Chapter 187 — Where Is Blade?

Chapter 187: Chapter 187 — Where Is Blade?

~ Raven ~

"I’ll tell Raven and get this over with."

Raven’s hand stopped against the door.

Brielle’s voice had carried clearly enough through the wood that there was no mistaking either the words or the fact that Raven had not been meant to hear them.

She stayed where she was for another moment, listening.

Nobody inside answered immediately, which only made the sentence worse. Raven could picture the room without seeing it, with Brielle probably wearing the expression she got whenever she had decided something unpleasant needed to be done, Thalia hovering nearby and Tessa listening while pretending she had nothing to do with the conversation until somebody forced her into it.

Whatever Brielle intended to tell Raven apparently involved all three of them.

Interesting.

Raven waited another second before pushing the door open.

The change inside the room was immediate.

Brielle froze so quickly that the silence itself became suspicious. Thalia looked toward Raven and then away again, while Tessa suddenly found the book across her lap considerably more interesting than it had apparently been a moment earlier.

Raven closed the door behind her and looked between them. "Morning."

Three greetings came back in slightly different versions of normal.

None of them were convincing.

Raven crossed toward her side of the room before the urge to smile gave her away. She had spent too much of her life learning how to tell when a room changed because she entered it.

Brielle’s shoulders had tightened, Thalia was trying much too hard not to look uncomfortable, and Tessa had been staring at the same page long enough that Raven doubted she had read a single word.

Still, Raven said nothing.

She set down what she was carrying, opened the wardrobe and started getting ready as though she had heard absolutely nothing.

The silence behind her lasted several seconds before Thalia finally cleared her throat.

"You’re back early."

"Unfortunately."

Thalia gave a laugh that sounded slightly too quick.

When Raven glanced toward the mirror, Brielle was already watching her.

Their eyes met in the reflection.

For half a second, Raven wondered whether Brielle might simply say whatever she had been preparing to say before Raven walked in, but Brielle only reached for the tie around her wrist and began pulling her hair back.

Raven turned away before the staring became an argument.

Fine.

If they wanted to keep something from her, they could.

The thought should not have bothered her as much as it did.

For the last three days, all three of them had asked some version of the same questions. What had happened with Isolde? Why had Raven been in the infirmary with her? Why had Isolde collapsed? Why had Dante suddenly become involved?

Raven had answered almost none of it.

She had asked them to trust her instead.

Apparently, trust had become a shared arrangement.

As she finished fastening her uniform, Raven caught Brielle’s reflection again. Brielle looked away almost immediately, and that was enough to confirm what Raven already knew.

Something had changed.

Not enough to make her distrust them, and certainly not enough for Raven to start demanding answers while keeping half of her own secrets buried, but she filed the moment away anyway.

She was becoming very good at that.

Unfortunately, she had considerably larger problems waiting outside the room.

Three days had passed since Isolde collapsed, and she still had not woken up.

Raven had imagined that after everything inside the Dreamwalker’s nightmare, the worst part would be sitting beside an infirmary bed and wondering whether Isolde would ever open her eyes.

Instead, House Marchmont had arrived.

Then more of House Marchmont had arrived.

By the end of the first day, Raven had discovered that powerful families responded to fear by putting everyone involved into rooms and asking the same questions in increasingly careful ways.

The meetings had barely stopped since.

Some were held with academy officials present. Others included Marchmont representatives, instructors or people Raven had never seen before but who spoke as though every word she gave them might become important later.

Dante had been beside her through most of them, and Raven had not expected him to be nearly as useful as he had been.

She had always known he was a Prymont. She knew he was a Cardinal heir and that he had spent his entire life surrounded by powerful families, politics and people who could smile at one another while searching for weaknesses.

Knowing those things and watching him inside one of those rooms were apparently very different.

During the second meeting, one of the Marchmont representatives had asked Raven whether she had been "involved in the events immediately preceding Isolde Marchmont’s collapse."

