Chapter 35 — What She Really Is

Chapter 35: Chapter 35 — What She Really Is

~ Raven ~

"You have got to be fucking kidding me."

Of all the faces Raven had carried out of Blackthorn — the Alpha’s, Lady Blackthorn’s, the twins’ — Celeste’s hadn’t crossed her mind once in seven days. Not on the forest floor. Not at Melissa’s table. Not standing in front of the classification array with two heirs fighting over her.

And now the girl was crossing the cafeteria toward her, slow and deliberate, in a Valerius uniform.

She’s here. She’s a student here. Which means—

The thought finished itself with a cold drop through Raven’s stomach. She’d spent a week not thinking about the twins either. Not what she’d do if she saw them. Not what they’d do. She’d shelved it with the manuscript and the publisher and every other later-problem, and the later had just stood up from Rowan’s section wearing Celeste’s face.

Around them, the cafeteria started dying by tables.

The nearest ones first — forks down, heads turning — then outward in a spreading ring, because everyone in this academy already knew two things: that girl was Celeste Blackthorn, arrived last night into the Cardinal Court, and this girl was Raven Rivers, who’d taken the Twentieth Seat off somebody an hour ago.

The whole room did the math at once.

Celeste stopped two paces away. Her eyes made the full journey — Raven’s uniform, collar to hem, the roommates flanking her, then the token in Raven’s hand and the crest cut into its face — and something in her jaw set tighter with every stop.

"You really are here."

"You can see that."

"How." It didn’t come out as a question. It came out like an accusation of fraud against reality itself. "Seven days ago you were running through our forest. Now you’re — this." Her gaze flicked to the token again. "Explain to me how a—"

"You two know each other?" Thalia’s head was going back and forth between them like a match she’d wandered into.

Celeste answered first. Of course she did.

"Know her?" Her voice lifted, pitched to carry, and it carried. "She belonged to my family."

"I worked for your family."

"My family took her in when she had nothing." Celeste turned toward Thalia, Tessa, and Brielle as though correcting a clerical error before it spread. "We fed her. Housed her. Tolerated every problem she caused, and there were years of them."

"I worked for every meal," Raven said. "And every corner I was allowed to sleep in."

"You scrubbed our dishes, Raven." Celeste spoke to her exactly as she had at Blackthorn, as though Raven were still standing over the kitchen sink with her sleeves rolled up. "Don’t put on that uniform and pretend you were ever our equal."

Raven’s shoulders tightened before she could stop them.

For one day, nobody at Valerius had known. They had looked at her and seen the girl who broke the classification array, the Nascent whose name had appeared on the Court board.

Now the whispers began.

"She was a servant?"

"At Blackthorn?"

"She worked in their kitchens."

The words passed from the nearest tables to the rest of the cafeteria. Slates appeared in students’ hands. Rowan’s section leaned forward first. Celeste wore their crest, and every humiliation she dealt Raven now felt like a victory for their Wing.

Thalia stared at her. Tessa’s frown deepened. Brielle looked from Celeste to Rowan’s tables, then down at Nikolai’s crest on Raven’s token.

Raven’s shoulders drew in before she could stop them. Her hands almost folded at her waist, and her eyes dropped to the floor. It was how she had learned to stand at Blackthorn whenever someone reminded her of her place.

For one breath, she could not look at any of them. She did not want to see whether Celeste’s words had already changed the way they saw her.

Celeste noticed Raven looking down, and something in her expression eased.

Then she turned toward Raven’s roommates as though she were warning them for their own good.

"You’ve known her, what — a day? Give it time. Everyone eventually learns what Raven Rivers really is."

There it was again. A Blackthorn speaking. Raven silent. Everyone else waiting to be told what she was.

Her hands had already folded at her waist. Her eyes had already dropped. Celeste had called her a servant, and for one breath, Raven had begun standing the way Blackthorn expected her to.

No.

The last time Blackthorn filled a hall and expected her to stand quietly while they humiliated her, Raven had spoken first.

She would do it again.

Raven let her hands fall to her sides, raised her head and stepped forward.

"Do you want me to tell them?"

Celeste’s attention snapped back like a struck wire.

"Do you want everyone here to know what happened at your brothers’ ceremony?" Raven held her eyes. "What really happened?"

And there — quick, involuntary, gone in half a second — Celeste’s mouth tightened and her gaze cut sideways toward Rowan’s tables before she could stop it.

Half a second was enough. The nearest students caught it. The whispers thinned to almost nothing, the whole cafeteria leaning in on a held breath.

Celeste lowered her voice. "If you dare."

Raven stepped closer instead of back.

"I dare." A beat. "Do you?"

"An academy uniform doesn’t put you beyond Blackthorn’s reach." Celeste’s voice stayed low and even, and that was the dangerous version of her, the one who’d learned at her father’s table. "If you disgrace my family again, we won’t take it lying down."

Raven said nothing, and Celeste mistook the pause for fear the way she’d mistaken everything else, and advanced into it.

"If you say one more word about that night, my family will make you regret—"

"You watched me put a knife to your throat and walk out through your gates." Raven’s mouth curved. "You still think daring me is the move?"

"Did she say knife?" someone whispered behind Raven.

Chairs scraped as students turned fully toward them. One girl covered her mouth, but not quickly enough to hide her grin. Across the aisle, a boy nudged his friend and mouthed the word again. More slates rose. Nobody looked frightened now. They leaned closer, eager for Raven to continue.

Celeste looked from one delighted face to another. Her jaw tightened. The calm smile she had crossed the cafeteria wearing disappeared, and when she faced Raven again, her upper lip had curled.

Raven let her eyes drift, slow and unhurried, to the Cardinal Court board on the far wall.

"Today must be difficult for you."

A laugh escaped from a table near the back. It was smothered quickly, but not before several students followed Raven’s glance toward the Cardinal Court board and understood.

Celeste noticed. Her mouth tightened even more, but she refused to look at the board. Instead, she opened one hand toward the watching cafeteria, inviting Raven to embarrass herself.

"Go ahead," she said. "Tell them whatever version makes you feel less pathetic."

Raven almost smiled.

"You still think you decide which version they hear."

"There’s only one version." Celeste’s voice remained steady. "My family gave you everything, and you repaid us by turning my brothers’ celebration into a spectacle."

"Celebration?" Raven repeated.

Then she turned away from Celeste and faced the cafeteria.

"Alaric and Kieran Blackthorn were my mates," she said. "Both of them."