Chapter 178 — Just For Tonight

Chapter 178: Chapter 178 — Just For Tonight

~ Raven ~

"I had a theory."

Raven stared at her.

Isolde, finally deciding there was no point pretending anymore, gave the smallest shrug. The movement would have looked almost innocent if not for the satisfaction still clinging to the corner of her mouth.

"You had a theory," Raven repeated.

"A very good one."

"You sat there listing the twins, Cassian, Dante and my wolf like the answers were occurring to you one by one."

"They were important supporting evidence."

Raven’s eyes narrowed. "You were performing."

That only made Isolde’s smile widen.

Raven leaned back in the chair and rubbed a hand over her face. "Goddess, you’re annoying."

"I’ve been told."

Raven dropped her hand and found Isolde still looking far too pleased with herself for someone who appeared ready to collapse where she sat. The shadows beneath her eyes had only grown darker since they entered the infirmary, and now that the story was finished, whatever energy had carried her through it seemed to be draining away by the second.

The sight took some of Raven’s irritation with it.

Isolde noticed, and some of the amusement left her face as she shifted against the bed. "Now that we’ve established my superior investigative ability—"

"We established that you’re a liar."

"Details." Isolde watched her for another moment before her expression turned more serious. "What do you actually know about him?"

Raven knew immediately who she meant.

The humor left the room.

Isolde drew one knee slightly closer beneath the blanket. "The Dreamwalker. You knew enough to ask me about them before any of this happened, and considering everything you just heard, I’m assuming that wasn’t because you developed a sudden interest in extinct bloodlines."

"No."

"How long?"

Raven hesitated before answering. "A while."

Isolde gave her a tired look. "That was incredibly informative."

Raven sighed.

There was no longer much point hiding the important parts from her. The bastard had already found Isolde, and judging by what she had just described, he was no longer merely testing whether he could get inside.

So Raven told her.

Not everything. There were still things she wasn’t ready to say aloud, particularly anything connected to the Alpha Queen or the parts of her own mind she barely understood herself, but she told Isolde enough.

She told her about waking inside dreams that were not quite dreams, about memories being dragged around and changed, about the pain and the way the Dreamwalker could make something feel real enough that knowing it wasn’t real stopped mattering.

She explained what had happened when her wolf finally reached him, how they had forced him out and how little she had learned about the man behind any of it.

By the time Raven finished, Isolde had gone completely quiet. She remained propped against the pillows, absorbing everything Raven had told her until there was nothing useful left to add.

Then Isolde slowly rubbed both hands over her face. "Fuck."

Raven gave a tired huff. "That was more or less my reaction."

Isolde lowered her hands, but there was no amusement left in her expression. "You don’t know who he is."

"No."

"You don’t know what he wants."

"No."

"And he can potentially get inside someone’s head without them even knowing afterward."

Raven’s mouth tightened. "Apparently."

Isolde stared toward the opposite wall for several seconds, and Raven watched the thought reach her.

"If you told the Headmaster," Isolde said slowly, "you’d have to trust that nobody around her had already been touched."

"Exactly."

"And if you started asking people questions openly, he’d know you were looking for him."

"He probably already knows that."

Isolde turned back toward her. "That isn’t reassuring."

"Tell me about it."

A long breath left Isolde as she settled farther back against the bed.

For the first time since Raven had seen her in the cafeteria, she looked less frightened than simply exhausted. Not First Seat exhausted, where Isolde Marchmont would straighten her shoulders and continue pretending nothing was wrong because people were watching.

Actually exhausted.

Her eyelids lowered for a moment before she forced them open again.

Raven frowned. "You should sleep."

Something in Isolde’s face changed.

It was small, barely more than a pause, but Raven saw the hesitation immediately. The nurse had told her to sleep, and her body clearly wanted the same thing, yet the moment Raven said it, tension returned to her shoulders.

Raven understood before Isolde said anything.

Isolde looked down at her hands. "Would you stay?"

The question was so quiet Raven almost thought she had heard incorrectly.

"What?"

Isolde took a breath, looking distinctly annoyed with herself for having to repeat it. "Just for tonight. You don’t have to do anything. Sit there, lie down, read one of those terrible books they keep in here, I don’t care."

