Chapter 155 — Stirring Up Trouble

Chapter 155: Chapter 155 — Stirring Up Trouble

~ Raven ~

Raven woke slowly, warm beneath her blanket and confused by the sunlight pressing against her eyelids.

For a moment, she stayed exactly where she was, trying to work out what felt different. Her body was still a little sore and the exhaustion from the last few days hadn’t completely disappeared, but there was no pounding in her head, no panic lodged beneath her ribs and, most surprisingly, no memory of waking during the night.

She had slept.

Properly.

Raven opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before turning toward the window.

Morning light spilled through the glass, pale and harmless now. There was nobody outside, of course, but she thought of the soft tap from last night and the way her wolf had settled almost immediately afterward.

Cassian had kept his promise.

The thought brought the beginning of a smile to her mouth before Raven caught herself and turned away.

Nope, too early.

Across the room, Thalia was standing in front of the mirror trying to do something with her hair that clearly wasn’t cooperating. Tessa was already dressed and digging through the drawer beside her bed, while Brielle sat with one leg crossed over the other as she fastened her boots.

Raven pushed herself upright and stretched.

Tessa glanced over. "You look better."

"I feel better."

"That’s suspicious," Brielle said without looking up.

Raven threw a pillow at her.

Brielle caught it one-handed and dropped it beside herself.

"Definitely better."

Thalia laughed while Raven reached for her slate. Notifications filled the screen the moment she woke it, most of them things she had no intention of reading before breakfast.

Bellringer had apparently posted something during the night, there were several messages from lessons she’d missed and the academy had sent out another update she almost cleared without looking.

Then she noticed the Luna Court standings.

Raven opened them.

Her eyes moved automatically toward the Seventh Seat.

Someone else’s name occupied Seventh. Raven frowned and looked again, wondering for half a second whether she had somehow opened an old ranking. When she checked Eighth and found another unfamiliar name there, her gaze finally dropped one more place.

Ninth Seat.

Raven stared at the screen.

That was new.

"What happened?" Thalia asked.

Raven didn’t answer immediately. She refreshed the page, partly because she couldn’t think of anything better to do.

Nothing changed.

Ninth.

It wasn’t as though the number devastated her. Raven hadn’t come to Valerius dreaming about the Luna Court, and if somebody had told her a month ago that she would care about being Seventh instead of Ninth, she probably would have laughed in their face.

Still, the longer she looked at it, the more something sour settled in her stomach.

She knew why it had happened.

The cafeteria. Petra. The whispers afterward. The way people had looked at Raven differently after she was seen sitting with the First Circle, followed almost immediately by an accusation that she’d threatened another girl to protect her place in the rankings.

They had wanted to damage her reputation.

Apparently, they’d succeeded.

Raven leaned back against the wall and looked at the number again.

What irritated her wasn’t even losing Seventh.

It was the image that came with it.

Adelaide seeing the update and smiling. Rosalind pretending she didn’t care while feeling very pleased with herself. Celeste probably enjoying every second of it.

Those women were somewhere in Valerius right now thinking they had actually managed to drag Raven down.

"Oh, fuck that."

The room went quiet.

Raven looked up.

All three of her roommates were watching her.

Brielle’s boot was forgotten in her hands. Tessa had stopped searching through her drawer, and Thalia was still holding the same section of hair she’d been fighting with for the last several minutes.

"What?" Raven asked.

Brielle narrowed her eyes. "You just made a face."

"I have a face."

"Not that one."

Raven glanced at her slate again, then set it aside.

"Anyone feel like stirring up trouble this morning?"

Brielle smiled immediately.

"Yes."

Raven blinked. "That was fast."

"I’ve had a boring morning."

"It’s barely started," Tessa pointed out.

"Exactly."

Thalia turned away from the mirror. "What kind of trouble?"

Raven considered the question for all of two seconds.

"I don’t know yet."

Tessa stared at her.

"You asked us to help you cause trouble and you don’t actually know what you’re doing?"

"Pretty much."

Brielle’s smile widened.

Tessa looked at her. "Why does that make you happier?"

"Because now I’m interested."

Thalia sighed. "I hate that I’m also interested."

Raven pushed herself out of bed before any of them could recover enough sense to change their minds.

"Good. Get ready."

"For what?" Tessa asked.

"Breakfast."

"Raven."

Raven headed toward her clothes.

"We need to eat."

"That is definitely not all we’re doing."

Raven smiled to herself.

It was not.

By the time the four of them left Hale Wing, the academy was properly awake. Students filled the corridors and paths between the buildings, moving toward lessons, training grounds and breakfast in loose groups.

The staring began before Raven had even made it down the first flight of stairs.

A girl passing them glanced at Raven, then at the slate in her hand. Two boys near the entrance lowered their voices as Raven walked by, although not quickly enough to stop her hearing the words Ninth Seat.

Raven kept going.

The whispers followed her down the corridor, but Raven barely paid them any attention. They had irritated her yesterday too, mostly because she hated having someone else’s lie attached to her name, but she had already accepted that she couldn’t control what every student in Valerius chose to believe.

This morning, even that irritation felt different.

It was still there, but instead of weighing on her, it had sharpened into something almost useful. Raven had plenty of energy; she simply had no intention of wasting it on whispers when there were far more satisfying ways to spend it.

