Chapter 85 — Three Against One

Chapter 85: Chapter 85 — Three Against One

~Raven~

Brielle had been staring at the side of Raven’s face long enough that pretending not to notice was becoming work.

Raven kept her attention on Seren instead.

Seren looked from her to Brielle, then back again.

"That wasn’t ...a trap."

Raven lifted her chin. "You chased me straight into a two-on-one. I’m comfortable calling it one."

Brielle’s stare became considerably harder.

Seren actually looked at her for a second. "You didn’t even know she was there."

"That feels irrelevant now."

Seren’s mouth twitched, but whatever answer she might have given died when her gaze dropped.

The amusement left her face.

Raven followed her attention to the Founder Seal resting beneath the crossing strap of her harness, its carved edge still visible against her ribs.

"I still want it," Seren said.

Raven glanced at Brielle.

She never got the chance to answer.

Brielle stepped forward.

It was only half a pace, but the pressure that followed made it feel like much more.

Essence rolled away from Brielle in a controlled wave, strong enough to turn the loose leaves around their boots and slide cold across Raven’s exposed skin. It wasn’t directed at Seren so much as allowed to fill the space between them.

Seren felt it.

Her posture changed slightly, her weight settling back even as her chin lifted.

"You can try," Brielle said.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then essence stirred around Seren in answer. A faint green shimmer gathered along the backs of her hands, and the air near her seemed to tighten with it.

Raven very deliberately kept her mouth shut.

This was clearly one of those moments where Brielle was doing perfectly well without assistance.

Seren looked at her first, then at Raven, before glancing briefly toward the slope behind her.

She had come down it alone.

Two Hale representatives stood in front of her now, and one of them was Brielle Vance.

The green aura faded.

"Enjoy it while you have it, Rivers."

"I intend to."

Seren backed away several steps before turning. She didn’t hurry as she disappeared into the trees, and Raven suspected that was deliberate.

They waited until the sound of her footsteps faded before Raven started toward the fallback point again.

Brielle fell in beside her.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Raven could still feel the stare.

"Don’t."

"I haven’t said anything."

"You’ve been staring at me since I called it a trap."

"Because it wasn’t."

"It worked didn’t it?"

Brielle looked at her.

Raven kept walking.

"That is not the same thing."

"It is from where I’m standing."

That earned her another long look, but thankfully Brielle didn’t say anything for a while.

They made it another stretch in silence before Brielle finally said, "You really looked her in the face and shamelessly called that a trap."

Raven kept walking. "She left, didn’t she?"

"That still doesn’t make it a trap."

"It makes correcting me feel unnecessary."

Brielle gave her a look.

Raven pointed ahead. "Fallback point."

Brielle’s mouth twitched, but she faced forward again.

Good.

Raven had just started believing she was totally free when Brielle suddenly stopped.

Raven took another couple of steps before turning in irritation.

"What?"

Brielle wasn’t looking at her face anymore.

Her eyes had settled on the crossing strap of Raven’s harness.

Then something seemed to click.

"When Ashbourne said she still wanted it..."

Raven followed her gaze.

The founder seal.

Brielle stared at it.

"Rivers."

"Ah."

Raven hooked a finger beneath the strap and lifted it just enough for the carved disc to catch the light.

Brielle came closer.

"That was you."

Raven let the strap fall back into place. "What was me?"

"The pulse after the scatter."

"Oh."

Brielle stared.

Raven sighed. "Yes."

Brielle looked at her for another second, but whatever she might have said, she kept it to herself. Then she turned and started moving again.

Raven followed.

After a few minutes, it became obvious that Brielle had taken over navigation without ever announcing it.

Whenever thick brush forced them off course, she corrected the moment they cleared it, never stopping to reconsider their direction.

She kept them on firmer stretches of ground where the leaf litter was thinner and their footsteps quieter, and twice she changed course toward something Raven couldn’t see until they reached one of Garrick’s markers.

Three flat stones stacked against the northern side of a tree.

Raven would have walked straight past both of them.

The second time, she glanced back at the route they had taken, trying to work out when Brielle had spotted the marker in the first place.

She still had no idea.

A little farther on, Brielle raised one hand.

Raven stopped immediately.

Brielle crouched beside a patch of broken fern and studied the ground for a moment before touching one of the bent stems.

"Two people passed through here."

Raven looked down.

To her, it looked exactly like every other patch of forest floor they had crossed.

"How do you know?"

Brielle turned the stem slightly so Raven could see the fresh break and the moisture still clinging to it.

"Recent."

She stood and looked toward the trees ahead.

"They went that way. We keep left."

Raven nodded and followed her without argument.

At this point, pretending she knew the forest better than Brielle would only have been embarrassing.

About ten minutes later, the trees opened enough for one of the Founders’ Ward anchors to appear between them.

Raven had seen the anchors from the observation field, but standing beside one was different.

The grey stone column rose higher than the doors of the Wing halls, its surface carved from base to crown with tightly packed sigil bands. Each one held the same steady white glow, clean and even, with nothing about it that looked different from the anchors Raven had seen from the observation field.

Brielle passed it without slowing.

Raven followed.

She had barely gone a few steps when something moved beneath her skin.

A sudden, crawling sensation that started somewhere along her arms and slipped inward beneath her ribs, cold and deeply unpleasant, as if her body had noticed something before her mind had.

Raven stopped.

The feeling vanished almost immediately.

