Chapter 103 — Very High

Chapter 103: Chapter 103 — Very High

~ Raven ~

Berry held the chalk out and waited.

Raven did not move.

"Rivers. What exactly are you waiting for?"

"I—" There was no version of this that ended well, so Raven chose the shortest one. "I don’t know what you want me to demonstrate."

Berry’s eyebrows rose.

Her gaze dropped pointedly to Raven’s notebook.

"Four pages of notes," she said. "Impressive."

Raven said nothing.

"And apparently not a word of them made it into your head. Congratulations. You’ve mastered writing without listening."

A snort escaped somewhere near the middle row.

Another student covered a laugh with a cough, and two more joined before the amusement was quickly swallowed back down.

Heat climbed the back of Raven’s neck.

She tightened her hand around the quill and kept her face still to the best of her ability.

Berry considered her for a moment longer, then turned back to the board and wiped a section clear with the side of her fist.

"Fine. We’ll lower the bar."

She drew.

Four strokes, a closed curve, two junctions. Berry put it on the board in seconds without once slowing down.

"Reinforcement sigil. First-year work. Reproduce it."

Oh, thank the Goddess.

Because Raven understood absolutely nothing about sigils.

Not why the strokes had to go in that order. Not what turned a handful of lines into something that could actually affect a body. Not even half of what Berry had been explaining before Raven’s thoughts wandered off somewhere between Dreamwalkers, Dante and the man sitting beside her.

But she could draw.

That, at least, came easily.

Raven stood, set her quill down, and lifted her chin.

From Celeste’s row came a soft, deliberate scoff.

Raven walked to the front without looking at her.

Berry handed over the chalk and stepped back.

Raven studied the pattern long enough that someone behind her shifted impatiently on the bench, then raised her hand to the board.

The moment the tip touched and she drew the first stroke, everything narrowed.

One second the classroom was there—the shuffle of bodies, the scratch of quills, Berry standing a few feet away with her arms folded, Cassian somewhere behind her—and the next it had all fallen so far into the background that Raven barely registered any of it.

There was only the board and the pattern.

Berry’s example sat inside her head with startling clarity, every curve and junction fixed there as though she were still looking directly at it.

Her breathing slowed on its own as her hand moved into the second stroke.

When she reached the first junction, her wrist turned without hesitation. Her pressure eased naturally through the curve, then strengthened again exactly where the next line began. Raven did not stop to think about any of it because there was nothing to decide.

The shape was already there.

Her hand simply followed it.

Behind her, the last traces of amusement quietly disappeared.

Tessa straightened in her seat, a couple of rows back, Isolde lifted her eyes from the page Whatever satisfaction Celeste had been wearing faded by degrees as she watched Raven’s hand continue across the board.

At the back of the room, Cassian’s pen stopped moving.

By the time Raven reached the final curve, most of the class was no longer watching her at all. Their attention had settled entirely on the chalk moving beneath her fingers.

Raven noticed none of it.

She carried the last curve around and closed it neatly into the waiting junction.

The instant she lifted the chalk, the pattern seemed to settle.

For a heartbeat, the separate strokes remained nothing more than lines on a board. Then a pulse moved outward from the anchor point, clean and uninterrupted, and every line lit with a faint white glow at once.

It lasted barely a second.

Then the light faded, leaving the completed sigil dull against the board.

Raven blinked.

And the room came rushing back.

Forty-odd people were staring at her.

What now?

Berry came forward.

She stopped close to the board, one hand braced against the ledge as she studied the sigil. Her eyes followed the junctions one after another. Twice, her fingers moved through the air just above the chalk without touching it before she leaned closer to inspect the spacing along the outer curve.

Then she went still.

"Rivers."

"Instructor."

"Have you ever drawn a sigil before?"

"No."

Berry turned to her.

This time she looked at Raven properly.

"Never?"

"No."

Berry said nothing.

She simply held Raven’s gaze.

One second.

Then another.

Raven waited, increasingly unsure what exactly she was supposed to do with the silence.

Is this meant to make me confess to something?

Berry kept staring.

Raven stared back.

Eventually, irritation won.

"I haven’t," she said. "The answer hasn’t changed."

Berry held her gaze for another moment before turning back to the board.

"Right."

She checked the junctions again, then the spacing between the strokes, before taking one step back to look at the entire pattern.

"Your aptitude for inscription is high."

"...All right."

Raven had no idea what she was supposed to do with that.

Berry, however, continued staring at the sigil.

Then her expression shifted.

"No. Correction."

Raven frowned.

Berry’s eyes moved slowly over the closed curve once more.

"Your aptitude for inscription is very high."

When she turned around again, Raven immediately wished she hadn’t.

The irritation that had been sitting comfortably on Berry’s face few minutes ago was gone. Something brighter had replaced it. Interest, sharp and immediate, as though Raven had abruptly become a problem Berry actually wanted to solve.

I liked her better annoyed.

"Again."

Berry erased part of the board and drew another basic sigil beside the first. Different pattern, slightly different construction.

Then she offered Raven the chalk.

Raven took it.

This time, the room didnt disappear.

She knew every person behind her was watching. She could feel Celeste’s stare fixed between her shoulder blades, and the strange quiet that had swallowed everything the first time never came.

Raven drew anyway.

