Chapter 72 — Pick Your Cardinal

Chapter 72: Chapter 72 — Pick Your Cardinal

~ Raven ~

"Let me tell you what I know," the Bellringer said, "which is almost nothing, and it is killing me."

"Good," Raven muttered.

"At some point this afternoon, Raven Rivers entered the east reading hall. Cassian Blade was already there. More specifically, she went into that corner of the hall, which anyone who uses the library will know students generally avoid for one very simple reason."

A pause.

"That is where Cassian Blade sits."

Thalia raised her eyebrow..

Raven ignored her.

"Nobody has come forward with what was said. Nobody knows what happened before this photograph was taken, and nobody appears to know what happened afterward. I have three separate students who saw Rivers enter that corner, and not one of them can tell me a single word of the conversation."

Raven covered her face with both hands.

The worst part was that she could stop this.

Right now.

All she had to do was turn to the three girls staring at her and explain.

Cassian owned a copy of Beyond the Chains hidden beneath a false cover.

He had read it enough times to fill the margins with notes.

She had deliberately insulted the book until he finally lost his temper and slammed his hand into the table.

And then, because apparently she had suffered a temporary separation from good judgment, she had stepped forward and put her throat between his hands just to see what he would do.

Raven lowered her hands.

No.

Absolutely fucking not.

Silence was better.

Silence was dignified.

Silence, Raven decided, was a skill she intended to become exceptionally good at.

"Heir Blade has not offered an explanation," the Bellringer said. "Heir Blade has not offered an explanation for anything in four years. I have therefore abandoned journalism and moved to the entertainment portion of this broadcast."

The slate split into four.

Dante, mid-step, putting himself between Raven and the twins.

Rowan, hand out, gold bleeding into the air around him.

Nikolai, arm across her shoulders in a stone corridor.

And Cassian, silver in the window light, his hands at her throat and her white hair spilling between them.

"Valerius. I give you — THE RAVEN RIVERS CARDINAL POLL."

"Oh, you absolute—"

"The premise is simple. If this academy had to put Raven Rivers with one of its four Cardinal Alphas, and I think we can all agree that it does, who gets your vote?"

"One. Dante Prymont. The one who keeps fighting for her."

"Two. Rowan House. The one she keeps fighting with. Again — help is available."

"Three. Nikolai. Wing Cardinal. Suspiciously attentive. Walks her home."

"Four. Cassian Blade. Whatever the hell is happening in that photograph."

"Voting is open. Try to be dignified about it. Good afternoon, Valerius."

Every slate in the room crackled at once.

A second later, another sounded from somewhere in the corridor. Then another.

A shriek went up three doors down, followed almost immediately by laughter loud enough to carry through the wall. Somewhere near the stairwell, a boy bellowed somebody’s name with the urgency of a man trying to call livestock back before a storm.

Thalia already had her slate in both hands.

Raven looked at her.

"Thalia."

"Mm."

"Put it down."

"I’m only looking."

"Thalia. Do not vote."

Thalia did not answer.

"That silence," Raven said, "is not reassuring."

Thalia set the slate face-down on the floor with the serene expression of a woman who had recently finished doing something.

Then all three of them turned and looked at Raven at once.

And it was not about Dante.

It was not even about Nikolai.

"The library," Thalia said.

"No."

"Raven—"

"No."

"Cassian Blade."

"I’m aware of who it was."

"He had his hands—"

"I’m aware of where his hands were!"

Tessa reached over, picked Thalia’s slate up off the floor, turned it face-up, and held the photograph out at arm’s length without saying one word.

"Put that away."

"Nobody talks to him." Tessa’s voice had gone quiet, which from Tessa meant she was serious. "Raven. Nobody. He doesn’t speak to people unless he has a reason to. Students don’t sit at his table. Half of them avoid the tables near his."

"Then he must be delighted with how today went."

Tessa stared at her.

"How did you even get into that corner?"

"I sat in a chair. It was a chair. There was nothing on it saying it was a Cardinal heir’s chair."

"And then what?"

"And then I left."

Thalia made a strangled noise into both hands.

"Was there talking?" she demanded. "Raven. Was there talking?"

"There were words. They were exchanged. Most of them were his and the majority were insults."

"He doesn’t talk to people—"

"He talked plenty. He has a great deal to say for a man who allegedly says nothing. It’s just all rude."

Brielle had not said anything.

Raven looked over and found her still sitting on the edge of the bed with her forearms on her knees, and when she finally spoke it was one question, level, not remotely teasing.

