversation that followed, and somehow made it worse by calling his name when he left.

Raven had spent the last two days making certain they did not end up alone long enough to discuss any of it.

So far, she’d been successful.

Dante, on the other hand, was proving considerably more difficult.

Mostly because Dante was actively looking for her.

He had come to Hale Wing twice.

The first time, Raven had been warned before he arrived and stayed upstairs until someone told her he was gone. The second, she’d spotted him herself through the open doors and left through the rear corridor before he could see her.

On Tuesday she’d found him outside the drill court and taken the longer route through the kitchens.

Yesterday she’d seen him in the arcade and turned into the nearest stairwell without checking where it went.

She was not proud of that one.

She also wasn’t going to think too hard about why she kept doing it.

Unfortunately, her body had not agreed to the arrangement.

One glimpse of Dante and heat climbed straight into her face, followed by pieces of a dream she had worked very hard not to remember while awake.

Raven had therefore decided Dante belonged under later.

A growing category.

Her manuscript was there.

Her publisher.

Whatever had happened to her childhood.

Her wolf.

Apparently half her life.

Nikolai, at least, remained manageable.

He caught up with her outside the second lecture hall, sliding into step beside her with his hands tucked into his pockets.

"Rivers."

"Heir Hale."

He glanced sideways. "That’s new."

"There are Wardens behind you."

"There are Wardens everywhere."

That was true.

He looked back at the two posted farther down the corridor, then dismissed them just as quickly.

"Holt’s out of the infirmary."

Raven looked at him. "Already?"

"He spent most of the morning arguing that being told to rest was an insult to him personally."

"So he’s fine."

"Completely."

A faint smile touched Raven’s mouth before she could stop it.

"And Isolde?"

Nikolai didn’t answer.

Raven took another few steps before noticing.

She turned her head.

His attention had drifted toward the far end of the corridor.

There was nothing there except students moving between lessons, but Nikolai seemed to be looking through all of them.

"Nikolai."

He blinked.

Then looked at her.

"No change," he said after a beat. "The Velkarin still have her."

Raven watched him a little longer.

"You’ve done that twice."

"Done what?"

"Left in the middle of a conversation."

One corner of his mouth lifted. "Have I?"

"Yes."

"I’m told it’s charming."

"It’s not."

That got a laugh out of him.

He bumped his shoulder lightly against hers as they walked, and Raven let the subject go.

Everyone who had stood outside the Ward that day had watched people they knew being hunted while being unable to do a damn thing about it.

If Nikolai had come out of that quieter than usual, Raven wasn’t going to interrogate him for it.

—-0—-

The decision came during the last twenty minutes of a lecture Raven had stopped listening to.

For two days, she had asked questions and collected fragments.

Melissa knew something.

The Headmaster knew more than she was saying.

Even the students who had been here two years ago seemed to know exactly when to stop talking.

And Raven had spent all that time waiting.

Waiting for someone to explain.

Waiting for someone to decide she had earned the truth about the people who had tried to kill her.

Her jaw tightened.

No.

She was done waiting.

If nobody intended to give her answers, she would find them herself.

She couldn’t get near the Hunt grounds.

She couldn’t investigate the operatives when most of them were dead and the only one Cassian had managed to leave alive had somehow killed himself inside a warded cell.

The broken crescent and skull mark gave her nothing.

Neither did the black-haired girl from the vision.

But there was one part of this mess Raven could actually start with.

Something that had happened inside her own head.

Dreamwalkers.

Brielle had called them old stories.

No documented living examples.

At the time, Raven had accepted that because there had been nowhere else to go with it.

But that had been before the Hunt.

Before a Ward that was supposed to be impossible to breach had failed, and before Raven had done things she still couldn’t explain.

After all of that, impossible had become a considerably less useful word.

The bell rang.

Raven was already packing before the instructor finished dismissing them.

The library first.

She wanted the old records.

By the time she stepped into the corridor, the next change of lessons had already filled it.

Raven took the inner route toward the east stair, ignoring the usual glances as she went.

A girl nudged her friend when Raven passed.

The friend immediately looked away.

Raven kept walking.

Four turns from the library, someone rounded the far corner.

She noticed the dark hair first.

Then the stride.

Raven slowed.

Dante.

He hadn’t seen her yet.

He was speaking to a Prymont second-year beside him, his attention turned away, and for one sensible second Raven considered simply continuing.

The corridor was wide.

Thirty paces between them.

She could walk past him.

She could even say hello.

People did that.

Normal people.

Dante turned his head.

His eyes found her almost immediately.

Raven knew the precise second recognition hit because his entire expression changed.

A grin spread across his face.

His hand came up.

Then he started toward her.

Nope. Absolutely not.

Raven turned, seized the nearest door handle and slipped through before good sense could catch up with her.

She pulled the door shut behind her and rested her back against it.

There.

Problem solved.

Her heart was beating much too fast for someone who had recently faced corrupted wolves.

You are eighteen years old.

Raven closed her eyes.

You threw a man out of your own head.

She drew one slow breath.

And now you’re hiding from a boy in a—

Ravens skin prickled.

She opened her eyes.

Over forty people were staring at her.

An instructor stood at the front with chalk still raised toward the board.

Rows of desks filled the room, and the quiet that had fallen after Raven’s entrance was so complete that she could hear someone near the front slowly lower their pen.

She stayed where she was, one hand still wrapped around the door handle.

Oh.

A class.

Of course it was a class.

Her first instinct was to leave.

Open the door.

Step back outside.

Pretend this had never happened.

Then she remembered who was currently outside.

Raven released the handle.

Fine.

She could explain.

Probably.

She looked across the room instead.

Most of the faces were unfamiliar. Older students, mostly. Third-years. A few she thought might be fourth.

Then her gaze reached the back row.

And stopped.

Cassian.

He sat beside the window, head lowered over the page in front of him, white hair catching the light along one side of his face.

He hadn’t looked up when she entered.

For one ridiculous second, Raven thought she might actually escape his notice.

Then the silence reached him.

Cassian lifted his head, a faint frown pulling at his features.

Pale silver-blue eyes found hers across the classroom.

His pen went still above the page. His brows lifted by the smallest fraction, and something shifted across a face Raven had almost never seen give anything away.

Cassian Blade looked startled.

Actually startled.

Raven stared at him.

Cassian stared back.

The entire room was silent.

Fuck.