The strokes did not come with quite the same effortless certainty, but her hand remained steady. The first junction closed cleanly. Then the second. When she completed the pattern, the faint pulse travelled through it without catching anywhere.

A low murmur moved through the middle rows.

Berry studied the result.

For several seconds, she said nothing.

Then her eyes lifted to Raven.

There was something almost predatory in the way she looked at her now, a bright, focused interest that made Raven even more distinctly uncomfortable.

Berry’s gaze seemed to sharpen the longer it stayed on her.

"Apparently," Celeste said loudly enough to carry, "copying beginner patterns is impressive now."

Berry did not even look at her.

Her attention remained fixed on Raven for another beat before she finally said, "Go sit down, Rivers."

Raven heaved a silent sigh of relief, set the chalk back on the ledge and turned toward her seat.

She passed Celeste without so much as looking in her direction.

A chair scraped sharply behind her.

Raven kept walking.

By the time she sat beside Cassian and opened her notebook, Berry had already turned back to the class.

"Page forty-one. We were discussing tolerance."

And just like that, the lesson continued.

Raven copied two more diagrams and understood perhaps a third of one of them.

She was halfway through the second when movement beside her caught her eye.

Cassian’s quill suddenly stopped.

His hand left the page, and two fingers pressed against his temple.

He kept looking toward the board, but his jaw tightened once, hard enough for Raven to notice.

A few seconds passed.

Then his hand dropped.

His quill returned to the page.

Raven’s eyebrows rose.

She watched him for another second.

Cassian gave no indication that anything had happened.

Whatever.

She went back to her diagram.

Berry finished the hour with a final pattern that nobody had enough time to copy properly before dismissing them.

Benches scraped back. Ink lids clicked shut. Conversations rose almost immediately, filling the room with the noise that had been held down for the last hour.

Raven had already made it halfway down the aisle when Tessa caught up with her, still fighting with the lid of her ink as she walked.

"So."

"Don’t."

"You walked through the wrong door."

"Tessa."

"You accidentally joined an advanced course." Tessa began counting on her fingers while still whispering, her face perfectly straight. "You lied to Berry. Then you somehow became the most interesting person in the room."

Raven shoved the ink into her bag. "I did not become the most interesting person in the room."

"For about ninety seconds, you did." Tessa swung her satchel over one shoulder. "And now you’re registered for an advanced qualification. I’ve never met anyone so incapable of entering a room quietly."

"I hate all of you."

"Mm."

A chair scraped behind them.

Raven looked over.

Cassian had stood.

He gathered his notes, tapped their edges neatly against the desk once, then started down the aisle.

Toward her.

Raven’s body tightened before her mind caught up.

Oh, no.

Not here.

Not with half the class still packing—

Because there it was.

The conversation she had been successfully avoiding for two days.

Cassian slowed as he reached her row.

His eyes moved across her face.

One eyebrow lifted.

Then his brows drew together slightly, as though he genuinely could not understand what was wrong with her.

And he walked straight past.

Raven stared at her bag.

You absolute fool.

He had never been coming toward her.

"What?" Tessa asked.

"Nothing."

Cassian stopped at Berry’s desk and placed his notes on one corner.

"Instructor."

"No."

"You haven’t heard the question."

"I’ve heard it four times." Berry continued writing in the register. "Twice on Tuesday. Once through your Wing prefect, which was low even for you. And once through a note shoved under my door, which I read and deliberately did not answer."

"It answered nothing."

"It answered you."

Raven’s hands slowed over the straps of her bag.

Four times.

In three days.

Cassian did not raise his voice or argue. He simply shifted his weight, leaned one hip against the corner of Berry’s desk and settled there as though he had nowhere else to be.

"Then I’ll come Thursday."

"I won’t be here."

"I’ll wait."

Berry finally looked up.

"Heir Blade."

"You must enjoy my company," Cassian said. "I can’t think of another reason to keep making room for me."

Berry put her pen down.

For a moment, she simply stared at him.

Raven recognized the expression.

Berry already knew how this ended.

Cassian would come back Thursday.

Then again after that.

He would keep asking the same question with the same irritating calm until Berry either answered him or he found the answer somewhere she would rather he hadn’t.

Raven caught herself listening and straightened.

Library.

She had somewhere to be.

She had, in fact, been trying to get there for hours.

Raven pulled her bag over her shoulder and started toward the door with Tessa when Berry’s voice came up behind her.

"Rivers."

She stopped.

"Stay behind."

Tessa stopped beside her. "I can wait outside."

"You can’t."

Tessa looked at Berry.

Then Cassian.

Then Raven.

"Right."

"Tessa—"

"No, this seems fine." Tessa was already backing toward the door. "Completely fine."

Traitor.

Raven watched her leave.

The rest of the students filtered out around her in ones and twos, carrying bags, books and half-finished arguments about tolerance ratios with them. Eventually the last student stepped through the doorway, and the door swung shut.

The silence afterward felt enormous.

Raven turned.

Cassian was still beside Berry’s desk, though he had straightened now.

He was looking at Raven.

And, for once, his expression was easy enough to read.

He had no idea why she had been kept behind either.

Berry looked toward the board where Raven’s two sigils still sat in white chalk.

Then she looked at Cassian.

Then Raven.

"Rivers," she said. "Come here."