Her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the blanket before she finally looked back at Raven.

"I just don’t want to close my eyes and face that bastard alone again."

The attempt at casualness disappeared somewhere near the end.

Raven looked at her for a moment.

For one brief second she was back in her own dormitory with her heart trying to break through her ribs, terrified that closing her eyes would send her straight back into that endless white space.

She thought of Cassian staying with her afterward, asking for nothing and simply remaining there until morning because she hadn’t wanted to be alone.

Raven reached across the small distance between them and took Isolde’s hand.

"I’ll stay."

Isolde looked down at their joined hands before meeting her eyes again, and something in her face loosened.

"Thank you."

Raven squeezed once. "Go to sleep."

This time, Isolde didn’t argue.

She shifted beneath the blanket and lowered herself onto the pillow, turning onto her side so she still faced Raven while their hands remained loosely joined between the bed and chair.

For a while neither of them spoke.

Then Isolde chuckled.

Raven frowned. "What’s funny?"

"Nothing."

"You’re laughing."

"Observation remains one of your stronger qualities."

Raven narrowed her eyes. "Isolde."

Another quiet laugh escaped her, although exhaustion made it softer than usual. "It’s just strange."

"What is?"

"This."

Isolde’s gaze dropped briefly to their joined hands.

Raven followed it, then looked back at her. "What about it?"

"Seeing you like this."

"Like what?"

"Soft."

Raven scoffed, looking genuinely offended. "I’m not soft."

"Of course not."

"What the hell is that supposed to—"

A soft sound interrupted her.

Raven stopped.

Isolde’s eyes were closed now, her breathing already evening out.

Another quiet breath left her, followed by the faintest snore.

Raven stared at her.

"You cannot be serious."

Nothing.

She had actually fallen asleep halfway through insulting her.

Raven shook her head, but a tired laugh escaped before she could stop it. "Unbelievable."

She settled back in the chair without releasing Isolde’s hand.

The room gradually became quiet again.

For the first time in what felt like hours, Raven had nothing immediate to solve. No question being thrown at her, no new secret appearing from somewhere and no Isolde laughing at her expense.

Only the steady rise and fall of the woman beside her.

Her thoughts drifted back toward the Dreamwalker, and strangely, the fear didn’t come with them.

That realization made Raven pause.

She should have been more afraid after everything Isolde had just told her.

Instead, Raven was more unsettled by how little fear she actually felt.

The Dreamwalker had once made sleep itself feel dangerous, but that had changed after the last time he entered her mind. Her wolf had reached him. Raven had reached her wolf. Together, they had forced him out.

If he came back, Raven no longer felt helpless against him.

That realization drew her attention inward, toward the creature that had protected her more than once despite everything Raven still didn’t understand about her.

Especially the chains.

Raven’s expression slowly changed.

Every time she had truly seen the creature, it had been chained.

She had known that from the beginning, yet somehow the question had always been buried beneath everything else.

First she had been too shocked to have a wolf at all, then too busy surviving the Hunt, understanding her abilities, dealing with the Dreamwalker and trying to make sense of every new thing her body seemed determined to reveal without explanation.

Meanwhile, the wolf kept helping her.

And Raven had done absolutely nothing about the chains.

A faint knot formed in her stomach.

That felt wrong.

She didn’t even know what had put them there, much less how to remove them, but she should have tried to find out by now. If asking someone was too dangerous, she could at least research it herself.

The library had records about everything else in this cursed academy, so surely there had to be something about wolves being bound, suppressed or—

The thought pulled another memory loose.

Masked figures surrounding a black-haired little girl who stood between them and something Raven had never managed to see.

Raven’s gaze drifted toward the infirmary ceiling.

She still didn’t understand that vision.

She didn’t know who the child had been, what had happened to her or why she had been shown any of it. There had been a man, a woman, screaming and blood, then everything had collapsed before she could make sense of the scene.

Another mystery.

Exactly what she needed.

Raven sighed quietly and looked back toward Isolde.

The woman shifted.

Raven almost ignored it.

Then Isolde’s fingers tightened around hers.

"No..."

Raven straightened.

Isolde’s face had drawn tight against the pillow, and her breathing had changed, each breath coming faster than the one before.

