Chapter 38 — Kneel

Chapter 38: Chapter 38 — Kneel

~ Raven ~

"No."

The weight grew.

It started as a hand pressing on the back of her neck, then it was two, then it was a yoke laid across her shoulders, and everything in it was aimed at her alone. The tables nearby barely trembled. Her spine took the load instead.

Raven set her heels against the floor as though she could root there.

Cutlery began to rattle somewhere to her left. A cup walked itself to the edge of a table and stopped. Across the aisle, a first-year with no part in any of this slid off the end of his bench and backed away, and still the worst of it stayed on her, narrow and deliberate as a thumb pressing down on an insect that hadn’t died yet.

He wasn’t trying to crush her.

She understood that through the pressure, and hated him more for it. Crushing her would take a second and be over. He wanted the struggle — wanted the academy to watch her fight and lose by degrees, wanted her to learn in front of two hundred witnesses that a uniform and a crest and a Court Seat changed nothing about what she was to House Blackthorn.

You could have done this in the kitchen any day for eighteen years, she thought, teeth locked. You never needed to. I knelt on schedule.

Her spine bent. She dragged it straight.

The pressure climbed.

Beside Kieran, Alaric added nothing. He stood with his hands loose and that same rim of burning color threaded through his eyes, watching — and his stillness pinned the room better than any aura.

Brielle strained against nothing and went nowhere. Tessa didn’t move. Thalia had both hands pressed flat on a tabletop as if holding it down. He was keeping the whole cafeteria shut so his brother could work, and somehow that was worse than if he’d joined in.

Look at him. He’ll stand there and let it happen and tell himself his hands are clean.

Her knees shook. She locked them. The lock held for three breaths, then her left leg began to fold, muscle giving way a fraction at a time no matter what she ordered it to do. Sweat ran cold down her back. The edges of the room had started to swim.

"Kneel," Kieran said again.

I can’t beat this.

The thought arrived cold and clear through the roar in her ears. His aura was a mountain, she was one person standing under it, and no amount of will was going to un-make that arithmetic. Her body would reach the floor. That part was already decided.

But kneeling wasn’t the same as falling. Kneeling was giving him the thing he’d walked in here to collect — her, submitting, in public, on command.

Those were different things. He could have one. He would never have the other.

Raven hauled her head up. Her leg was going, her vision greyed at the edges, and she filled her lungs anyway and made sure the last row of tables could hear every word.

"Fuck you, Kieran. Fuck Alaric. And fuck Blackthorn. I’d reject both of you again before I ever fucking knelt."

The cafeteria made a sound like the whole room inhaling at once.

Somewhere a plate shattered. Nobody looked at it.

Kieran’s eyes ignited — the blue-white rim swallowing the amber whole — and the pressure surged and a faint shimmer of blue distortion shrouded him.

Raven’s knee dropped, air rushing past her ears, the floor coming up to meet it—

The weight stopped.

Not eased. Stopped — caught mid-fall, like a fist closing around a hammer on its way down.

A new presence rolled through the cafeteria, and it was to Kieran’s aura what a furnace is to a candle. It didn’t touch Raven at all. It wrapped around Kieran’s pressure and held it, and every conversation, every breath, every trembling fork in the room went dead at once.

Kieran strained. She felt his aura fighting to keep its grip on her — and felt it peeling away anyway, dragged off her shoulders strip by strip while sweat broke along his hairline.

A low laugh moved through the silence.

"As expected of you."

Dante Prymont came through the crowd, and the crowd came apart in front of him.

His hands were in his pockets. His collar hung open, his hair was a mess, and his amber-gold eyes went over the scene at their own unhurried pace — Raven with one knee an inch off the floor and her legs shaking, Kieran standing over her, Alaric planted between her and her housemates. The grin stayed on Dante’s mouth the whole time.

It never got anywhere near his eyes.

"Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?" he asked. "Two members of the Vanguard cornering a Nascent first-year and ordering her to kneel? In the cafeteria?"

"This is a Blackthorn matter," Kieran said.

"She’s our mate," Alaric said. "It doesn’t concern you."

"Funny. She just told half the academy she rejected you both, so which is it?" Dante’s voice stayed light. The heat coming off him didn’t. "Release her."

Kieran held on. One more second, jaw set, aura clamped around Raven out of nothing but spite—

Dante’s eyes brightened.

Kieran’s aura tore away from her completely, ripped off like a sheet in a storm, and the sudden absence of weight nearly pitched Raven onto her face.

She caught herself on her own legs. Thalia’s hand hovered at her elbow and Raven straightened past it, breathing hard, upright by herself.

The twins’ auras still churned around them — she could see it in their eyes, in the way students five tables back leaned away without knowing they were doing it — but neither of them turned it on Dante.

Kieran was visibly shaking with the effort of not doing it. Alaric’s wolf sat right behind his stare, close as a held breath. Both of them understood exactly what challenging him openly would cost, and both of them, for now, paid the smaller price.

Dante turned his back on them like they were furniture and looked at Raven.

"Raven. Follow me."

