Chapter 89 — No One Is Coming

Chapter 89: Chapter 89 — No One Is Coming

~ Raven ~

No one moved to continue the fight.

Raven was still on one knee where she had rolled clear of Celeste, braced for another hand to come at her collar, but none did.

Dorian still had an Ashbourne student’s sleeve twisted in his fist. Mara had drifted toward the edge of the clearing with one arm held behind her, blocking anyone from circling Hale. Even Celeste, on all fours in the leaves and spitting dirt, had turned toward the trees instead of Raven.

All of them were watching Isolde Marchmont watch the woods.

At the far edge of the clearing, a branch moved.

Raven pushed herself upright.

"Marchmont." She kept her voice low. "What’s out there?"

Isolde did not answer. She planted one hand beneath herself and pushed, but her arm buckled before she could rise.

Dorian was closest. He reached for her.

"Don’t."

His hand stopped halfway but he didn’t leave.

"I said don’t! Are you deaf?"

A reddish distortion shivered around Isolde’s shoulders, tight against her body, then collapsed before it could settle. She got one knee underneath herself on the second attempt and stayed there, breathing hard.

First Seat.

Less than two weeks ago, Raven had watched this woman stop Celeste with a single quiet word. Now her hair had come loose, blood darkened one sleeve, and every breath seemed to hurt.

Garrick moved to Raven’s left.

"Marchmont. What happened?"

"Someone attacked me."

"Competitors?"

"No."

Isolde’s attention shifted past him. Her face tightened.

"There are more."

The branch shifted again, then bent aside as a man stepped through.

He moved slowly, a dark hood pulled low and his hands loose at his sides. Dried mud caked his boots. He wore no Wing colours, and nothing was fixed to his collar.

Raven checked his collar twice, certain she must have missed the registration seal the first time.

"That’s not a competitor, right?" Dorian asked.

"No."

"Because if he is, someone seriously fucked up the registration."

"Dorian."

He closed his mouth.

A second figure emerged thirty paces to the right of the first. Another appeared behind Mara, close enough that she stepped away from the edge without giving him her back.

Two more came down the slope. A sixth stopped beside the fallen branch Isolde had tripped over, and the seventh appeared between the trees on Garrick’s side.

Then a branch cracked behind Raven.

She turned.

An eighth figure stood between the trees.

Hale and Ashbourne drew closer without anyone giving the order. Raven found herself shoulder to shoulder with the same Ashbourne second-year who had tried to tear the seal from her collar moments earlier.

"Identify yourselves," Garrick called. "You’re inside a sanctioned Valerius event."

Nobody answered.

The Ashbourne captain stepped forward by half a pace.

"You crossed the Founders’ Ward in front of the entire academy. Identify yourselves or get the fuck out of this clearing."

The first man tilted his head slightly, as though the captain were a dog barking somewhere far away.

"You’re being broadcast," Mara said, pointing at the black iron ring fixed to the tree behind Isolde. A single point of light burned inside its dark glass. "The entire academy can see you."

Raven followed her finger.

The entire academy. All four heirs. The Headmaster.

It should have made her feel safer.

It did not.

"Do you know who I am?" Celeste had managed to stand.

Her eyes streamed from the dirt still caught in her lashes, weakening the effect of her glare. "I’m Celeste Blackthorn. My father is Alpha of House Blackthorn. If you touch one person here—"

"Celeste."

"They should know."

"Look at them," Seren said. "They don’t care."

Celeste looked.

None of the figures had moved.

Isolde had not taken her eyes off the first man since he entered the clearing.

"Something is wrong."

"We know," Garrick said.

"No." Isolde spoke quietly, but everyone near her heard. "They never touched my collar. They weren’t trying to eliminate me."

The clearing seemed to contract around those words.

Garrick raised one hand.

"Hale, stay close."

Mara moved beside Raven, Dorian backed toward them and Brielle closed the remaining gap. Across the clearing, the Ashbourne captain called his team closer. Within seconds, both Wings had drawn into a rough circle, every face turned toward the trees.