Raven had already started answering when Dante cut in.

"Involved how?"

The man turned toward him. "I believe the question was clear."

"It wasn’t." Dante leaned back in his chair, neither raising his voice nor smiling. "Are you asking whether Raven was physically present, whether she caused something or whether she knew Marchmont was in danger beforehand? Those are three different questions."

The man had changed the wording after that.

Raven had noticed.

Later, Dante explained what the question had actually been trying to do.

They did not need Raven to admit she had hurt Isolde. They only needed her to agree with something vague enough that somebody else could decide later what her answer meant.

Raven would have walked directly into it.

She hated that.

She also remembered it every time Dante interrupted another carefully constructed question.

He did not answer everything for her. Most of the time, he let Raven speak for herself and only stepped in when something about the wording smelled wrong to him.

Apparently, beneath the temper, the flirting and his general habit of treating danger like a personal challenge, Dante Prymont had spent his entire life learning how to survive rooms full of powerful people trying to corner one another politely.

Rowan had stepped in too.

Isolde belonged to Ashbourne Wing, which meant whatever happened to First Seat had become partly his problem whether he wanted it or not. When one accusation about Raven’s involvement had grown particularly creative, Rowan had contradicted it before Raven even needed to.

Nikolai had been quieter about his involvement, but Raven had seen him leaving the Headmaster’s office twice, and several questions from Hale officials had suddenly stopped being pushed afterward.

Three Cardinal heirs had spent the last three days placing themselves between Raven and political pressure.

Of course Valerius had noticed.

By the time Raven and the others left Hale Wing that morning, she knew exactly what waited outside.

The first few students tried pretending not to stare.

Raven almost found that insulting.

She had been Valerius’s favorite public disaster often enough to recognize the pattern by now. Someone noticed her, the person beside them noticed that they had noticed her, a Linkslate appeared somewhere, and within thirty seconds an entire corridor suddenly found the walls fascinating.

This morning was no different.

Raven walked between Brielle and Thalia while Tessa kept pace beside them, and the attention followed almost immediately.

A pair of students near the stairs lowered their voices as Raven approached.

"Prymont was there again yesterday."

"I heard Ashbourne told them to stop questioning her."

"He didn’t say that."

"He contradicted Marchmont’s people in front of everyone."

Raven kept walking.

Farther ahead, another conversation dropped as they approached.

".... yes and Hale left the Headmaster’s office right after Rivers."

"So?"

"So that makes three."

Someone else laughed quietly. "Three Cardinals protecting one Fourth Seat? Completely normal."

Raven almost rolled her eyes.

Apparently, she had gone from being the academy’s scandal to being its favorite unsolved equation.

Again.

A Linkslate rose near one of the archways. Raven looked directly at the boy holding it, and after a moment of hesitation, he lowered it.

Progress.

Beside her, Thalia leaned closer. "You’re taking this surprisingly well."

"I’ve had practice."

"That is unfortunately true."

The staring itself no longer bothered Raven much. Not after classification, Bellringer, Celeste, the twins, the Hunt and every other disaster Valerius had managed to turn into public entertainment.

What bothered her was the question that kept appearing between everything else.

"Where is Blade?"

Raven’s step did not change.

Another student answered somewhere behind them. "Nobody knows."

"I heard they fought."

"About what?"

"Rivers has Prymont around her constantly now. You figure it out."

Raven’s jaw tightened slightly, but she kept walking.

This was not the first time she had heard it.

Cassian’s absence had already been noticeable before Isolde collapsed. After everything that followed, it had become impossible to ignore.

Everyone remembered the Hunt. Everyone remembered Cassian appearing beside Raven often enough afterward that even Bellringer had found material in it.

Now three Cardinals were publicly involving themselves in Raven’s problems, and the one everyone had expected to see most was nowhere in Valerius.

Naturally, the academy had invented explanations.

