Chapter 102 — Too Proud to Leave

Chapter 102: Chapter 102 — Too Proud to Leave

~ Raven ~

Cassian looked away first.

He lowered his head, found his place on the page and started writing again, and whatever had crossed his face two seconds ago was gone as though she had invented it.

Unbelievable.

He had been startled. She had fucking watched it happen.

Raven let go of the door handle and finally looked at the rest of the room.

Tessa sat four rows in, her quill suspended halfway to the inkwell.

For a second, they simply stared at each other.

Tessa’s brows lifted.

Raven’s did the same.

Two seats along, Celeste’s mouth went flat. She took Raven in from boots to collar, then faced front again with her chin raised, which in Celeste meant later.

Then Raven’s eyes reached the row beyond that.

Isolde Marchmont.

Raven stopped.

She was awake.

Books open. Back straight. Quill in hand.

She did not look well. Her face was pale enough to make the shadows beneath her eyes stand out, and she held herself with the careful stiffness of someone whose body still objected whenever she moved too quickly.

Every so often, one hand drifted toward her side before stopping short of touching it.

But she was up.

In class.

No change. The Velkarin still have her.

Nikolai had said that earlier.

So either Isolde had been released afterward, or Nikolai had simply been wrong.

Raven put that aside for now and looked back at Celeste.

She looked pale and tired, sitting with the long-suffering expression of someone personally offended by the fact that recovery took time.

Isolde looked like she should still be in bed. Two rows farther back, a boy in Ashbourne colours had one arm strapped flat across his chest and was writing with the other.

Raven looked down at herself.

Nothing.

No wrapping. No splint. Nothing that announced what had happened to her two days ago.

That did not mean she felt nothing.

Her shoulders still ached when she moved them too quickly, her ribs complained whenever she twisted the wrong way, and most of her body carried the deep soreness that came after being thrown around a clearing until standing became problematic.

She simply knew how to function while hurting.

Apparently, that was less common among nobles who had grown up with healers, servants and beds.

Raven looked at Isolde again, then at Celeste’s pale, thoroughly inconvenienced expression.

Maybe that explained some of it.

Then she finally looked toward the front of the room.

Berry was still standing beside the board, chalk caught between two fingers, watching Raven with steadily decreasing patience.

Right.

Of course.

"Rivers."

"Instructor," Raven answered, a little too stiffly.

A few mouths around the room twitched.

Berry’s eyebrow rose.

"Is there a reason you’re standing in my classroom?"

Raven’s eyes went to the board while she tried to think of an answer.

Half a lattice filled one side of it, drawn in a hand far too precise to be forgiving. Terminology ran down the other, words Raven recognized individually without understanding what any of them were doing together.

Beneath that sat a smaller line of anchor points marked in an order she couldn’t follow.

Her gaze shifted back to the room.

Third-years.

Fourth-years.

Tessa.

Isolde.

This wasn’t a year group.

It was qualification-based.

Advanced Sigil Writing.

Second meeting of the term.

Raven had seen the notice for it days ago and kept walking, the same way she treated most things with advanced in the title.

"I—" Her mouth got ahead of her and then abandoned her entirely. "I’m sorry. For the — I’ve interrupted. I only meant to—"

"Rivers—"

"You’re late."

Raven turned.

Tessa had already gone back to her ink as though she had merely commented on the weather.

Then she glanced up.

Barely a second.

But Raven caught it.

Take it.

Oh.

Berry’s chin dipped slightly.

"Late."

"Yes."

"From where?"

Raven’s mind emptied.

"The lecture halls."

Berry waited.

"I took the longer route," Raven added. "Then I got turned around on the second floor."

The lie kept getting worse, and somehow Raven kept helping it.

Berry raised an eyebrow. "You got turned about."

"I was rushing."

Berry looked at her for long enough that two students near the front stopped writing.

"Rivers, you are not registered for this course."

"I was going to register."

"Are you telling me," Berry said, after a moment’s pause. "that you intend to take Advanced Sigil Writing."

Raven had one second in which to say no.

"Yes."

Oh, well done.

Berry set the chalk down on the ledge and dusted her fingers.

"Then you’ll complete the qualification registration before the next meeting. Aptitude assessment included. If the registrar hasn’t got your name by then, you don’t come back."

"Understood."

"Sit down so the rest of them can learn something."

Raven turned toward the room.

Halfway through it, the full stupidity of what she had just agreed to finally caught up with her.

She had enrolled in an advanced sigil course.

Because admitting she’d been hiding from Dante Prymont had seemed worse.

Congratulations. Genuinely. Out of everything you have done since walking through those gates, this is the stupidest.