Less than two minutes earlier, they had been tearing at one another’s collars. Now none of them cared which Wing stood beside them.

Seren caught Celeste by the arm and pulled her closer.

Isolde forced herself upright. She made it four steps before stopping where she could watch as much of the tree line as possible.

An Ashbourne second-year with blood running down his sleeve looked away from the hooded figures and up at the nearest observation sigil.

"Extraction!"

The sigil continued glowing.

"What the fuck are you waiting for?" he shouted. "Get us out!"

His voice disappeared into the branches.

Nothing answered. No extraction light descended from the Ward. No bell sounded to acknowledge the request.

"Give it a moment," someone said.

They did.

"They’re coming," the second-year insisted. "They can see us right now."

Another moment passed.

"Then where the fuck are they?"

He seized the seal at his collar and broke it.

The disc split between his fingers. A thin pulse of white passed across its surface and disappeared.

Raven waited for something else to happen.

Nothing did.

The Ashbourne student remained exactly where he was, holding the two halves. From the way his face emptied, Raven understood that this was not supposed to happen.

He turned toward his captain.

"It broke," he said. "I’m out. Why the hell am I still here?"

A second student immediately did the same. Two more followed, one fumbling with the seal before it finally cracked.

Three faint white pulses flickered through the clearing and died.

All three students remained.

"Stop!" Garrick’s shout cut through the rising panic. "Stop breaking them. Everyone get your hands away from your collars."

"It has to be a fault in the extraction—"

"I said hands off."

Across the clearing, one of the hooded men shifted his weight.

Raven noticed because she had been watching him instead of the seals.

The lower half of his face showed beneath the hood.

He was smiling.

Four students had broken the seals meant to carry them to safety, and not one of them had disappeared. He watched their fear spread and kept smiling.

Raven’s stomach turned.

"There could still be a delay," Mara said, although she no longer sounded certain.

"The academy watched Marchmont get attacked," Dorian said. "If they could reach us, someone would already be here."

Raven stopped listening.

The first man had walked into a clearing containing ten registered Valerius competitors and Blade’s First Seat. He had done it beneath an active observation sigil, knowing the entire academy could see him.

Yet he had not looked up at the sigil once.

He wasn’t worried about being seen.

You should be running.

The crawling sensation returned beneath Raven’s ribs. It was the same wrongness she had felt beside the Ward anchor earlier. She had thought it vanished when she walked away.

It hadn’t.

"No one’s coming," Raven said.

Her voice carried farther than she intended.

Brielle turned toward her. "What?"

"No one is coming."

"You don’t know that."

"Rivers." Garrick moved around to face her. "If you know something, say it now."

She did not know anything.

That was the problem.

Raven could hardly tell them that she suspected something was wrong because standing beside a Ward anchor had made her skin crawl. They would think she had lost her mind.

So she relied on what they could all see.

"Four seals flashed when they broke," she said. "All four students are still here."

"That could be a fault."

"In four different seals?" Raven nodded toward the hooded figures. "And none of them has a registration seal."

Mara went very still.

"They found a way through the founder’s ward," Raven continued. "Now our seals can’t get us out."

"That doesn’t mean they sealed it. The Ward could have been damaged."

"Then why aren’t they worried?"

Nobody answered.

Raven looked up at the observation sigil above the clearing.

"They know the academy can see them. They walked straight beneath a live feed, and not one of them has tried to destroy it or move out of sight."

Her hands had begun to tremble. She kept her voice level and let them shake at her sides.

Then she looked directly at the first man.

"You sealed the Ward."

No one spoke.

"That’s why you’re not running," Raven said. "They can see us, but they can’t reach us."

The man tilted his head.

His smile widened beneath the hood.

"Yes."

The word passed through the clearing and killed every argument at once.

"You are clever," the man said.

Brielle moved closer until her shoulder pressed against Raven’s.

"Stay together," Garrick said. "Don’t let them pull anyone away."

He looked toward Ashbourne’s captain.

The captain nodded. "You heard him. Stay close."

The hooded figure raised one hand.

Around the clearing, every hooded figure moved at once.