Chapter 41 — Everyone Gets It

Chapter 41: Chapter 41 — Everyone Gets It

~ Raven ~

Nikolai didn’t move from the doorway.

His stare stayed on Dante’s hand — on the fingers still wrapped around Raven’s wrist — and the pleasant expression that lived on his face at all hours simply wasn’t there. Raven had never seen him without it. She found she preferred the smile.

Dante didn’t let go. Gold still burned in his eyes as he stared at Nikolai. A sudden chill raised the hairs along Raven’s arms. The study had been warm a moment ago.

"The Headmaster is waiting for you," Nikolai said. "Something about a cafeteria that no longer has furniture. She was very specific that it be now."

"My conversation with Raven isn’t finished."

"It stopped being a conversation when she asked you to let her go." Nikolai’s voice stayed level, almost gentle. "That was some time ago, I understand."

Raven blinked.

How the hell did he know she had—

Nikolai held her gaze.

Oh.

He didn’t know.

He was giving her the chance to say it now.

Raven turned to Dante. "He’s right. I did tell you to let me go."

Both men looked at her.

"What? It wasn’t a complicated request."

Before either could resume speaking over her, Raven twisted her wrist free. Dante’s fingers tightened a fraction too late, closing on air.

"I’m exhausted," she said. "I was nearly forced to kneel in front of the whole academy, I watched a cafeteria get destroyed, and I’ve been dragged across the building and interrogated. I am not standing here while two Cardinal wolves discuss me like I belong to one of you."

She stepped around Dante and toward the door. Nikolai, at least, knew where her room was.

"We’re not finished," Dante said behind her.

"Men like you rarely know when to stop."

She walked out before he could answer.

The corridor felt cold after that room. Nikolai fell into step beside her without comment, hands loose at his sides, and by the time they reached the main stair his usual expression had reassembled itself, piece by pleasant piece.

Students moved aside for them the whole way. That part wasn’t new — everyone moved for a Cardinal heir. What was new was the staring. Slates came up as they passed, held at that angle people use when they think they’re being subtle. Whispers followed them down the stairwell like a second set of footsteps.

"...that’s her. Dante fought the Blackthorn twins over her—"

"—broke Kieran’s face on the floor, I saw it—"

"—and now Nikolai’s walking her back? Personally?"

Raven frowned at the slates being subtly angled toward her. Each time she caught someone staring, they hurriedly looked away without lowering them.

She glanced at Nikolai. "What are those—"

"Tell me something," Nikolai said. "Do you intend to insult every Cardinal heir before completing your first week? I only ask because there are four of us, and you’re ahead of schedule."

Raven blinked. "Perhaps Valerius should raise better Cardinal wolves."

A smile broke across his face.

A real one. It reached his eyes and lit them, and for a second he looked entirely different — younger, unguarded, briefly delighted — and before Raven could process any of that, he reached over and ruffled her hair.

She stopped walking.

Full stop. Middle of the corridor.

"What the hell was that?"

"You said we were badly raised."

"That was not permission to prove me right!"

She dragged her fingers through the mess, furiously reordering it, and his smirk only widened as he strolled on ahead, leaving her to follow while glaring a hole into the back of his skull.

Around them, half a dozen students had frozen mid-step. Raven didn’t need to hear their thoughts. She could read every single one straight off their faces.

Dante fought the twins for her at lunch. Nikolai touched her hair before dinner.

By breakfast she’d be secretly mated to all four cardinal heirs and possibly the Headmaster.

Wonderful. Add it to the pile.

Nikolai’s Wing opened off the west colonnade, and he brought her in through the main hall.

It was nothing like she’d imagined a noble House looking. Four male students were playing cards around a low table, and judging by the shouting, at least one of them was cheating. Two more came in from the training courts with wrapped knuckles, arguing about footwork. Lamps everywhere, mismatched chairs, somebody’s boots on a windowsill.

And on the long couch by the far wall, an older student lay asleep on his back, dead to the world, while three of his friends crouched over him arguing in fierce whispers.

One held a pot of ink. One held a slate, angled to record. The third was carefully, delicately, unscrewing the lid from a jar of honey while a fourth stood by with — Raven looked twice — a razor and a spoon.

She worked out the plan in stages. The horror arrived on the same schedule.

The eyebrow. They’re going to take his eyebrow, ink the gap, honey the — no. No, I don’t want to know what the spoon is for.

The card game faltered first. Then the whisperers. One by one, conversations died as the hall noticed her standing beside Nikolai.

"That’s her," one of the card players said. Openly. To the entire room. "The one Dante fought the Blackthorn twins over. In the cafeteria. Today."

