Chapter 87 — Something Was Wrong

Chapter 87: Chapter 87 — Something Was Wrong

~Raven~

Brielle went for Celeste and never reached her.

One of the Ashbourne representatives cut across her before she had covered two paces, forcing Brielle to turn and deal with him instead. That was all Celeste needed. She slipped straight through the space Brielle had been trying to close.

"HALE, MOVE!"

Garrick’s shout tore across the clearing just as the Ashbourne fourth-year barked an order of his own, and whatever shape the two Wings had been holding collapsed into motion.

Raven backed up instinctively.

There was no time for anything clever. Mara crossed in front of her, Dorian broke the other way, and suddenly there were bodies everywhere, colliding, separating, changing angles before Raven could properly follow who had gone where.

She made it three steps before the pattern became obvious.

Ashbourne wasn’t trying to beat Hale cleanly.

They were trying to open Hale up.

To get to her.

A hand came for her collar from the left.

Raven tucked her chin and threw herself sideways just before the fingers reached her personal seal. Mara arrived a heartbeat later and drove her shoulder into the Ashbourne boy, slamming him back into a tree hard enough to shake loose a spray of leaves.

"Left!" Garrick shouted.

Raven moved immediately as she felt a chill run down her spine.

Something cut past close enough to stir the hair beside her ear. Another Ashbourne representative came in from the opposite side, already reaching for her collar, but Dorian hit him before he got there. The two of them crashed into the leaf litter together, leaving Raven stumbling backward with her pulse somewhere in her throat.

Raven stumbled back, pulse hammering.

"There are eleven other Founder Seals in this fucking forest!"

Nobody cared.

She twisted away from another grab and felt nails scrape the side of her neck.

"Eleven!" she shouted. "Go find one!"

"We already found this one."

The Ashbourne student barely slowed.

"You found me. That is not the same thing!"

Apparently Ashbourne disagreed.

"Down!"

Raven dropped immediately.

Dorian came over her shoulder and slammed into the wolf reaching across her back. Raven stayed low for half a second, palms pressed into damp earth while bodies moved around her, then Garrick shouted again and she was moving before she had fully understood the instruction.

Three days of drills had finally stopped feeling pointless.

To her right, Brielle and Seren crossed paths.

Raven only caught pieces of it between everything else happening around her. Seren refused to drive straight through Brielle and kept trying to angle around instead, forcing Brielle to shift with her if she wanted to keep the lane to Raven closed.

Brielle followed only as far as she needed to.

Seren shifted again.

Brielle matched her.

Then another hand came for Raven’s collar and she lost sight of both of them.

The observation grounds had stopped treating the Hunt like a competition and started treating the clearing like the only thing that mattered.

The central display had shifted almost entirely to Hale and Ashbourne, several feeds catching the fight from different angles while both Wing sections shouted themselves hoarse.

Students were standing on benches for a better view. Prymont had crowded the rail despite having nobody in the fight, and the officials had mostly given up trying to keep people in their seats.

Every time someone came close to Raven’s collar, the noise surged.

Every time Hale cut them off, it surged again.

The first full Wing-on-Wing clash of the Hunt had swallowed the attention of the observation grounds completely.

Celeste kept coming.

Raven noticed because she was the only one who had stopped moving with Ashbourne.

The others adjusted around their fourth-year, closing when Hale closed, shifting when an opening disappeared and finding another route in. Celeste did none of that.

She just kept tracking Raven.

At one point, Dorian left her a clean opening and Celeste ignored it completely, cutting across the clearing instead to stay on Raven.

Raven almost laughed.

You idiot.

"You know your team is actually trying to win, right?"

Celeste came at her again.

Raven slipped around Mara and put the third-year between them.

It bought her a few seconds.

Then an Ashbourne second-year drove in from Mara’s other side and forced her to turn, dragging the fight with her and opening Raven’s flank before she could correct.

Raven moved with it.

One step.

Then another.

And suddenly there was nobody between her and Celeste.

Celeste saw the opening at the same moment Raven did.

Raven turned.

Too late.

