Chapter 112 — Stillheart

Chapter 112: Chapter 112 — Stillheart

~ Raven ~

Check your front pocket.

Raven stared at the words.

There was every chance Cassian was fucking with her again.

He had put a knife under her jaw, pulled two secrets out of her without asking for either directly and sealed her inside a glowing box in front of half the library. Sending her digging through an empty pocket afterward would be entirely in character.

If there’s nothing in here, Blade...

She scoffed and slipped her hand into the pocket anyway.

Her fingers touched paper.

Raven stopped.

There was actually something there.

She pulled out a small folded square and looked at it suspiciously. It was thin enough that she hadn’t noticed the extra weight at all, and for one irritating second she wondered when Cassian had managed to get it there.

Then she decided that could join the rapidly growing list of questions she intended to make his problem later.

Raven unfolded it.

A tiny sigil had been drawn on the inside.

It flashed once.

The boundary answered immediately.

A pale pulse ran through the lines surrounding the alcove, climbed the six panels of light and came back down again. Then the structure began to come apart from the corners, each line thinning until, within seconds, the glowing walls were simply gone.

Raven looked up before she could stop herself.

So did everyone else.

Two slates lowered. The whispering rose sharply, and several students at the nearest tables shifted forward as though something more interesting might happen now that she was free.

Raven kept her expression perfectly still.

Absolutely not.

She folded the paper along its crease, set it beside her hand and calmly pulled her chair closer to the table. Then she picked up the book she’d been reading, found her place and continued.

She did not leave.

Two girls at the nearest table looked at each other.

Somebody behind Raven whispered, "Is she not going—"

Raven turned a page.

That’s right.

Sit there and wonder.

She had spent hours trapped inside that thing while the audience around her multiplied, and not one of them was going to get the satisfaction of watching Raven Rivers bolt the second the walls disappeared.

As far as anybody watching knew, she had opened the boundary whenever she felt like it.

And apparently she still didn’t feel like leaving.

It was petty.

Raven found she didn’t care in the slightest.

She stayed where she was for another minute before finally setting the book down and reaching for the paper again.

Only then did she look at what Cassian had actually written on it.

One word.

MARCHMONT.

Raven frowned.

Marchmont.

The answer came immediately.

Isolde.

Whatever Cassian wanted her to find, it had something to do with Isolde Marchmont.

Raven leaned back in the chair.

And naturally you couldn’t just say that.

One sentence, Blade. It would not have killed you.

She rubbed lightly at one eye, and as she did, an older conversation surfaced.

Thalia talking about Isolde weeks ago.

Not simply about her being First Seat, but about the thing Brielle had very obviously not wanted explained.

She’s not First Seat just because she’s a Marchmont.

And then:

She awakened at sixteen.

Raven had asked what she’d awakened.

Brielle had shut the conversation down before Raven got an answer.

Her gaze moved from the scrap in her hand to the stack of books Cassian had selected.

Right.

She pulled the Great House reference toward herself.

Earlier, Raven had skimmed past most of this section because all she’d cared about were the Cardinal Houses. Now she returned to the beginning and followed the names properly.

The four Cardinal Houses occupied the top.

Prymont.

Blade.

Ashbourne.

Hale.

Nothing surprising there.

Then, directly beneath them:

HOUSE MARCHMONT.

Raven paused.

She had known Isolde came from an important family. It would have been difficult not to notice. People moved differently around the girl, and even students who disliked her generally had enough sense not to forget what name she carried.

Raven simply had not realised Marchmont sat this close to the Cardinals.

Her eyes moved lower.

Then stopped again.

HOUSE VANCE.

Raven’s finger settled beside the name.

Brielle?

She stared at it for a moment.

She knew Brielle was noble. She knew her family mattered.

Apparently she’d had no idea how much.

Brielle Vance, who argued over laundry, made terrible tea and had spent the last few days getting increasingly irritated whenever anybody treated her healing hand as though it might fall off.

You’ve been sleeping six feet away from that this entire term.

Raven decided there were some questions she really should have started asking her roommates weeks ago.

She went back to Marchmont.

The entry was longer than she expected.

House Marchmont had carried a reputation for judgment and interrogation across generations, with members repeatedly serving in positions where intention mattered as much as evidence.

Their bloodline was particularly valued in cases involving treason, disputed oaths and crimes where the truth of what someone meant could decide whether they walked free or went to an execution block.

Raven slowed.

That was an oddly specific reputation for one family to maintain across centuries.

Then she found the reason.

STILLHEART.

Raven leaned closer.

Stillheart was a rare hereditary Natural Sigil of House Marchmont, one that did not manifest in every child or even every generation. Entire branches of the family had apparently gone decades without producing a confirmed bearer.

