Chapter 61 — You Wanted Me Here

Chapter 61: Chapter 61 — You Wanted Me Here

~ Raven ~

For one beat, Dante actually looked surprised.

Then he laughed.

Not the short, offended sort she might have expected. He actually tipped his head back and laughed, openly delighted, which somehow annoyed Raven even more.

For a few seconds, the entire cafeteria seemed to stall.

Nobody knew where to look anymore.

Raven could almost feel everyone trying to catch up with what had just happened. In less than two minutes, she had told Rowan House, Blackthorn, the Cardinal Court and every Cardinal heir in the academy to go fuck themselves, given up her Seat, insulted Cassian while he stood there as a witness, and then told Dante the same thing to his face.

And the bastard was laughing.

Somewhere to her left a boy said, in genuine wonder, "Who’s left?"

"The Headmaster," his friend whispered back.

"Don’t say that—"

Rowan clenched his fists.

Whatever polite construction he’d been holding together since he walked into Berry’s classroom finally came apart. His voice, when it came, was flat and quiet and much worse than shouting.

"Shut your mouth," he said. "Get off the table. You are going to stop turning a lawful Redress into a spectacle, and you are going to do it now, before this becomes something you cannot walk back."

Raven looked at him.

And something even more reckless clicked into place behind her ribs.

Dante’s here.

She didn’t trust him. She didn’t understand him, she’d been alone in a room with him for eleven minutes and come out convinced he was at least partly insane, and she still had no idea what he actually wanted from her.

But she knew one thing, because she’d watched it happen from the floor of this exact room yesterday.

If Rowan put a hand on her while Dante Prymont was standing there, Dante would do something about it.

It was a stupid bet. It was possibly the stupidest bet she had ever made, and she made it in about a second and a half, because she had already lost everything she’d come here with and consequences had stopped feeling like a real category.

Raven scoffed.

"Go fuck yourself."

Four hundred people inhaled at once.

Rowan’s face changed.

The polite expression disappeared from Rowan’s face.

What replaced it wasn’t anger exactly. It was colder than that, controlled enough to make Raven’s stomach tighten before the first trace of gold appeared around him.

The air distorted.

A faint shimmer rolled out from Rowan’s shoulders and spread across the cafeteria, and the effect was immediate.

Chairs scraped hard against the floor. Someone knocked over a bench trying to get back. Students nearest him stumbled into the rows behind them, while farther along the wall, several first-years lowered their heads before they seemed to realize they were doing it.

Then the pressure reached Raven.

It settled across her shoulders all at once, heavy enough to drag a breath out of her.

Oh.

Raven looked at Rowan.

Maybe telling a Cardinal heir to go fuck himself while sitting on a table hadn’t been one of her better ideas.

Dante stepped forward.

He came out of the crowd without any rush and stopped between Raven and Rowan.

That was all.

One second Rowan’s pressure was still bearing down on her. The next, heat rolled off Dante and met it halfway across the open floor.

The golden distortion shuddered.

Stopped.

The pressure on Raven eased almost immediately. It didn’t disappear, but enough of it lifted that she could breathe properly again, straighten her back and keep her chin where it was.

She stared at Dante’s back.

It was, she noted with some annoyance, a very good back. It was also standing between her and the man who had been about to flatten her, which was a novel enough experience that it took her a moment to work out what she was feeling.

I was right.

Satisfaction went through her, warm and entirely undeserved.

Raven had probably just cost herself the Seat she had held for less than a day. The points would come next, along with whatever else Rowan could squeeze out of the Redress once this was over.

Half the academy thought she had lost her mind. The other half was making sure there would be recordings of it.

Still, she had one thing left.

She had looked at Dante Prymont, looked at Rowan bearing down on her, and gambled that Dante was exactly as unreasonable as she thought he was.

She had been right.

For the first time all morning, something had gone the way Raven expected it to.

Dante laughed again.

Then he glanced around the cafeteria and opened his arms as though inviting everyone else into the joke.

"Let me make sure I understand this."

His gaze returned to Rowan.

"You filed a House Redress against a first-year. Had her pulled out of class in front of forty students. Marched her across the academy. Brought the Blackthorns here early so they’d be waiting when she arrived."

He glanced toward Cassian.

"You even dragged Blade away from whatever miserable thing he was enjoying so you could have a neutral Cardinal witness."

Cassian’s expression did not change.

Dante looked around at the packed tables, the students standing along the walls and the forest of raised Linkslates.

"And then you somehow found four hundred people to watch."

His smile widened.

"That is an impressive amount of fucking effort, Rowan."

He turned back to Rowan.

"Because of something I did."

The gold in the air tightened.

"You wanted me here."

Dante spread his hands a little.

"I’m here. What now?"

Nobody in the cafeteria moved.

Rowan’s control slipped another inch.

The golden distortion around him thickened, no longer as smooth as it had been before. Dante’s heat rose to meet it, and where the two pressures collided, the air warped badly enough to blur the space between them.

That was enough for the crowd.

Nobody ran. They simply began backing away, benches scraping and bodies pressing toward the walls as several hundred students reached the same conclusion at once: whatever happened next, they did not want to be standing near it.

Beyond Rowan, Kieran had gone rigid. His hands were clenched at his sides, his eyes fixed on Raven, and the anger on his face needed no explanation. Somehow, once again, he had ended up in this cafeteria with hundreds of people watching his humiliation revolve around her.

Alaric looked less openly furious, but his jaw had tightened as his gaze moved between Raven, his brother and the two Cardinal heirs who looked increasingly likely to destroy part of the building.

Celeste looked worse.

Whatever satisfaction she had carried into the cafeteria was gone. She had wanted Raven on her knees in front of everyone.

Instead Raven was still sitting on a table, Dante Prymont was standing between her and Rowan, and the entire Redress had somehow become a confrontation between two Cardinal heirs that had almost nothing to do with Celeste anymore.

Raven decided staying exactly where she was seemed safest.

Cassian apparently came to a similar conclusion about the middle of the floor.

He stepped away from Dante and Rowan with barely concealed irritation, crossed to the plate Raven had stolen from earlier and picked up another piece of meat.

Then he ate it.

Raven stared.

The cafeteria was one bad word away from becoming a battlefield, and Cassian Blade was standing off to the side having a snack.

His eyes shifted toward her.

Their gazes met.

His brows drew together in a flat, cold, extremely specific frown that seemed to say what?

That was enough for Raven to remember that approximately two minutes ago she had publicly told him to go fuck himself.

Raven looked away.

Fine.

That one might have been slightly unfair.

Before either Rowan or Dante could speak again, a voice cut cleanly across the cafeteria.

"How long are you planning to let this stupidity continue?"