There were only two seats left she could reach without making half the row stand.

The first was beside Celeste.

Celeste was already staring at her, eyes bright with such naked hostility that Raven did not need to imagine how sitting there would go.

The second was beside Cassian.

Cassian had already gone back to his notes. As far as his face was concerned, the empty chair beside him had nothing whatsoever to do with him.

Confrontation with Celeste.

Or an hour of uncomfortable silence beside Cassian.

Raven chose the silence.

She went up the side aisle.

As Raven passed Tessa’s desk, she mouthed a quick thank you.

Tessa gave the smallest nod without looking up from her notes.

Passing Isolde’s row, Raven felt herself being looked at.

She glanced over.

Isolde was watching her.

Tired and quietly. Giving nothing away.

Their eyes held for a moment before Isolde looked back down and turned the page.

Raven reached the end of the back row and sat.

Cassian did not move or even give any indication that she existed.

She should have been relieved.

Ten seconds in, she discovered she wasn’t, and ten seconds after that she was annoyed at herself for not being.

"Now that the interruption has resolved itself," Berry said, "we’ll continue."

Interruption.

Raven kept her mouth shut, though the irritation stayed.

Berry picked the chalk back up mid-sentence.

"—which is where most of you will go wrong, because you’ll have spent two years being told that a correct pattern is a working pattern. It isn’t. A correct pattern is a pattern that will work on the right bearer."

Raven pulled her notebook out and had the lid off her ink before she’d decided to.

"Take an acceleration inscription along the calf." Berry tapped the lower anchor on the board. "Nothing complicated. Any competent third-year could inscribe it. Put it on a wolf with a healthy leg and it’ll do exactly what it’s meant to do."

She drew a second mark alongside it.

"Now put that same inscription on someone already carrying a natural reinforcement through the same leg. Same pattern. Same strokes. Same quality of work."

Berry let the silence sit for a beat.

"Three months later, that tendon tears apart on a training court, and the inquiry comes for the writer before it ever looks at the bearer."

Somebody near the front asked whether the tolerance was measurable in advance.

"Partly. Which is the whole of this course."

Berry turned back to the class.

"Before you inscribe anything, you learn to read five things. Essence flow. What the body is already carrying, natural or inscribed. How much that body can safely take. What you’re anchoring the sigil to. And whether any of those things are going to conflict."

Raven wrote all of it down.

Not because she understood all of it. Half, maybe.

But everyone else in the room was nodding along, and she refused to be the only person sitting there looking confused.

So she copied the terminology.

Then Berry’s examples.

Then the lattice on the board, which came out considerably worse than the original.

Raven stared at it for a second.

Then kept writing anyway.

Survive the hour. Register, since you promised. Then learn two years of sigil work before the next meeting.

Simple.

Beside her, Cassian turned a page.

Raven glanced over before she could stop herself.

His notes were arranged in neat columns. His handwriting was small, even, and stayed perfectly inside the ruling. He had copied the lattice from the board into barely a third of the space Raven had used.

And his was actually correct.

Of course it is.

She hated him a little for that.

Then a better question arrived.

Why was he even here at all?

It was an aptitude course, not a year course, so there was nothing strange about a fourth-year being in it.

Still, Cassian Blade had been at Valerius for over two years. If he had wanted to learn sigil writing, Raven would have thought he would have done it before now.

So why was he here?

He didn’t look over. His quill kept moving.

Raven made herself face forward.

It lasted perhaps four minutes before her thoughts wandered again.

The library came to mind, which she still hadn’t reached.

Then Dreamwalkers.

Then Dante coming down the corridor with that grin.

Then the fact that the man sitting close enough for her to watch his hand move was a man she had called mate in front of the academy.

"Rivers."

Then the fact that she was now enrolled in Advanced Sigil Writing because walking past somebody in a corridor had somehow been unthinkable.

"Rivers."

Something knocked sharply against the side of her shoe beneath the desk.

Raven stopped writing.

She looked sideways.

Cassian was still facing the front, his expression unreadable as his quill moved steadily across the page.

His foot was already tucked neatly beneath his own chair.

Raven stared at him.

He kicked me.

Her eyes narrowed.

He actually kicked me and now he’s pretending he didn’t.

"Rivers."

Raven’s head came up.

Berry was looking directly at her. So was the row in front of her. So was Tessa, with her eyes very wide, and Celeste, who had turned fully round in her seat and was not bothering to hide what this was doing for her.

Heat went up Raven’s neck and kept going.

"Since the lesson isn’t holding your attention," Berry said, "you can hold ours instead."

She held out the chalk.

"Come here, Rivers."