When one did appear, however, the House treated it very differently.

Raven kept reading.

The name was slightly misleading.

Stillheart did not simply make its bearer calm.

The stillness was only how the ability worked.

A bearer learned to reduce the noise of their own body—the racing pulse, uneven breathing, the instinctive reactions of their wolf—until those signals stopped interfering with what they were sensing from somebody else.

And then they listened.

Not with their ears.

With everything else.

Minute changes in heartbeat. Breathing. Scent. Essence. The wolf beneath the skin. Responses too small and too quick for most people to separate from one another.

A trained Stillheart bearer could recognise concealed fear beneath an easy voice, hostility behind a smile and killing intent before the first movement of an attack. They could notice when someone’s words and intentions moved in different directions, and distinguish broad impulses beneath the surface: attack, flee, conceal, betray, protect.

Raven’s interest sharpened.

The ability did not hear exact thoughts, and it could not reach into someone’s memories. More importantly, it could not tell the bearer whether something was objectively true.

A person who sincerely believed a lie would still register as sincere.

Stillheart read the person in front of it.

Their intent.

Their instinct.

And the places where those things contradicted what they were saying or doing.

That explained the history.

Marchmont Stillheart bearers had served as royal adjudicators, interrogators and witnesses in capital cases because deceiving one was extraordinarily difficult when the liar knew one thing and intended another.

Raven turned the page.

The next paragraph stopped her.

Stillheart could also recognise when a person’s will was no longer moving entirely under its own direction.

Raven read the sentence again.

Foreign mental pressure created contradictions of its own. An impulse that did not fit the person’s underlying intention. A suggestion lodged inside the mind without matching the instincts beneath it. An action being pushed in a direction the person themselves did not truly want to go.

And in a Stillheart bearer, an intruding consciousness was even harder to hide.

Raven’s pulse quickened.

Dreamwalker.

She continued faster.

The Marchmont records described Stillheart bearers as exceptionally difficult targets for mental intrusion. Not immune—the book made that distinction very clear—but almost impossible to enter without alerting them.

The moment something foreign entered the mind, Stillheart could sense that something did not belong there.

That meant a bearer could recognise an implanted suggestion before accepting it as their own thought, and could identify a Dreamwalker’s presence much earlier than an ordinary wolf ever would.

But recognising the intruder and removing it were two different things.

Stillheart gave the bearer awareness.

It gave them an anchor.

After that, it came down to will.

A weak-willed bearer could still be overwhelmed. A sufficiently powerful mental attacker could still force their way deeper.

But a Stillheart bearer with a powerful enough will could find the foreign presence, hold onto themselves and force it back out.

Raven slowly lowered the book.

For several seconds she stared at nothing.

Then she looked down at Cassian’s note.

MARCHMONT.

Thalia’s voice returned immediately.

She awakened at sixteen.

Raven had always imagined something violent when she’d heard that.

Some rare combat ability.

Some weapon that explained why Isolde had become First Seat so young.

Not this.

Stillheart.

Suddenly, Isolde Marchmont looked different.

Not simply the First Seat of the Luna Court.

Not simply the girl who could walk into a room and make half of it remember its manners.

Isolde possessed one of the very few abilities Raven had just read about that could recognise mental interference for what it was.

And if her will was strong enough—

She could throw the intruder out.

Raven’s mind went briefly, unwillingly, back to herself.

She had done exactly that.

Without Stillheart.

Raven left the thought there.

She had enough problems without adding why can I apparently do something a rare Great House bloodline needs a Natural Sigil for to the list.

Isolde was the important part.

Raven turned the little scrap between her fingers.

Why had Cassian pointed her here?

Did he want Raven to speak to Isolde?

Did he think Stillheart could tell whether Raven had already been influenced?

Could Isolde recognise someone else carrying a Dreamwalker’s suggestion?

Or had Cassian meant something else entirely?

With him, the last possibility was becoming irritatingly common.

Behind Raven, the library was still whispering. Someone was almost certainly still recording her, and a few minutes ago she would have cared enough to hate every second of it.

Now she barely heard them.

She had come into this library knowing that something could enter her head.

Now she knew there was someone inside Valerius whose bloodline had spent generations learning how to recognise exactly that kind of invasion.

Raven looked once more at Cassian’s handwriting.

MARCHMONT.

Then at the name beneath the Stillheart entry.

Thalia’s words settled into place for the final time.

She awakened at sixteen.

Raven’s eyes narrowed.

Whatever Cassian expected her to do next, Isolde Marchmont was no longer just part of the academy around her.

She was part of the Dreamwalker problem.

And Cassian had just pointed Raven straight at her.