For a second she stood there listening to the forest, trying to decide whether she had imagined it.

The Ward still glowed behind her.

Nothing had changed.

And yet something inside her had recoiled from it.

Brielle turned. "What?"

Raven looked back at the anchor.

"I don’t know."

That was the problem.

The sigils still glowed evenly. The forest around them was quiet. There was no sound, no movement, nothing she could point to and call wrong.

Still, she walked back.

The closer she came, the more that faint unpleasant feeling returned.

Something behind her ribs simply recoiled.

Raven’s eyes moved slowly over the bands until the sensation sharpened near the lower eastern face.

"There."

Brielle came beside her. "Where?"

Raven pointed. "There. I think."

"You think?"

"I already told you I don’t know."

Brielle gave her a look but moved closer to the stone.

Raven watched while she inspected the sigil bands carefully, tracing their path with two fingers held just away from the surface. She worked down, then back up, checked the adjoining bands and finally stepped away.

Raven waited.

Brielle knew sigils in a way Raven didn’t. If there was something there, she would find it.

Instead, Brielle straightened.

"The Ward’s fine."

Raven frowned at the anchor. "I know."

"The array is drawing evenly. There’s no fluctuation, no break in the bands, nothing damaged."

"I know."

Brielle looked at her now. "Then what did you notice?"

Raven kept staring at the stone.

"I don’t know."

For another second, Brielle studied her, then glanced around the clearing.

"We should move."

Raven looked at her.

"We’re standing beside one of the easiest fixed landmarks in this section while carrying the first Founder Seal anyone claimed."

That was annoyingly difficult to argue with.

Raven followed her back into the trees, although she looked over her shoulder once before the branches swallowed the anchor from view.

Cassian’s attention returned to Raven Rivers’ feed again.

At least this time there was something worth watching.

She had stopped beside one of the Ward anchors.

His first assumption was that she had heard another competitor nearby. Two students had crossed east of her position not long ago, and Vance had already picked up their trail.

Then Rivers turned around.

She walked back to the anchor.

Only after that did Vance follow her.

Cassian sat forward slightly.

Brielle Vance inspecting a Ward anchor made sense. Vance knew sigils well enough to question anything that looked even slightly irregular.

Raven Rivers stopping before her did not.

He watched Vance examine the section Raven had pointed toward.

The readings beneath the feed remained unchanged.

No fault in the anchor.

Vance eventually came to the same conclusion and pulled Raven away.

Cassian kept looking at the stone after they had gone.

There was nothing visibly wrong with it.

Still, Rivers had noticed something.

Or thought she had.

A shout rose from somewhere below him.

One of Blade’s feeds had caught Isolde’s group coming up against an Ashbourne fourth-year near a stream bed, and most of the observation field immediately shifted its attention.

Cassian looked away with them.

A voice carried through the trees ahead, calm enough to sound almost conversational.

"—I’m just asking you to consider whether chasing me is actually worth what you’re going to get out of it."

Brielle’s hand came out.

Raven dropped behind the brush with her.

Then the voice carried again, and recognition clicked into place.

Raven closed her eyes briefly.

"That’s Dorian."

"Yes."

They moved closer until the holly thinned enough for Raven to see into the clearing.

Dorian was backing through it with both hands raised, completely unarmed, while a broad-shouldered Prymont second-year followed him.

"You don’t have a Founder Seal," Dorian said. "I don’t have a Founder Seal. So if you eliminate me, congratulations, you get my personal seal and absolutely nothing else."

"One less Hale representative."

Dorian paused.

"That is annoyingly reasonable."

The Prymont student kept coming.

Dorian took another step back. "You could also spend this time looking for something that actually scores."

"I like this better."

"I’m beginning to dislike you."

Raven almost smiled.

Dorian’s eyes flicked past the other boy and found the holly.

His posture changed at once.

"Actually," he said, "I may have undersold my position."

The Prymont student frowned and turned.

Raven stepped into the clearing.

Brielle followed.

Dorian smiled as though this had all happened exactly according to plan.

"There you are."

Raven gave him a look.

There I am?

The Prymont student’s gaze moved from her to Brielle and stayed there.

"Merrick," Dorian said pleasantly, "that peaceful withdrawal I mentioned is looking significantly better now."

Merrick looked back at him.

Then at the three Hale representatives.

"His personal seal is on his collar," Brielle said. "If you still want it, you’ll have to come through us."

Raven nodded firmly beside her.

She felt that was contribution enough.

Merrick stood there for a few seconds, clearly doing the same maths Seren had done earlier.

Then he backed toward the trees.

"You won’t always have someone walking in behind you, Hale."

Dorian smiled. "You’d be surprised."

Merrick disappeared into the undergrowth.

They waited until they could no longer hear him.

"I had that handled," Dorian said.

Brielle looked at him. "You were negotiating for your life."

"Successfully."

Raven laughed under her breath.

Dorian brushed some dirt from his sleeve, still looking entirely too pleased with himself.

Then his attention caught on Raven’s harness.

His expression changed.

"Wait."

Raven immediately disliked the direction this was going.

Dorian crossed the clearing and leaned closer, eyes narrowing at the carved disc beneath the strap.

"That’s a Founder Seal."

Raven looked at Brielle.

Brielle returned the look with the calm detachment of someone who had decided this was no longer her problem.

Dorian looked back at Raven.

"You found one?"

Raven sighed.

"Please don’t make this a thing."