There was something almost ridiculous about walking toward the cafeteria knowing she intended to make somebody’s morning worse. Nobody had ordered her there. Nobody was dragging her into another confrontation she hadn’t asked for. She wasn’t trying to defend herself while half the academy watched.

This time she was choosing the problem.

Raven glanced at the girls beside her.

Thalia and Tessa were quietly arguing about whether this counted as a terrible decision if they hadn’t been told what the decision actually was. Brielle walked beside Raven with the calm expression of someone who had already accepted that breakfast might involve shouting.

A laugh almost escaped Raven.

Friends.

She had somehow ended up with three of them, and when she’d asked whether they wanted to cause trouble before breakfast, all three had followed her.

If Raven was being completely honest with herself, it felt a little like heaven.

A badly supervised version of heaven, perhaps, but she wasn’t complaining.

The cafeteria was already crowded when they arrived.

Raven barely made it through the entrance before the smell of food reminded her she hadn’t eaten anything yet. Her stomach tightened, but then she looked across the room.

There they were.

Rosalind Crowe sat at one of the larger tables with Adelaide and several of the other Court girls. Celeste was with them too, leaning back in her chair as though she had nowhere else in the world to be.

And beside them sat Petra Voss.

Raven slowed.

Petra looked perfectly comfortable.

Interesting.

Brielle noticed where she was looking and went quiet.

Raven smiled.

Tessa saw it. "No."

"I haven’t said anything."

"That smile said enough."

Raven started walking.

The room noticed almost immediately.

At first it was only the students closest to her. A conversation stopped at one table. Someone turned in their seat. Then another student followed Raven’s path across the cafeteria and apparently understood where she was going, because he nudged the girl beside him.

The attention spread from there.

Whispers followed her between the tables, growing as more people realized Raven Rivers was heading directly toward the same women involved in the last cafeteria disaster.

Raven didn’t hurry.

By the time she reached them, enough conversations had stopped that the change in the room was impossible to miss.

Adelaide looked up first.

Her expression hardened.

Rosalind’s gaze moved from Raven to the three women behind her before returning to Raven’s face.

Celeste gave a soft, disbelieving laugh.

Raven smiled at all of them.

"Morning, bitches."

A few people nearby choked on their laughter.

Adelaide’s mouth tightened. "What do you want?"

"Food eventually."

"Then perhaps you should go and get some," Rosalind said. Her voice was calm, but just loud enough to carry beyond the table. "Unless you’ve come to create another scene."

Raven’s smile stayed in place.

Adelaide leaned back. "Haven’t we had enough of this already? You cause a scene, everyone else deals with the consequences, and somehow you still come back looking like the victim."

A murmur moved through the cafeteria.

Celeste folded her arms. "Apparently losing two Seats still wasn’t enough attention for her."

That earned a stronger reaction. Raven heard someone whisper behind her, followed by another voice telling them to shut up so they could hear.

Rosalind looked Raven over slowly.

"Although perhaps attention is exactly what she needs now."

Raven raised an eyebrow.

Rosalind smiled.

"How is Ninth Seat treating you?"

There it was.

Several whispers rose immediately.

Raven heard her new ranking repeated behind her, saw one student glance toward another, and suddenly everything that had annoyed her that morning became very simple.

They were pleased, and they weren’t doing a particularly good job of hiding it.

Raven laughed.

Celeste frowned. "What’s funny?"

Instead of answering, Raven turned away from the table and looked across the cafeteria.

Nearly everyone was watching now. Some students tried to pretend they weren’t once she faced them directly, while others had given up on subtlety entirely.

Raven lifted her voice.

"If you’re all going to stare anyway, you might as well record it."

For a second nobody moved.

Raven gestured toward the slates scattered across the tables.

"Go on. This should be fun."

One student lifted theirs.

Then another.

A girl near the middle of the cafeteria stood to get a clearer view, and after that the hesitation disappeared. Slates began rising all around the room while chairs shifted and students leaned around one another to see.

Behind Raven, Brielle made a strange sound.

Raven glanced over her shoulder.

Her eye was twitching.

"What?"

"You really don’t have a plan."

"I told you that."

Brielle looked around at the growing number of people recording them.

"Yes. I was hoping you’d lied."

Tessa rubbed a hand over her face.

Thalia appeared to be trying very hard not to laugh.

"Raven," Celeste snapped.

Raven turned back.

Celeste had already pushed her chair away from the table, anger coloring her cheeks.

"If you think you’re going to come here and turn this into some kind of performance because you couldn’t handle losing two Seats—"

"Shush."

Celeste stopped.

Raven smiled pleasantly.

"You’re not important right now."

The reaction was immediate.

Someone laughed loudly before trying to disguise it as a cough. Another student failed completely and earned a furious look from Celeste, which only made the whispers spread faster.

"What did you just say to me?"

Raven was already looking away.

Her eyes settled on Petra.

That finally wiped some of the amusement from the table.

Petra had been quiet since Raven arrived, apparently content to let everyone else speak for her. Now, with slates pointed toward them from half the cafeteria and Raven’s attention fixed entirely on her, she shifted in her seat.

Raven noticed the way her fingers tightened near her plate.

Perfect.

The room gradually quieted again as people realized where Raven’s attention had gone.

Even the Court girls stopped talking.

Raven stepped slightly closer to the table.

Petra looked up at her.

Raven smiled.

"I think I’ll start with you."

Petra’s expression tightened.

Raven tilted her head.

"Hi, Petra."