"She—"

Kieran’s voice cracked out of him and then caught, because even now some part of him was counting the risk.

Raven watched Kieran reach the same conclusion she had beneath his aura. He knew he could not overpower Dante.

His pride refused to let that matter.

His hands closed at his sides. "She isn’t going anywhere with you."

He glanced at his twin. Just once.

Alaric stepped up beside him. "We’re Vanguard, Dante. We wear Rowan’s crest." His voice remained level. "Force two members of his House aside in front of the academy, and he won’t overlook it."

There it was. They were counting on Rowan’s name to make Dante reconsider.

Alaric moved shoulder to shoulder with Kieran. "Raven stays with us."

Only then did their auras rise.

They did not turn their power on Dante. Even now, they were not that reckless.

Instead, they stepped shoulder to shoulder into his path. Their pressures rose together, meeting between them and spreading into a single wall. A faint blue distortion shimmered through the air where they overlapped.

Chairs scraped back. The nearest tables emptied as students hurried out of the way.

Dante’s amusement vanished.

"Vanguard?" His gaze moved between the twins. "You think that means shit to me?"

The faint blue distortion between them trembled, but neither brother stepped aside.

"And Rowan?" Dante continued. "Tell him what happened. If he objects, he knows where to find me."

Gold flickered beneath his skin.

At first, Raven thought it was fire. The shimmer ran across his shoulders and down both arms, brightening until his entire body seemed outlined in molten gold. Heat rolled from him, and the air began twisting upward in tongues that looked like flame without ever becoming it.

Celeste backed into the table behind her.

The twins held their ground.

Dante’s aura exploded.

The cafeteria shook beneath the force of it. The twins’ joined pressure buckled, the blue shimmer bending inward before it shattered. Kieran and Alaric were ripped from their feet and hurled in opposite directions.

Kieran crashed through the edge of a table. Wood split beneath his back, sending plates and cups across the floor. Alaric struck a row of chairs hard enough to overturn all three before skidding to a stop.

Students screamed and scattered.

Raven threw an arm across her face.

The gold distortion divided before reaching her. It tore past on both sides, snapping tablecloths and sending loose pages spinning through the cafeteria, but the air against her skin remained cool.

Dante was already moving.

Kieran dragged himself out of the broken table and surged forward with blood running from the corner of his mouth. He swung for Dante’s face.

Dante slipped inside the punch.

The gold shimmer gathered around his fist an instant before he drove it beneath Kieran’s ribs. Heat burst through the impact. Kieran’s uniform blackened where the knuckles struck, and every breath left him in a broken grunt.

Dante caught the back of his neck and drove his knee into Kieran’s face.

Blood sprayed across the floor.

Celeste screamed her brother’s name.

Alaric attacked from Dante’s blind side, claws cutting toward his throat. Dante turned at the last moment, seized his wrist and twisted until the joint gave with a sickening crack.

Alaric snarled through the pain and struck with his free hand.

Dante took the blow across the cheek.

His head moved barely an inch.

Then he smiled.

He drove his forehead into Alaric’s nose. Once. Twice. The second strike dropped Alaric to one knee with blood pouring over his mouth.

Dante did not let him fall.

He hauled Alaric upright by the front of his uniform and punched him across the jaw. Gold flashed at the point of impact. Alaric spun away and hit the floor beside his twin.

Kieran tried to rise.

Dante kicked his supporting arm out from beneath him, caught him by the hair and smashed his face into the floor.

The crack silenced the cafeteria.

Alaric pushed onto one knee. Dante turned and drove his heel into his chest, throwing him backwards through the remains of a chair.

Then it was over.

Kieran lay facedown among broken plates, blood running from his nose and mouth. Alaric had collapsed several feet away, one arm wrapped around his ribs as he fought for breath.

The gold shimmer still crawled over Dante’s arms, rising from his shoulders in soundless, flame-shaped waves.

Nobody moved.

Celeste stood pressed against the table, one hand clamped over her mouth. Her eyes moved between her brothers as though she could not decide which one to reach first.

Dante looked at Raven.

His face had returned to something almost normal. No smile. No snarl. Nothing to match the blood covering his knuckles.

But the madness was still there, dancing in his gold-bright eyes.

It should have frightened her.

Instead, a thrill tore through Raven’s veins.

Something stirred beneath her skin. Her wolf surged toward the surface so suddenly that Raven’s breath caught. It pressed forward, restless and eager, drawn to the violence still clinging to him—

A chair scraped sharply across the floor.

Celeste had started toward her brothers, but stopped when Dante turned toward the doors. He walked straight at her.

She scrambled aside without uttering a word. Her face had lost all colour, and one trembling hand reached behind her for the table.

As Dante passed, the gold shimmer around his shoulder flared.

Celeste staggered backwards. Her hip struck the table, overturning a tray. A bowl tipped into her chest, spilling sauce down the front of her immaculate uniform before crashing to the floor.

A few startled laughs broke through the silence.

Dante never looked at her.

He reached the doors with his hands clenched at his sides, then spoke without turning around.

"Raven."

He walked out.