Chapter 47 — Come On, Fuckers

Chapter 47: Chapter 47 — Come On, Fuckers

~ Raven ~

Thwack.

The ball took her under the ribs from the side she wasn’t watching.

The air went out of her in one lump. Her stride broke, her foot came down wrong, and then the runes did the rest.

Dominance poured through her.

It went straight past her skin into her bones, carrying one command with it.

Stop.

Her shoulders bowed.

Lower your head.

Her spine bent before she could fight it.

Kneel.

Raven’s knee slammed into the court.

Pain shot up her leg, sharp enough to blur her vision for half a heartbeat.

The heat kept moving around her. Bodies rushed past on both sides, close enough that she felt the air break against her skin. Ten paces ahead, Brielle staggered beneath the aura with her teeth bared and kept going without looking back.

Along the wall, six wardens turned toward Raven at once.

She planted one hand flat against the stone while feeling like an absolute idiot.

Stupid. You ran out in front like a prize goose at a fair.

She pushed. The black rune pulsed through her, patient, and the court’s aura came down on top of it, and lifting her own head felt like lifting a roof beam.

She got one foot under her anyway.

A yellow ball slammed into her shoulder.

Fear hit a heartbeat later.

Her heart kicked hard against her ribs. Cold swept over her skin, her mouth went dry, and every nerve in her body screamed the same warning at once.

Something was behind her.

Close.

Coming.

Run.

The platform stopped mattering. The silver glow at the end of the court became nothing more than a distant light.

The boundary line was four steps away.

Four steps, and it would all stop.

Raven had already taken two before she realized where her feet were carrying her.

She stopped so hard her body pitched forward.

"No."

She forced herself around one shoulder at a time, fighting her own legs as they tried to turn her back toward the boundary.

A blue ball struck her hip with another painful thwack.

The court tipped sideways.

The floor dropped one way while the walls lurched the other. The platform slid across her vision, split into two, then four, every silver shape swimming over the next. The wardens along the walls multiplied until Raven could no longer tell which ones were real.

She picked the nearest platform and ran for it.

Straight into another contestant.

The impact knocked a grunt out of him, and both of them crashed onto their palms.

"Sorry—"

"Get off—"

The throwers kept firing.

That was the part that got through the fog. They weren’t throwing at anyone else. Balls came from three directions at once, all of them hers, and the rest of the heat was jogging up a beautifully empty court because every mask on the wall had decided Raven was the evening’s entertainment.

A boy she’d never met trotted past her with his arms tucked in.

"Thank you," he said.

"I will remember your face."

Two days. Two days at the finest academy on the continent, and she was on her hands and knees on a painted floor being used as target practice by grown men in masks while a stranger thanked her for the service.

Rage started somewhere under the fear, small and hot.

At the far end, Brielle hauled herself onto the silver and closed her fist around a marker.

Her howl came out full and clean and shook the lattice.

When it ended, Brielle stood on the platform breathing hard.

Then she turned.

Raven was still down in the middle of the court, one palm against the stone while glowing balls tore past and struck around her.

Brielle held her eyes with a frown looking uncertain.

Raven blinked hard until the court dragged itself back into one piece.

There.

The platform.

The real one.

Straight ahead.

A red ball slammed into her chest.

Rage hit immediately.

The fear was still there. The black ball’s command was still grinding through her bones. The court still rolled beneath her feet.

Now anger crashed over all of it.

Raven was terrified enough to run, furious enough to tear into somebody, and still fighting an order that wanted her flat on her knees—all at once, inside the same body.

Her lips peeled back from her teeth.

She turned toward the wall.

One of the throwers caught the look.

He did not flinch.

Instead, he reached for another red ball, raised it where Raven could see it clearly— and waited.

Come on, then. Come and hit me.

Touch a thrower and you’re out.

Raven took one step toward him.

Then she stopped.

Her heel had already lifted.

For one terrible second, Raven could still feel the urge pulling at her—turn, cross the line, make it stop.

She forced herself to let it go.

That was what finally brought water to her eyes.

A ball slammed into her thigh.

Another struck across her back.

Black.

The command hit before she could brace.

Down.

Raven went flat against the court.

The bruising was almost familiar. She had taken worse in the Blackthorn kitchens.

The runes were not.

Fear dragged her toward the boundary. Rage wanted her on her feet and at someone’s throat. The black command kept pressing her into the stone while the blue effect still rolled the court beneath her.

Four different instincts tearing at her at once.

Behind her, a howl rose.

Then another.

Raven’s jaw tightened.

Students were reaching the platform now.

Students who had started behind her.

She dragged her arms underneath herself and tried to push up.

They shook once then folded underneath her.

Her eyes were burning now, hot and streaming, and something rose in her throat that was very close to a sob — not fear, not even pain, just too much of everything crammed into one girl at once.

Raven swallowed it.

It came back up as a growl.

Kneel, said the rune.

Kneel, said Celeste, in a kitchen, with wet manuscript pages in her fist.

Kneel, said the Blackthorn hall, four hundred faces waiting to watch her lie down.

Kneel, said Kieran’s aura in a cafeteria full of people who had never once seen anyone refuse it.

And now this. A wall of men and women in wolf masks throwing everything they had at one first-year, and the only reason for it, the only reason, was that she had walked five steps without bowing.

Raven put one shaky palm on the stone.

No.

Around the court, the silver boundary lines began to dim.

Time was running out.

Raven lifted her head.

"COME ON, THEN, YOU FUCKERS!"

Every thrower along the wall drew an arm back.

Raven ran.

There was nothing graceful about it. Fear clawed at her stomach. The black rune kept trying to fold her spine. The platform swayed in and out of focus ahead of her, and she ran at it anyway.

A yellow ball struck her arm.

Her feet turned toward the boundary before she could stop them. Raven lurched sideways, saw the silver line rushing toward her and threw herself back the other way.

A red ball smashed into her shoulder.

Rage flooded through her so fast she went dizzy.

She used it.

Her legs drove harder.

A black ball hit between her shoulder blades.

Raven stumbled, nearly went face-first into the court, caught herself and kept moving.

"Ten," the leader called. "Nine."

The platform was right there.

The remaining throwers released together.

A ball slammed into the back of Raven’s leg.

Her knee gave out.

She crashed chest-first into the edge of the platform, both palms skidding across the silver surface hard enough to tear the skin from the heels of her hands.

"Six. Five."

Raven hooked her fingers over the edge and pulled.

Nothing in her arms wanted to work anymore.

She pulled anyway.

Elbows over first.

Then her ribs.

Then one knee.

Her bloody hands slipped across the silver as she reached for the row of markers.

"Three. Two—"

Her fingers closed around one.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then every rune let go.

The fear vanished.

The rage broke loose.

The pressure forcing her down disappeared so suddenly Raven nearly collapsed from the absence of it.

Everything they had driven into her all night seemed to rush back through her at once, gathering beneath her ribs with nowhere to go.

Raven pushed herself upright.

Her legs shook beneath her. Tears blurred her vision. Every breath stabbed through her side.

But she was standing on the platform.

She had made it.

Then something shifted inside her chest.

Deeper than the pain.

Deeper than the runes.

Raven froze.

It rose slowly at first, a vibration beneath her ribs that climbed into her throat.

She tried to swallow.

Couldn’t.

The sound pushed higher, through her chest, into her jaw, until her teeth began to hum with it.

Raven’s chin lifted.

Her head tipped back.

And the howl tore out of her.

It ripped through the Grand Drill Court, loud enough to swallow everything else.