"That’s also the first-year who picked Nikolai in front of the whole academy," said the one across from him — and this one was smirking at her, genuinely pleased, like she’d personally won him a bet. "Best classification I’ve ever attended. You cost Rowan’s Wing a fortune in points, by the way. Feel proud."

"She can hear every word you’re saying," Nikolai said mildly.

"Good," said the card player. "Saves repeating it. Welcome to the Wing, Twentieth Seat."

No embarrassment anywhere in the room. Just grins and open, amused curiosity, a dozen faces sizing her up like a new and interesting problem. After Blackthorn’s silences and Rowan’s cold ranks at the ceremony, it was so different that Raven didn’t know where to put it.

Near the couch, the older student with the honey jar leaned toward his friend and whispered — the kind of whisper that carries across a room.

"Forget the eyebrow, I can’t wait for the First Howl. It’s the following n—"

His friend kicked him in the shin.

"Ow—"

"Why don’t you yell it louder?" the friend hissed, at easily twice the volume of the original whisper. "Go on. Warn every first-year in the building while you’re at it. Stand on the table."

Two of the older students facepalmed in unison. A third looked at the ceiling like it might rescue him.

Raven looked at Nikolai. "What’s the First Howl?"

"A welcome."

She looked back at the older students, who were now conducting a furious four-way argument in whispers about which of them was the stupidest, with strong cases being made on all sides.

"That did not sound welcoming."

Nikolai smiled and kept walking. "You’ll understand in a week."

That’s what people say about things you don’t recover from.

As they crossed toward the far archway, she passed one more small scene: an older male student sitting with his head bowed, rubbing slow circles into his temple, while the boy beside him pressed a small vial into his hand.

"Again?" the younger one said.

"It’s just the Wing headache." The senior tipped the tonic back and grimaced. "You stop noticing it eventually."

Raven caught it and let it go. Her own head had started aching somewhere back in the study room — a dull, deep pulse behind her eyes — and after today, a headache didn’t even rank among her problems. Every wolf in this building probably needed a tonic after living with the eyebrow people.

Nikolai stopped at an archway carved with the Wing’s crest. Beyond it, a stairwell curved up and away.

"Female residence," he said. "This is where I leave you."

Except leaving her wasn’t going to be simple, because Raven could already see her corridor from the base of the stairs — and her dorm door was open, and there was a crowd outside it.

Fifteen girls, maybe more, packed along the walls.

They saw Nikolai and transformed. Backs straightened. Voices vanished. Fifteen students became a portrait of perfectly behaved young ladies with no particular reason for being there.

"Raven has had a brutal day," Nikolai told them. "She should be allowed to rest."

"Of course, my lord."

"Absolutely."

"We were just leaving."

He gave the corridor one last pleasant look and went. His footsteps faded down the stair.

One second. Two.

The corridor detonated.

"Is it true Dante broke Kieran Blackthorn’s nose on the floor—"

"Why did he take you away alone? What did he want—"

"Are you actually mated to both twins? Both of them? At once—"

"What happened at your examination? Kaya said the sigils turned white—"

"Why did Nikolai walk you back? He doesn’t walk anyone—"

Raven put her head down and forced a path through them, one shoulder first, the way she’d once moved through packed kitchens with hot trays. She reached her door.

There were more of them inside.

Six girls she’d never spoken to sat on the beds and the floor like invited guests.

Brielle stood in the middle of the room with her arms crossed and an expression suggesting she was about ninety seconds from resolving the situation through violence. Thalia hovered near the window, trying valiantly to be a good host and drowning. Tessa sat on her own bed, eyes exhausted, two fingers pressed against her temple.

The questions from the corridor followed Raven in and merged with new ones from inside, overlapping, rising, hammering—

The noise drove the ache deeper behind her eyes.

"Enough."

The room stopped.

"Today has been shit." Raven kept her voice low, which somehow worked better than shouting. "I’m tired, I’m hungry, and every one of you sounds like someone hammering inside my skull. If you don’t sleep in this room — get out. If you do — sit down and stop shouting."

Silence.

Then movement. The visitors peeled themselves off the beds, murmuring things that were nearly apologies, and filed past her out the door. Most of them managed one last long look on the way — the look people give something they intend to keep watching.

The most interesting first-year in the academy, Raven thought sourly. There’s a prize nobody fights for twice.

Brielle shut the door behind the last one, turned the lock, and leaned her back against it like a barricade.

"Finally," she muttered.

Quiet settled over the room, thick and merciful.

Raven sank onto her bed. The ache behind her eyes rolled forward the moment she stopped moving, deep and rhythmic, a slow drum, and she pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead.

Across the room, Tessa watched her do it. A tired, sympathetic smile crossed her face.

"You have it too?"

Raven looked up. "Have what?"

Tessa rubbed her temple, two slow circles.

"The Wing headache. Everyone gets it... so I heard."