Chapter 192 — You Saw Nothing

Chapter 192: Chapter 192 — You Saw Nothing

~ Raven ~

Raven had not made it halfway back to Hale before she saw the first recording.

A girl coming down the opposite corridor slowed when she noticed her, only to glance immediately back at the Linkslate in her hand. Adelaide filled most of the screen, red-faced and fighting against three women while screaming that she would kill Raven.

The next slate Raven passed showed Berry forcing Adelaide’s head down, while another had already clipped the vote and added the final count beneath it.

Ten to seven.

By the time Raven and Brielle reached Hale, somebody had even separated the students outside the rehearsal hall into their own recording. Raven heard her name being shouted from a Linkslate before the door had properly closed behind them.

Thalia and Tessa were waiting inside, and the grin already spreading across Thalia’s face made Raven stop.

"Whatever expression that is, get rid of it."

Thalia lifted both hands innocently. "I didn’t say anything."

"That face is doing enough talking for you."

Tessa was considerably less interested in pretending. She was smiling so widely that Raven immediately regretted coming back at all.

"That was peak."

Raven stared at her, then looked toward Brielle when another laugh escaped beside her.

"Oh, fuck all of you."

That only made Thalia grin harder.

Raven dropped the two ceremonial slates onto the nearest table and sank into a chair before anyone could congratulate her. She had spent the entire walk back pretending not to notice how differently people were looking at her.

For once, there had been very little suspicion in those looks, or even curiosity. Some of them had actually seemed pleased for her, which left Raven with absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do about it.

She was still thinking about that when one of the slates chimed.

Raven eyed it with immediate distrust before reaching across the table.

Updated representative schedule.

Of course.

Tessa leaned over the back of Raven’s chair. "What now?"

"Apparently winning things is just another way of being given work."

Her reporting time had been moved earlier, the reception order had changed, and both her entrance and seating positions had been reorganized.

Somebody had also somehow squeezed a formal fitting into that evening because what had originally been prepared for Fourth Seat apparently no longer suited the woman representing First.

Raven kept scrolling until a diagram farther down caught her attention.

"The Cardinals have fixed positions?"

Brielle glanced over. "At formal events? Yes."

The revised layout showed four marked stations around the ceremonial floor. The Luna Court would enter according to Standing while the Cardinals were already positioned, after which the Court representative would lead the women through the final opening formation.

Raven looked up from the slate. "Did they rehearse all this today too?"

"Not all afternoon."

Her eyes narrowed immediately, and Brielle’s mouth twitched before she continued.

"Their positions barely change. They usually do a short timing check."

"How short?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe."

Raven stared at her long enough for Thalia to bring a hand over her mouth.

"So I nearly watched Adelaide commit murder over a floor marking for three hours, and they get twenty fucking minutes?"

Brielle gave a small shrug. "That appears to be the arrangement."

"Wonderful."

Raven returned to the slate before she became personally offended by the entire academy, only to reach the next section and stop again.

Opening dance.

She blinked, read the line once more and slowly lowered the slate.

Tessa noticed immediately. "What?"

"There’s a dance."

Thalia frowned. "It’s a Ball."

"I know there’s dancing. I did not know I was required to open it."

That wiped some of the amusement from their faces.

Raven read the rules properly this time. Each Cardinal could register one willing opening partner from among the Top Ten Luna Court Seats. An invitation could be refused, and if more than one Cardinal invited the same woman, the decision belonged entirely to her.

The First Seat representative’s pair opened the floor.

Which meant Raven’s pair would go first tomorrow.

Her gaze drifted lower.

FIRST SEAT REPRESENTATIVE — RAVEN RIVERS

OPENING PARTNER — PENDING

"Fuck."

When Raven looked up, Brielle was already watching her with an expression she did not like at all.

"Don’t."

Brielle raised an eyebrow. "Can you dance?"

Heat climbed into Raven’s face before she could stop it. "I’ve watched people dance hundreds of times."

The answer came out far too quickly.

Nobody said anything.

Raven could actually feel her cheeks getting hotter as all three women continued staring at her.

"That counts for something."

Their expressions suggested otherwise.

