Chapter 52 — First Seat

Chapter 52: Chapter 52 — First Seat

~ Raven ~

Raven walked and thought about it.

She wasn’t about to argue for a race she’d never laid eyes on. She didn’t feel anything warm toward them either. What sat wrong was how comfortable all three of them were, how fast and how easily, about people none of them had met.

She’d been Nascent for one afternoon and she already knew what a word could do when it arrived before you did.

"Have any of you actually talked to one?"

None of them answered.

"Anyway," Thalia said, recovering, "this year’s going to be enormous. All four Cardinal Vampire Heirs are coming."

"Four?"

"All four." Thalia’s eyes were bright. "It’s a Renewal year. The Concord gets reaffirmed alongside the Trials, so every Cardinal House has to send its heir. Ours and theirs."

"Reaffirmed against what?"

"Us killing each other again," Tessa said. "Obvious answer."

Thalia dropped her voice, enjoying herself. "Technically the old stories say the Alpha Queen used to keep the peace herself. No treaty. Just her."

Raven’s step faltered.

She had heard those two words before — moving through a banquet hall in a whisper, four hundred people looking at a kitchen girl who had just claimed two Alpha mates.

"Used to?"

"She disappeared. Centuries ago." Thalia shrugged. "Wolves say the vampires had something to do with it. Vampires apparently tell it the other way round."

"Nobody alive knows what happened," Brielle said.

"Which has never stopped anyone blaming somebody," Tessa said.

Four Cardinal Vampire Heirs.

Something turned over under Raven’s ribs.

It was there and then it wasn’t — one slow shift, like a sleeper changing position, gone before she could put her attention on it.

She missed half a step.

First Howl, she thought. Her whole body had been strange since the platform. Everything ached, everything hummed, and apparently now it did that.

She kept walking.

Thalia had already moved on to what she’d heard about the vampire heirs, which was a great deal, and most of which Tessa dismissed as Bellringer-grade nonsense before the third sentence.

The colonnade opened out into the academic court and the crowd thickened.

There were older students everywhere here. Raven watched a group of them go past and noticed the insignia — not the plain first-year pin she’d been given, but worked pieces at collar and shoulder, and some of the women wore something different again, a crescent set into the metal.

"Luna Court," Tessa said, following her eyes. "Different ladder. Women only."

"So there’s a First Seat."

"Obviously there’s a First Seat."

"You know who the First Seat is," Thalia said, and then looked at Raven’s face. "Oh, for—"

"Stop being surprised," Tessa said. "It’s exhausting for everyone."

"She’s a year above us. Highest-ranked woman in the Luna Court, which makes her about the most important student in this academy who isn’t a Cardinal heir."

Thalia ticked it off. "And she’s Rowan’s House. So the two of them get put together for everything — House representation, formal events, the joint exercises."

"They’re together, then."

"No." Thalia said it so fast that a passing boy looked round. Then she leaned in, delighted with herself. "Everyone knows she wants Dante Prymont."

She let that sit, and gave Raven a look.

Raven returned it flatly. "Why are you telling me?"

"Because after yesterday," Thalia said, "and after this morning, you are quite possibly the only person left in Valerius who thinks Dante Prymont’s behaviour around you means nothing."

"He fought the twins because they irritated him. He’d have done it to a chair."

"Of course," Tessa said.

"I hate that tone."

"It’s a very neutral tone."

"It’s the worst tone anyone has ever—"

Ahead of them, the crowd changed.

It didn’t part the way it had for Dante in the cafeteria. It was softer than that: a general drift, students shifting a shoulder’s width to one side without appearing to notice they were doing it, a corridor opening down the middle of the court from the far end.

Raven frowned and looked.

The woman coming toward them was, without any argument, beautiful.

Not in a way that asked to be looked at. Her uniform sat on her like it had been convinced rather than tailored. Her hair was pinned in something that had clearly taken somebody an hour and looked like it had taken nothing.

She had strong, elegant features, and she walked through a crowded court at an unhurried pace, and it was obvious from twenty paces that she had never once in her life wondered whether people would make room.

Students greeted her as she came. Two older wolves inclined their heads. A confident-looking girl on Raven’s left quietly straightened her collar.

The girl didn’t smile at any of it. She didn’t need to.

"Isolde Marchmont," Thalia murmured. "First Seat."

Raven looked at her a moment longer than she meant to, and understood exactly why a woman like that would look at Dante Prymont and consider the match reasonable.

Then she saw who was walking beside her.

Celeste.

Not level with her. Half a step back and slightly to the side, in the position of a younger student from the same House who had attached herself to something more powerful and intended everyone to notice.

Raven’s exhaustion came back all at once.

Of course. Of course she found reinforcements before breakfast.

Celeste looked up.

Their eyes met across ten paces of court, and whatever composure Celeste had been wearing for the First Seat’s benefit came off her face like a dropped plate.

Raven braced for it. The sneer, the remark, the performance for an audience.

It didn’t come, because Raven had stopped looking at her eyes.

There was something in the middle of Celeste’s forehead.

Small. Faintly glowing. A pale red shape, perfectly centred, shining steadily through the careful sweep of hair she had arranged over it.

A paw print.

Raven stared.

Celeste followed her gaze, and her face went from ugly to murderous.

And Raven thought about the black ball in her ribs and the count ticking down and her palms splitting open on the platform edge and crawling the last arm’s length on her elbows with her whole body shaking.

She thought about standing in her room this morning, pointing at each of her roommates, promising to stay aggressively low-key.

Everything she had been carrying since three o’clock that morning went straight out of her.

Raven laughed.