Chapter 48 — Masks Off

Chapter 48: Chapter 48 — Masks Off

~ Raven ~

The howl kept coming until Raven ran out of breath.

The last note cracked as it left her, but it carried far enough to hit the walls of the Grand Drill Court and come back to her.

Once.

Then again, quieter.

Then it faded completely.

The court went silent.

A hundred first-years and not one of them made a sound.

Raven swayed on the silver with the marker crushed in both palms. Blood had run down into her wrists from where the platform edge had opened her hands.

Her ribs hurt when she breathed in and hurt differently when she breathed out. Her leg had decided it belonged to somebody else.

Underneath all of it, something felt awake.

The presence she had spent her whole life not quite touching sat closer to the surface than it ever had. Not loud. Just there — restless, pushing against the inside of her skin like a body turning over in sleep.

Warmth moved out through her arms and legs.

Her breathing steadied on its own. The court got clearer at the edges, and the whispering starting up behind her got sharper, and for a handful of seconds Raven stood there with her hands full of her own blood and felt like she could run the whole thing again.

The feeling passed. Her leg started buckling again.

Then the supposed leader of the masked figures reached up and took off his mask.

He was maybe twenty. Sandy hair flattened by the leather, a bored, pleasant face, the sort of boy you’d walk past in a corridor twice a day and never once look at.

All along the walls, the others followed.

Masks came off in ones and twos and then all at once, and the men and women who had dragged a hundred children out of their beds turned out to be upper-years like she suspected. Prefects. Wing seconds. Faces Raven had seen carrying books across the yard that afternoon.

Almost none of them looked at the winners coming off the court.

They were staring at her.

Raven stood in the middle of it and understood exactly what she was being admired for. They had thrown everything in the racks at one girl, watched her crawl the last stretch on her elbows, and now they were impressed.

Her jaw tightened until her teeth ached.

You did this to me. Don’t stand there enjoying the result.

She went along the wall face by face anyway, because she was looking for someone. Second rack. Third. A tall girl. A boy with a broken nose? Another—

The mask came off.

Nikolai.

Of course.

He smiled at her, wide and delighted, both dimples showing like he had just watched something go exactly the way he wanted.

Raven stared at him.

So there he was.

Nikolai’s grin widened.

Raven held his eyes for a long second.

"Don’t fucking smile at me," she muttered, low, to nobody.

Half the academy was watching. You did not insult a Cardinal Heir out loud in front of half the academy.

Across the court, Nikolai’s smile got wider.

Raven decided she hated Alpha hearing.

"Raven—" Thalia came up onto the platform and grabbed her arm.

Raven hissed through her teeth.

"Sorry! Sorry." Thalia let go and put both hands up. "Are you hurt?"

Raven looked down at herself. Her nightdress had gone grey with dust and stuck to her ribs where the blood had. There was a boot-shaped bruise coming up on her thigh that hadn’t come from a boot.

"No. I always look like this."

"Right." Thalia’s mouth twitched. "Stupid question."

Tessa limped up beside them with her own marker in her fist and her split knee still weeping.

"They were trying to make you hit them," she said.

"I noticed."

"Cowards." Tessa spat it. "Fucking masked cowards."

Raven glanced sideways at her.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Then stop looking at me like that."

Brielle came last, and Brielle was smiling.

It stopped Raven mid-breath. She had never seen it before — not once, not through two days of shielding and needling and unbothered remarks — and it changed the whole shape of the girl’s face.

Brielle turned and looked at the racks.

They were empty. Every one of them, all down the wall, wiped clean.

"They used everything they had on you." Brielle’s smile stayed put. "Gave the rest of us a clear run."

Raven’s irritation spiked.

Her hands closed around the marker until the silver bit into the cuts.

"You think that’s funny?"

The smile went off Brielle’s face.

"I think we passed."

"I didn’t volunteer to be your shield."

"I know." Brielle’s chin came up then she shrugged. "I didn’t ask them to hit you, either."