Raven looked back down at the slate before any of them could make this worse. She knew noble balls. She knew where servants waited, when empty glasses disappeared from tables, when trays changed hands and how guests moved around a ballroom without ever noticing the people working around them.

She had watched women dance more times than she could count.

She had simply never been one of them.

Then another problem occurred to her.

I need someone to practise with.

Dante entered her thoughts so quickly that Raven bit her lip..

He could dance. He was a Cardinal, he had already invited her, and if she accepted, his name could go directly into that empty space.

Which made everything considerably worse.

Raven was not going to find him after days of refusing to give him an answer and suddenly ask for help because she now happened to need a Cardinal who knew how to dance. The thought felt too much like using him, and it sat badly enough that she dismissed it almost immediately.

She would learn the dance first.

Then she would solve Dante.

How difficult could it possibly be?

~~ ~~

Very fucking difficult, apparently.

Raven caught herself before she could trip over her own foot for the fourth time and glared at the empty practice hall as though the floor had personally offended her.

"This is stupid."

The floor, unsurprisingly, offered no defence.

She checked the ceremonial sequence again. The movements looked insultingly simple when written down, but they became considerably less cooperative when Raven attempted them with an imaginary partner who provided absolutely no guidance and somehow still managed to irritate her.

She reset, tried again and made it through several steps before realizing she had turned in the wrong direction.

"Fuck."

A quiet chuckle came from behind her.

Raven froze.

Very slowly, she turned.

Nikolai stood near the doorway with one shoulder resting against the frame, amusement already visible across his face.

Heat rushed into Raven’s cheeks so quickly that she wanted to kill him on principle.

"How long have you been standing there?"

Nikolai seemed to consider the question, which immediately made everything worse.

"Long enough."

Raven closed her eyes for a moment, hoping perhaps the entire situation would disappear before she opened them again.

It did not.

Nikolai was still there.

Still smiling.

"You saw nothing."

His brows rose. "I saw—"

"Nothing."

Another chuckle escaped him, warm rather than mocking, and somehow that only made the embarrassment worse.

Raven pointed at him. "You tell nobody."

"I hadn’t planned to."

"Nobody, Nikolai." She straightened and fixed him with the most serious expression she could manage while her face was still burning. "What happened in this room dies in this room."

His smile widened.

"No Thalia, no Tessa, definitely no Brielle. No Rowan, no Dante, and no fucking Cardinal conversation where all of you sit around ruining my life."

"I don’t remember agreeing to all of those conditions."

Raven narrowed her eyes. "Promise."

That finally earned her a proper laugh, but Nikolai lifted his hands in surrender.

"Fine. I promise."

She studied him suspiciously for another second before turning back toward the floor.

Behind her, Nikolai asked, "Would you like help?"

"No."

The answer left her mouth before he had properly finished asking.

Nikolai said nothing.

Raven stared at the empty space where a partner was supposed to be, then glanced back at him. He remained exactly where he was, apparently content to wait while she argued with herself.

She bit her lip.

Pride fought a very brief battle with the possibility of humiliating herself in front of half of Valerius tomorrow.

Pride lost.

"Fine."

Nikolai pushed away from the doorway and crossed the room without commenting on her surrender, which helped a little.

He took her hand before placing his other lightly against her waist. Raven stiffened instinctively, then forced herself to relax as he adjusted her position.

"Your problem is that you move before your partner does."

"Anticipating movement is useful."

"In a fight."

"It’s useful everywhere."

Amusement warmed Nikolai’s eyes. "I’m not attacking you, Raven."

"That remains to be seen."

He laughed softly while guiding her back into position. "Then stop treating me like an opponent and let me lead."

Raven frowned immediately.

"There," Nikolai said.

"What?"

"That expression."

She nearly stepped on him deliberately.

Instead, Nikolai started moving.

Raven was terrible for the first several turns because every instinct told her to predict what came next. Whenever she did, she moved too early, and Nikolai quietly guided her back into rhythm without making a spectacle of it.

Annoyingly, his patience made accepting the help much easier.

When they reset again, he kept hold of her hand. "Stop thinking ahead."

"I’m trying."

"You look offended."

"I am."

His laugh was softer this time as they started again, and Raven forced herself to wait instead of trying to predict where he would take her next.