They fought. Cassian finally came to his senses. Dante drove him away. House Blade pulled him out.

Something happened to him.

Raven disliked that last version most, although she had no intention of admitting it to anyone.

Cassian Blade could look after himself, and whatever he was doing was none of her business.

She had told herself that often enough that the words should have become more convincing by now.

They had not.

"Raven."

She looked over.

A girl had stepped away from several Court students gathered near one of the lower paths. Raven recognized her face from the rankings, although they had never spoken enough for Raven to claim she knew her.

The girl hesitated before giving Raven a small smile. "I just wanted to say I hope Marchmont wakes up soon."

Raven slowed.

For a second, she waited for the rest.

Nothing came.

No question about what happened. No sideways accusation disguised as concern.

"Yeah," Raven said after a moment. "Me too."

The girl nodded before glancing toward the group she had left. "And I don’t believe half the shit people are saying."

Raven blinked.

Before she could decide how to answer that, the girl gave another small nod and walked away.

Thalia watched her go. "Well."

Raven started moving again. "Don’t."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were about to."

Thalia smiled.

A little farther along, another student Raven vaguely remembered from the Hunt gave her a brief nod as they passed.

"Ignore them, Rivers."

Raven frowned. "Who?"

He glanced toward the academic buildings. "Take your pick."

Then he kept walking.

Raven watched him leave for another moment before turning forward again.

That one was considerably harder to dismiss.

She had known, at least in theory, that not everyone looking at her believed the rumours. Over the last several days, people had spoken to her normally, sat near her during meals and treated her as something other than whatever version Bellringer or the First Circle had produced that morning.

Still, hearing somebody say it outright felt strange.

Brielle seemed considerably less surprised. "People aren’t stupid."

Tessa glanced at her. "Some people."

"Enough."

Raven looked ahead again.

Apparently enough mattered.

Unfortunately, the other side had noticed the same thing.

They reached the academic courtyard before Raven saw Celeste standing beneath one of the covered walkways with three other women around her and enough nearby students pretending not to listen that Raven knew exactly what was happening before she heard a word.

Celeste saw her too.

Something changed in her expression, but she did not stop speaking.

"I’m not accusing Rivers of anything."

Of course she wasn’t.

Raven slowed without meaning to.

Celeste continued, her voice carrying just enough to reach the students nearby. "I’m asking why nobody is allowed to ask what happened."

One of the women beside her nodded. Raven recognized her from the upper Court, though she had no interest in pretending to remember every First Circle shadow individually.

Celeste folded her arms. "Isolde Marchmont is First Seat. She has been unconscious for three days, and Raven was there when it happened. Those are facts."

Brielle made a sound under her breath.

Raven looked at her. "Don’t."

Tessa caught Brielle lightly by the sleeve before she could drift any farther toward Celeste.

Across the courtyard, Celeste continued.

"And now every time somebody asks what happened, Prymont appears. Or Ashbourne. Or Hale."

Her tone remained perfectly reasonable, which was what made it effective.

Celeste was not screaming that Raven had attacked Isolde. She was not calling her a murderer or making some accusation easy enough to disprove.

She was asking questions.

Why had Raven been alone with Isolde? Why would Raven not explain what happened? Why had First Seat ended up unconscious while Fourth Seat walked away? Why were three Cardinal heirs suddenly deciding which questions Raven should have to answer?

Every question left just enough empty space for somebody else to put something ugly inside it.

Raven knew the tactic.

She had lived with Celeste long enough to know exactly how good she was at looking concerned while making sure everyone heard the worst possible version of somebody else.

The difference was that Celeste had become better at it.

Raven started walking again and had nearly made it past when another voice carried from the group.

"Convenient, though."

Raven stopped.

Thalia looked over.

The woman speaking apparently had not realized Raven was still close enough to hear.

"Marchmont is First Seat. Rivers is Fourth. If Marchmont stays out, who benefits from that?"