"Then stop smiling."

Thalia put herself between them with both hands out, which was brave, considering.

"Can we — can we please wait until morning before we start on each other?"

Tessa’s knee chose that moment to buckle. She caught herself on Thalia’s shoulder and stayed there, hanging.

"Morning’s in about three...four hours."

That took the top off Raven’s anger. Not because it helped. Because she was too tired to hold it up, and because Brielle, standing there with her chin in the air, was swaying almost as badly as she was.

The murmuring around the court had picked up.

Not all of it sounded bad.

A girl who had crossed the last twenty paces without much trouble caught Raven looking and mouthed something that looked suspiciously like thank you.

On the other side, one of the boys who had failed gave Raven a quick nod before looking away.

Then she heard the other whispers.

Nascent.

Twice.

Both times from students standing with the failures.

Raven looked over.

There were twenty or thirty of them gathered off the court now, each with a glowing red paw print planted squarely on their forehead.

One noble girl kept dragging her hair down over hers, checking whether it was hidden, then pulling more hair across when it wasn’t.

The mark shone straight through it every single time.

Raven almost smiled.

"First Howl complete," the sandy-haired leader called, in the tone of a man closing a shop. "Wing groups. Move."

The court began sorting itself.

Nikolai came through it with four slim black slates held in one hand.

Thalia recognised them before Raven did.

"Linkslates."

He handed them out one by one. Thalia’s first, then Tessa’s, then Raven’s.

Raven took hers and stared at it.

She had no idea how to activate the damn thing.

"These existed before tonight?"

"They were issued this afternoon actually," Nikolai said.

"Then why didn’t we get them?"

"I kept them."

Raven looked up at him.

"Of course you did."

Nikolai smiled.

"No first-year in my Wing gets a slate before their First Howl. Give you one early and what happens? You start searching. Old recordings, advice from older students, cousins sending you every trick they remember."

He shrugged. "By the time you reach the court, you already know what’s coming."

"And that would be terrible?"

"It would make tonight pointless." His smile widened. "You’re supposed to be surprised."

"So you lied about the date," Raven said, "and withheld the one thing that would have exposed the lie."

"That sums it up."

You’re an absolute asshole.

She kept it behind her teeth this time.

Nikolai turned and put the last slate into Brielle’s hands.

"But now you’ve howled."

Raven watched him walk away and wanted, very much, to throw the marker at the back of his head.

The problem was the warmth. It was still there, low and steady under her ribs, closer than it had been in eighteen years — and she could not stand there with that under her skin and call the whole night pointless.

Which was, she suspected, the entire point.

Fine. But I’m still hitting you eventually.

They were walked back through the residence in a long, quiet column. Nobody had much to say. Thalia was most of the way asleep on her feet and had to be steered twice. Tessa kept stopping to rub her thigh and swearing at it, personally, as though the leg had made choices.

An upper-year leaned out of a doorway on their floor and said, "Welcome b—"

"Don’t," said Brielle.

He didn’t.

Their door was still open the way the masks had left it. The water jug lay in pieces. Someone’s boot was in the middle of the floor.

All four slates woke at once.

Raven pressed her thumb against hers.

Light spread beneath the glass.

Up close, the thing looked more like a small hand mirror than anything she would have called a slate.

A thin sheet of dark reflective glass sat inside a silver frame, smooth enough that Raven could see the tired shape of her own face in it. Tiny runes had been carved all around the edge, so fine she had barely noticed them until they began lighting one after another beneath her fingers.

Her reflection disappeared.

Words and symbols filled the glass in its place.

Raven stared at them.

RAVEN RIVERSNIKOLAI WINGCARDINAL COURT — TWENTIETH SEATFIRST HOWL — COMPLETE

Her class schedule unrolled underneath it.

Then, along the bottom of every screen in the room, a line of numbers began to move.

FIRST BELL: 3 HOURS

The four of them stood there and looked at it.

Tessa dropped face-first onto her bed.

"I’m not going."