One step became another, then another, until the sequence stopped feeling like something she had to remember and simply became movement.

There was no music in the empty hall, only the quiet sound of their shoes against the floor and the occasional whisper of fabric when they turned, yet after a while Raven stopped noticing the silence.

Nikolai kept an easy rhythm between them, never rushing her when she hesitated and never tightening his hold when she moved the wrong way. His hand remained steady at her waist, guiding rather than correcting, while the hand holding hers shifted only enough to show her where to go next.

For once, Raven did not have to think several steps ahead.

She did not have to watch his shoulders for the beginning of an attack or calculate the distance between them. There was nothing to defend against, nothing she needed to anticipate before it happened. All she had to do was follow the small pressure of his hand and let the next step come when it came.

The realization settled over her slowly.

This was... nice.

Raven almost frowned at the thought, but Nikolai turned her before she could examine it too closely, and she moved with him without thinking. Somewhere along the way she had stopped counting entirely. She could no longer remember which turn she had been struggling with earlier or where the sequence was supposed to become difficult.

She was simply dancing.

Without music.

Without an audience.

Without having to be good at anything for anybody.

Nikolai’s hand stayed warm and steady against her waist, and Raven became more aware of the ease between them than of the dance itself. The closeness should have made her uncomfortable now that she was actually paying attention to it, but it didn’t.

Instead, she felt herself relaxing into the rhythm, letting him guide her through another turn as the rest of the room seemed to fall away around them.

For several seconds, Raven forgot tomorrow existed.

Forgot the Ball, the Court, Adelaide, the rankings and the empty line still waiting for a name on her slate.

There was only the quiet floor beneath them and Nikolai moving with her as though there was nowhere else either of them needed to be.

It felt strangely comforting.

Perhaps too comforting.

By the time Nikolai finally slowed and brought them to a stop, Raven needed a second to realize they were no longer moving.

She blinked, then looked down at their feet. "That was it?"

"That was it."

She stared at them as though they might have somehow cheated.

Nikolai smiled. "You’ll be fine tomorrow."

Raven stepped away, considerably more relieved than she wanted him to know, but the feeling lasted only until his gaze shifted toward the ceremonial slate she had left nearby.

"Have you chosen your opening partner?"

Her suspicion returned instantly. "Why?"

"Curious."

"No."

Dante came to mind again before she could stop him.

Nikolai watched her for a moment before asking, "Has someone already claimed the rest of your dances?"

Raven looked away. "I already owe someone an answer. I’m not collecting another invitation before I deal with the first one."

For a brief moment, Nikolai went quiet.

Thankfully, he did not ask who even though she suspected that he knew.

Instead, he shifted his weight slightly and said, "I’m not asking for the opening."

Raven looked back at him.

"One dance. Afterward."

That was different.

She studied him for a moment before giving a small nod. "One."

"One."

Nikolai started toward the door.

"Nikolai."

He turned, and Raven immediately pointed at him.

"You still saw nothing."

His mouth curved again.

"Promise."

"I already promised."

"That smile is making it less convincing."

He left laughing.

Raven watched him disappear down the corridor and decided that if Brielle somehow heard about tonight, Hale Wing was going to need a new Cardinal.

~~ ~

By the time Raven finally returned, the fitting was finished, her reporting time was fixed and she knew enough about the opening sequence to avoid disgracing herself tomorrow.

Only one problem remained.

OPENING PARTNER — PENDING

She had barely set the slate down when every Linkslate in the room chimed at once.

Thalia checked hers first, and the smile disappeared from her face so quickly that Raven immediately looked over.

Tessa leaned closer to see the screen and went completely still, while Brielle stopped what she was doing and looked down at her own slate.

Raven frowned at all three of them. "What?"

Nobody answered.

That was concerning enough that she grabbed her own slate and opened the notification.

LUNA COURT STANDING — UPDATED

Her eyes moved across the first name.

1 — ISOLDE MARCHMONT

Then down.

2 — RAVEN RIVERS

Raven stopped moving.

Directly beneath her sat another name.

3 — ADELAIDE FENN

She stared at the screen for several seconds before finally looking up.

"What the fuck?"