Celeste hit her hard across the ribs and drove through her, taking both of them off their feet. Raven slammed into the ground with enough force to punch the air from her lungs. Pain shot through her shoulder, and the Founder Seal ground painfully against her chest beneath the harness.

She tried to roll.

Celeste was already on top of her.

A knee came down on either side of Raven’s waist, pinning her hips before she could twist free.

Raven shoved both hands into Celeste’s chest and strained.

Her arms started to shake almost immediately, shoulders burning as she tried to force enough space between them to twist free. She planted one foot, tried to buck her hips and got barely an inch before Celeste drove her weight back down.

Raven gritted her teeth and tried again but same result.

Celeste was stronger. Strong enough that Raven could feel it in every useless push, every failed attempt to shift her even slightly.

For one ugly second, pinned there beneath her, Raven felt exactly how little leverage she had.

And she hated it.

Celeste sat back, breathing hard. Half her hair had come loose from its pins and her cheeks were flushed almost violently red. Green glow had begun to seep through the brown of her eyes, faint at first but growing brighter as her essence rose.

She smiled.

Raven immediately recognized that smile.

You have got to be fucking joking.

Celeste raised her hand.

Raven stared at it.

Of course.

In the middle of a Wing fight, with a Founder Seal at stake and the entire academy watching, Celeste Blackthorn was going to stop long enough to slap her.

Some habits apparently survived everything.

Raven’s right hand scraped through the leaves beside her.

Her fingers found loose earth.

She closed her fist around as much of it as she could.

Celeste’s hand started down.

Raven threw the dirt straight into her face.

Celeste had her mouth open.

That made it considerably worse.

She jerked backward with a strangled cough, both hands flying to her eyes as dirt filled her mouth, nose and lashes.

Raven didn’t waste the opening.

She bucked hard beneath her and shoved.

Celeste toppled sideways.

Raven rolled the opposite direction and scrambled far enough away to get one knee beneath herself.

Celeste was on all fours, coughing and spitting dirt into the leaves.

"Eat shit," Raven said.

Then she got up quickly, because Celeste would eventually regain the ability to see and Raven had no interest in being nearby when that happened.

The fight was still breaking and reforming around them.

Garrick was trying to pull Hale back together while Mara closed toward him. Seren shouted something toward the Ashbourne fourth-year. Dorian stumbled past Raven with someone twice his size on him and nearly took her down with him.

Brielle was forcing her way back toward Raven.

Raven turned to meet her.

Something crashed through the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing.

Branches snapped hard enough to turn heads, and whatever was coming made no effort to hide its approach.

Raven’s stomach tightened.

Another Wing?

Then a flash of white appeared between the trees.

Blade colours.

A figure burst through the branches a second later, and Raven recognized her immediately.

Isolde Marchmont.

Raven knew something was wrong before Isolde even reached the clearing.

She wasn’t running toward them.

She was running away from something.

Isolde kept looking over her shoulder instead of watching where she was going, and that alone was wrong enough to make Raven forget the fight around her.

One side of her hair had come loose. Dirt streaked the length of her sleeve, and the shoulder seam of her uniform had torn open. Raven had never seen Isolde Marchmont look anything less than deliberately put together.

Now her face had gone pale.

Her boot caught on something hidden beneath the leaves.

She went down hard.

The fight slowly lost its shape around her.

One person noticed Isolde go down, then another, and the movement across the clearing began to die in pieces. Hands came away from collars. Someone who had been pushing forward stopped entirely. Within seconds, Hale and Ashbourne were both looking towards Isolde lying in the leaves between them.

Isolde planted one hand against the ground and tried to push herself up.

Her arm shook so badly it almost gave beneath her. She caught herself on one elbow, dragged in a breath that sounded too rough for someone usually so composed, then tried again.

Even then, she never looked at Hale or Ashbourne.

Her eyes stayed on the trees behind her.

That was what unsettled Raven most.

There was fear on Isolde’s face, unmistakable now, but it wasn’t helpless fear. Anger burned underneath it, sharp and humiliated, as though she hated whatever had managed to put that expression there.

She forced one knee beneath herself and remained there, breathing hard, still watching the woods.

Raven followed her gaze.

For a few seconds, nothing moved.

Then a branch shifted.

Something was coming through the trees.