Chapter 30— Who Asked Me?

Chapter 30: Chapter 30— Who Asked Me?

The sigils lit again.

Light swept around the ring, gathered beneath Raven’s feet—and stopped.

A snicker broke from the tiers.

"Still nothing."

The laughter returned, louder now that the array had failed twice. Raven kept her eyes ahead while the light trembled below her, bunched against something no one else could see.

Then the ring gave a sudden pulse.

A thin strand of light forced its way upward. It was so faint Raven nearly missed it against the brightness of the hall. The strand flickered, almost vanished, then steadied and began shaping the result above her one letter at a time.

Each letter shook before it held.

WOLF PRESENCE: CONFIRMED

Raven stopped breathing.

The hall kept making noise somewhere beyond her. The second line formed beneath the first.

POWER CLASS: NASCENT

Mockery rolled down the tiers in a warm, comfortable wave — Nascent, all that for a Nascent, the record’s fake, told you, TOLD you — and none of it reached her.

Her eyes stayed on the first line. Confirmed. Eighteen years of silence, of examiners shaking their heads over her, of wolfless said in front of her like she couldn’t hear it, and the academy’s own array had just written the answer into the air above her head where no one could cross it out.

Her nails found her palm and pressed until they hurt.

Finally.

The evaluator was still reading. Raven dragged her attention back in pieces.

"The points are in no danger of dissolution," the evaluator announced to the hall at large, because half the hall was asking. "They become permanent upon final confirmation of wing. Whichever wing holds her, holds them."

Every eye in the hall went to Nikolai.

Raven looked too. He had straightened in his chair, unhurried, drawing breath to speak—

"Raven Rivers." Dante’s voice came down from the platform first. "Dante’s Wing."

For one full second, nobody moved.

Then half the hall shouted at once.

"He claimed her?"

"A Nascent?"

"He hasn’t even seen the rest of the results!"

Students twisted around on the benches, some climbing to their feet for a better view of Dante. Three girls near the front were speaking over one another, each demanding to know whether they had heard him correctly.

Brielle turned toward Raven so sharply that her hair struck the girl beside her. Her eyes dropped to the result still hanging above the array, then lifted to Raven again, her frown deepening as if the numbers had personally offended her.

Two tiers above, Thalia had risen halfway from her seat. She stared at Dante, then down at Raven, and slowly mouthed—

What the fuck?

Raven looked up at Dante.

The lounging was gone. He’d come forward out of the chair’s embrace, forearms on his knees, and his burning gaze hadn’t moved off her.

"Contested."

Nikolai’s smile was still on his face when he said it. The warmth had left without disturbing a single feature.

The hall’s roar doubled. The evaluator raised both hands and got as far as "Procedure requires—" before Dante stood up.

"You hadn’t claimed her."

"She was assigned to my wing," Nikolai said.

"Residency isn’t a claim."

"Then consider this one."

"I assessed her myself." Dante stepped to the platform’s edge. "She cleared Stage Three. If your array failed to read her properly, blame the array—not her."

"And she entered under my wing, broke a record that feeds my standing, and will remain where she was placed."

"Her record. Not yours."

Dante stepped down off the platform. Nikolai rose from his chair, and the officials nearest the space between the two heirs discovered reasons to be elsewhere.

The tiers loved it. Students were on their feet, chanting one name against the other, points flying hand to hand faster than the prefects could follow. A girl three rows up shouted that Raven should kneel and thank the Goddess, a Nascent had no business being fought over. Someone else was already saying she’d engineered it, look at her, she planned this, omegas always—

On the platform, Cassian hadn’t moved, but everything in him had narrowed onto the two heirs like a blade finding its line. Beside him, Rowan had stopped watching the argument. He was watching Raven, and the boredom had gone out of his face and left something colder and more awake behind it.

None of it mattered, because down on the floor, the words had started to blur.

Her claim. Her placement. Her points. Her value. Where she belongs. What she’s worth.

Raven stood beside the array with the two of them trading her back and forth above the noise, and neither one had looked at her since it started. She knew this. She had stood exactly here before, in a colder house, while people who owned the room discussed what to do with her over her head — where the omega would sleep, what work the omega could take, what the omega had cost them — and the room had waited for the decision the same way this hall was waiting, hungry, entertained, certain the girl in the middle had no part to speak.

Her breathing went hard. Her nails cut deeper into her palms, and her weight shifted forward off her heels.

Two tiers above, Thalia caught the way Raven shifted toward the platform.

Her face went pale.

She shook her head once.

Then again, harder.

No, she mouthed. Raven, don’t.

Her eyes darted toward the Cardinal heirs before returning to Raven. She mouthed something else—slower this time, as though Raven had somehow forgotten where she was.

Those are Cardinal heirs.

Raven held her gaze and lifted her chin.

Thalia stopped shaking her head. Her mouth fell open as she finally understood.

Raven wasn’t thinking about doing it.

She had already decided.

Thalia covered her face with both hands.

Oh gods.

Dante took another step toward Nikolai. Heat had begun to shimmer off him, bending the air along his shoulders, and light was rising through the fabric of his uniform in curved lines — sigils waking under the cloth, burning their shapes through the gray.

Raven stepped away from the array and pitched her voice over the entire screaming hall.

"Would both of you shut the fuck up?"

The words went through the ceremony like a thrown knife.

The chanting died. The wagers stopped mid-hand. Dante turned. Nikolai turned. Hundreds of students found somewhere to put their eyes, and every one of them chose her.

Raven looked from one Cardinal heir to the other and let the silence sit a moment, because they’d made her wait long enough.

"You’ve both said where you want me." Her voice stayed level, and it cost her, but it stayed level. "Has it occurred to either of you to ask where I want to go?"

For the first time since Raven had entered the hall, all four Cardinal heirs were staring at her.

Nobody said a word.