"No."

The second word came weaker than the first, strained somewhere between a whisper and a plea.

Raven leaned closer. "Isolde?"

No response.

Her hand twitched inside Raven’s before suddenly gripping hard enough to hurt.

"Isolde."

Raven shook her shoulder gently, then harder when nothing happened.

"Wake up."

Isolde’s body jerked beneath the blanket.

Raven shot to her feet, the chair scraping backward across the floor as she caught Isolde by the shoulders.

"Isolde!"

Still nothing.

The trembling worsened.

Raven looked toward the infirmary door.

She could call the nurse.

The thought lasted barely a second.

And tell her what?

That someone might be attacking Isolde inside a dream?

Even if the woman believed her, what exactly was she supposed to do about something happening inside Isolde’s head?

Raven looked back at the bed, and her stomach dropped as the answer settled in.

"Oh, fuck."

The bastard was back.

Something moved beneath her ribs.

Raven froze.

Her wolf.

The presence wasn’t restless in the way Raven had come to recognise, nor was there any of the usual agitation that sometimes came with danger. This felt different.

Focused.

Intent on something.

Raven’s attention dropped to Isolde’s hand, still trapped inside hers, just as a strange sensation passed through the contact.

It wasn’t pain, not exactly. It was something deeper and faint enough that Raven might have missed it entirely if her wolf hadn’t reacted at the same moment.

Isolde jerked again.

Raven tightened her grip instinctively, and the response from her wolf came immediately.

Don’t let go.

The words were not spoken. Raven knew that.

Yet the certainty behind them was so strong that she stopped questioning it.

"Alright," she whispered. "I’m not letting go."

She moved closer to the bed and took Isolde’s other hand as well.

Nothing happened.

Raven had no idea what she was supposed to do next.

Her wolf stirred again.

Raven closed her eyes.

Instead of forcing the strange sensation, she tried to find it beneath everything else, following the same faint pull she had felt through Isolde’s hands moments earlier.

Every time Raven tried to examine it directly, it seemed to slip away, so she stopped chasing it and reached inward instead, toward the presence of her wolf.

The presence was there, easier to find now than it had been before, and Raven held onto it as she lowered her head beside Isolde’s, still gripping both of her hands.

She had no idea what she was trying to do. Isolde was trapped somewhere Raven couldn’t normally reach, and her wolf seemed certain there was another way, so Raven stopped trying to understand it and simply followed the pull.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then the infirmary began to fade around her.

The sounds beyond the door disappeared first, followed by the quiet hum of the room and even Isolde’s uneven breathing. Raven frowned when the mattress beneath her arm seemed to shift, but before she could make sense of the sensation, it felt as though the bed itself had vanished.

Her grip tightened around Isolde’s hands even as they somehow seemed to grow farther away, as though the distance between them was stretching despite Raven knowing she had never let go.

Her stomach lurched.

The next instant, she was falling.

Raven barely had time to react before her feet struck solid ground. She staggered forward, caught herself and looked around, trying to understand how the infirmary had disappeared so completely.

The place surrounding her looked real at first glance, but the longer she stared, the more everything seemed slightly wrong. Distances didn’t quite match what her eyes expected, shadows stretched where there should have been light, and the entire place carried the same unsettling quality she remembered from dreams that felt far too real.

Her pulse quickened.

"No fucking way."

The sound of hurried footsteps reached her from somewhere ahead, and Raven turned just as someone appeared in the distance.

Isolde.

Relief hit first, but it lasted only until Raven saw her properly.

The woman running toward her looked nothing like the composed girl who had been sleeping beside her moments earlier. Her hair had come loose around her face, her clothes were dishevelled, and she kept glancing behind herself as she ran, fear written openly across her expression.

"Isolde!"

She stopped so abruptly that she nearly stumbled.

Raven started toward her. "It’s me."

For a moment, Isolde only stared at her, and Raven thought the recognition in her face meant she understood.

Then something changed.

The fear twisted into fury as her wolf surged close to the surface, and Isolde’s lips pulled back from her teeth.

"You fucking bastard."

Raven stopped short, completely thrown by the reaction.

"What?"

Isolde moved.

"Wait—"

She lunged.