"Did he hurt you?"

The room went quiet.

"No," Raven said.

She said it immediately. Without a pause, without thinking, without any of the hesitation a person might reasonably show about the man in that photograph.

And she heard it land.

Thalia’s mouth opened.

"Don’t," Raven said, groaning inwardly.

"I didn’t—"

"You were going to."

"I absolutely was."

"I am not leaving this room," Raven said, "for the rest of the day."

They gave up on her eventually, mostly because Brielle had a training slot and Tessa had a Sigil Theory reading.

Thalia hovered in the doorway.

"We’ll bring something back from the cafeteria."

"Bring two."

"You’ve eaten."

"I’ve had one crushed roll and a national scandal."

Thalia laughed and shut the door, and then Raven was alone with the afternoon light lying across the floor and the entire academy voting about her somewhere on the other side of the wall.

She lay back with her arms behind her head.

Ten hours ago she had been on the Grand Drill Court being hit with training balls by men in wolf masks. It was still the same day. It was somehow still the same day.

But what she kept circling back to was the bell.

Who was he.

She’d assumed, at the first broadcast, that it was some bored third-year with a slate and no friends. It wasn’t.

Nobody with no friends had footage from the drill court at dawn and the cafeteria at noon and a photograph taken through a shelf gap in the east reading hall four hours later. That was not one man wandering about with a camera.

That was a system. That was people, plural, feeding him things, and enough of them that he could stand there and complain about having three witnesses instead of four.

And he was a man.

That was the part Raven kept snagging on.

Gossip had been women’s business since the beginning of the world. She’d grown up inside it — the Blackthorn kitchens ran on it, four women at a sink with their hands in the grease and every secret in that House going round the table twice before the water went cold.

They had been excellent. Nobody had ever needed a mask.

Now some sneaking bastard with a bell on his face had built a career out of it, with staff, and Raven found that offensive on behalf of every woman she had ever scrubbed a pot beside.

If she ever found out who he was, they were going to have a conversation.

She had not yet decided what kind.

She’d know when she got there.

The light had moved a little across the floor. She watched it, and closed her eyes, and opened them, and it had moved a little more.

Poll’s probably closed by now.

She wondered whether Thalia had actually voted, then which one she had chosen, then whether she even wanted to know.

Somewhere in the middle of that thought, she lost the beginning of it.

Her arms felt heavy.

She blinked, and her eyes took a little too long to open again.

Ten minutes.

She only meant to close them for a moment.

Then she felt the pull.

That was wrong. Sleep was not supposed to come from anywhere. You closed your eyes and eventually disappeared into it. You did not feel it waiting somewhere beyond you, low and patient, drawing you toward it.

But Raven did.

And somehow, she was already following before she realized she had agreed to nothing.

She tried to sit up.

Her body took too long to obey.

Raven forced her eyes open.

The room was wrong.

The ceiling had lost its edges. Tessa’s bed seemed farther away than the room was wide, while the light from the window stretched sideways across the walls as though someone had dragged a hand through wet paint.

Then the room folded.

One corner slid over another. The beds doubled. Walls met walls that had no business touching.

Something’s wrong.

Raven tried to lift her head.

White swallowed everything.

Then—

Nothing.

Raven opened her eyes.

She knew the place immediately.

Endless white stretched in every direction. There was no visible floor, yet something solid held her weight. No walls. No ceiling. No horizon. Not even the faintest sound.

The dream.

The chains.

Her wolf.

And the thing made of smoke that had gone through her memories as casually as a man searching drawers.

She had been here before.

Only this time, there were no chains.

No wolf.

Nothing at all, in every direction, forever.

Except him.

He stood perhaps ten paces away, hands hanging loosely at his sides.

She could make out the shape of him clearly enough. His height. His shoulders. The slight shift of his weight onto one leg.

His face was different.

Or rather, impossible.

Every time Raven tried to focus on it, the details slipped away. Eyes blurred before she could catch their color. The shape of his mouth changed the moment she looked directly at it. Something in the dream itself seemed determined not to let her remember him.

The last trace of sleep vanished from her body.

He had been waiting for her.

The figure looked directly at her.

Then he smiled.

When he spoke, his voice was warm enough that the first two words might almost have been affectionate.

"Welcome back, love."

Raven did not move.

He took one step toward her.

The smile changed.

"Now..."

He let the silence stretch.

"Where were we, you fucking bitch?"