Chapter 134 — Get Up

Chapter 134: Chapter 134 — Get Up

~ Raven ~

Raven pushed her chair back and stood, leaving her hands against the table until she trusted herself to move them.

Petra took a small step away.

"Look at me."

The girl kept her eyes lowered, her fingers clasped in front of her.

Raven’s jaw tightened. "Look at me."

Petra finally raised her head, glancing past Raven at the watching students before meeting her eyes. For a moment, the fear was gone, and the corner of her mouth lifted in a small smile.

Raven stared at her. By the time Petra lowered her gaze again, she was trembling.

You lying bitch.

Raven stepped toward her, too angry to care whether anyone else had seen the smile, but before she could speak, Petra dropped to her knees.

Raven stopped short, the words forgotten. She stared down at the girl, struggling to believe she had actually done it.

"I’ll do what you wanted," Petra said. "I’ll stay out of your way. If you need anything, I’ll help. Just tell me."

Her voice shook without rising, and Raven could hear every word because the tables nearest them had fallen quiet.

She knew what it was to keep her head down and her hands still, afraid that even looking up would make things worse. At Blackthorn, she had done it because she had no choice.

Petra had just smiled at her before kneeling, and now everyone was looking at Raven as though she were the person she had spent her life trying not to anger.

"Get up."

The girl didn’t move.

Raven’s fingers began to tremble. She pressed them against her thighs, but that only made her more aware of it.

"Get up," she repeated, struggling to force the words past the tightness in her throat.

Petra made a small, distressed sound.

"Please. I said I’ll do whatever you—"

"Get the fuck up, you bitch."

Voices rose around them, and Raven realised how that had sounded. Whatever she had meant, everyone had just heard her call a girl kneeling at her feet a bitch.

Petra’s shoulders drew in further. Someone at the next table said something Raven couldn’t catch, while the girl beside him stared at her with her mouth slightly open.

Raven’s eyes began to burn.

Don’t you dare.

She clenched her hands despite the soreness beneath her wraps. She wanted to haul Petra upright and make her stop kneeling there as though Raven had demanded it.

She reached toward her, then stopped. Petra had flinched over a glass of water. What would she do if Raven grabbed her?

Raven let her hand fall. Petra stayed where she was, and Raven couldn’t make her move without giving everyone another reason to believe her.

"Petra. Stand."

Adelaide barely raised her voice.

Petra got up immediately.

Raven watched her brush her skirt straight and step away, and for a second she was certain she was going to do something she couldn’t take back.

Adelaide had only needed to ask once.

The girl settled beside the table with her head bowed. Adelaide waited until she had moved clear before turning toward Raven.

"We invited you because we believed you’d earned your place among the highest-ranked women here."

Raven stared at her. "Don’t you fucking—"

"You hold Seventh Seat, Raven." Adelaide’s voice remained steady, carrying to the students nearby. "People watch how you treat those below you in the standings."

"I never asked her to kneel."

"And calling her a bitch was supposed to reassure her?"

Raven almost laughed.

There was no possible way Adelaide could believe what she was saying, yet she delivered it without the slightest hesitation.

"Whatever has happened between you and Petra," she continued, "using her humiliation to keep her from challenging you is unacceptable."

"Nothing has happened between us."

"Then there should be no reason for her to be afraid of you."

Raven glanced toward Petra, but the girl kept her eyes on the floor.

"The Circle will not protect this sort of behaviour," Adelaide said. "And you will not use our table or our name to intimidate another student."

Raven turned back to her.

Every sentence made it sound as though they had already established what she had done and were simply deciding how disappointed to be. Adelaide wasn’t asking questions anymore. She was explaining Raven to the room.

"You know what it means to come from very little," she added. "I would have thought you, of all people, understood what it costs someone to be treated this way."

Raven stared at her, sitting comfortably behind her plate while she spoke about something she had never had to live through.

"You don’t get to use that—"

"People were pleased for you, Raven. They wanted to believe you could rise without forgetting what it was like before." Adelaide glanced toward Petra. "And now the woman you displaced has been on her knees, offering to serve you."

Raven blinked hard, trying to clear her vision.

Beyond the table, students who had once smiled at her in the corridors were watching without a word. She wanted to ask whether any of them found this strange. Petra had brought her a drink in a crowded cafeteria, announced a threat Raven knew nothing about, then knelt before Raven could get a name out of her.

Did none of them wonder why she had made sure everyone could hear?

But Adelaide was still looking at her, and when she spoke again, her voice carried.

"I expected better from you."

Raven’s lips parted, but the anger caught in her throat before she could answer.

Beside Adelaide, Rosalind looked down at her cup with a small smile.

Raven wanted to ask whether they were pleased with themselves, whether they had decided what Petra would say before inviting her to the table. Most of all, she wanted to tell Adelaide exactly where she could put her fucking disappointment.

Petra shifted beside them, her hands folded, and Raven almost laughed.

The girl who had smiled at her was pretending to be frightened. Rosalind could barely hide her satisfaction, and Adelaide was still waiting as though Raven owed her an apology.

Yet Raven was the one struggling not to cry.

She drew a breath, too angry to trust what would come out, but another voice cut through the noise before she could speak.

"Just what the fuck is going on here?"

Students turned as Dante made his way between the tables, carrying two chicken legs in a napkin. He was still chewing, frowning at a boy who had to step aside to let him through.

Raven hadn’t seen him enter.

He glanced toward the Circle as he approached, then at Petra standing apart from the table. His gaze passed over the chair Raven had pushed back and the spilled water beside her plate before settling on her.

Raven tried to steady her hands. She hated that he was seeing her like this, with her throat too tight to speak and her eyes burning no matter how hard she blinked.

Dante slowed and stopped chewing.

The irritation left his face as he looked at her properly, and his hand lowered to his side.