Chapter 97 — What Are You?

Chapter 97: Chapter 97 — What Are You?

~ Raven ~

The Headmaster stepped inside, closed the door behind her and swept her gaze around the room until everyone seemed to understand what she wanted.

Then she told them anyway.

"Out."

Dante settled deeper into his chair.

"I’m comfortable."

"Prymont."

He looked at her.

The Headmaster simply held his gaze.

Dante sighed and got to his feet. He took his time about it, naturally, but he got up. As he passed Raven’s bed, he tapped two fingers twice against the frame without looking at her, then followed Rowan out.

Nikolai lingered just long enough to move the cup of water within easier reach before leaving after them.

The door shut behind him.

For the first time since Raven had opened her eyes, the room was completely quiet.

The Headmaster crossed toward the bed. She had changed out of the clothes she’d worn into the clearing, but the fresh set did little to hide what the night had cost her. A dark burn ran along the inside of her left forearm, disappearing beneath her sleeve, apparently overlooked—or simply left untreated—while everyone else was being dealt with.

Or she’d refused to let them touch it.

"Rivers—"

"Brielle."

The Headmaster stopped.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Brielle Vance. Her hand." Raven’s throat was better than it had been in the clearing, but her voice still scraped when she pushed it too hard. "Nikolai said she’ll use it again. I want to hear it from you."

Whatever the Headmaster had come prepared to say remained unsaid.

"Two of the metacarpals were driven apart and one was crushed," she said after a moment. "The Velkarin have had her since we brought her in, and they’ll continue treating her until the bones have set properly."

Raven waited.

The Headmaster understood what she was actually asking.

"She’ll use the hand again. Write, hold things, grip properly." Her gaze stayed on Raven."With her healing, she should have most of the function back within a day. Combat will take longer. Two days, perhaps three, depending on how cleanly the bone repairs."

Raven’s shoulders loosened slightly.

"And after that?"

"After that, if the Velkarin are satisfied, she goes back to hitting people."

Raven released the breath she’d been holding.

"Seren Ashbourne is stable," the Headmaster continued. "Holt is awake and making himself everybody’s problem. Marchmont has not regained consciousness, and at present hers is the injury concerning me most."

Raven’s fingers tightened slightly over the blanket.

"Why hasn’t she woken up?"

"We don’t know yet."

That answer sat badly.

Before Raven could ask anything else, the Headmaster drew Dante’s abandoned chair closer to the bed and sat.

"Now," she said, "I’ve watched every observation feed that survived. I’ve spoken to the Wardens, the instructors and everyone conscious enough to give me an account. I don’t need you to tell me what happened in that clearing."

Raven looked at her.

"Then what do you need?"

"You."

That wasn’t ominous at all.

Raven waited.

The Headmaster folded her hands loosely in her lap.

"Your advancement has been confirmed. You entered the Founders’ Hunt as Nascent and left it Awakened."

Raven said nothing.

"That kind of advancement under extreme stress is unusual, but not impossible. It is also not why I’m here." The Headmaster leaned back slightly. "An advancement of one Power Class does not explain what happened afterward. Awakened wolves do not force trained fighters to the ground with a single word."

"No," Raven said.

"Did you know you could?"

"No."

"Have you ever done anything similar before? At Blackthorn, perhaps. As a child."

"No."

The Headmaster studied her for long enough that Raven began to wonder whether she expected the answer to change through persistence alone.

It didn’t.

"When you ordered the captive to shift," she said eventually, "did you understand what you were doing?"

Raven considered the question.

Unfortunately, the truthful answer was going to make her sound insane.

"I knew he was going to obey me."

The Headmaster’s expression sharpened.

"How?"

"I don’t know."

"You had never done it before."

"No."

"You didn’t know what the ability was."

"No."

"But you knew the command would work."

Raven looked toward the ceiling.

"I wasn’t hoping he’d obey. I wasn’t guessing either. I just knew." She frowned. "It was like knowing my own name. I couldn’t explain where that came from if you asked me either."

"Could you do it again now?"

"No."

The answer came quickly enough to make the Headmaster pause.

"You sound certain."

"I am."

"Why?"

"Because whatever that was isn’t here anymore."

That wasn’t completely true.

Something was still there.

Just not in the same way.

The Headmaster seemed to arrive at the same thought.

"Can you feel your wolf?"

Raven went still and turned her attention inward.

Her wolf was there.

Closer now. Awake and restless, moving beneath everything else with a presence she could no longer mistake for imagination. When Raven focused on it, something shifted faintly in response.

But there were no words. No voice. No sudden understanding of what any of this meant.

"It’s there," Raven said slowly. "Closer than before."

"Closer?"

"I used to have to look for it. Now I don’t."

"Can you communicate with it?"

Raven tried.

Nothing.

"It’s awake, but it isn’t talking to me. I can’t tell it to do anything either."

"Do you know what kind of wolf it is?"

Raven frowned. "No."

The Headmaster sat back.

Then she asked, "Tell me about your parents."

Raven looked at her.

"I don’t have any."

"Rivers."

"I’m not being difficult."

The Headmaster’s expression suggested history disagreed.

Raven turned her head fully toward her.

"I was raised by House Blackthorn. I don’t know who my mother was. I don’t know who my father was. I don’t know what pack I came from, whether I have relatives somewhere or where I was before Blackthorn."

Her fingers shifted against the blanket. "Nobody told me. I stopped asking when I was about six because asking usually cost more than not knowing."

"You were taken in as an orphan of the House."

"I was a maid of the House."

Raven’s mouth twisted.

"There’s a difference. They made sure I understood it."

The Headmaster said nothing.

"Eighteen years in their kitchens," Raven continued. "Wolfless omega. Servant. Nuisance. Everyone from the Alpha down to the boot boy was very clear about what I was supposed to be."

"And House Blackthorn holds no record of how you came into its care?"

"They might have an entire book dedicated to it for all I know. I wasn’t exactly invited into the family archives."

The Headmaster went quiet.

Raven watched something shift behind her face. Not surprise exactly. More like several pieces had moved into positions the woman didn’t like.

"Alpha Blackthorn," she said slowly, "took an infant into his House and allowed her to grow to adulthood without telling her anything about where she came from."

"Yes."

"That is not standard practice."

Raven gave her a flat look.

"No. It isn’t."

The Headmaster’s gaze sharpened.

"What did Lady Melissa tell you?"

Raven’s fingers stopped moving.

Laura.

The name surfaced at once, followed by the memory of Melissa almost saying it when they’d first met.

Raven had spent six days under her roof after that, asking questions whenever she could and getting answers about her ankle, the weather, what she should eat—almost everything except the one thing she actually wanted explained.

She had never told anyone at Valerius about that moment.

She still didn’t know who Laura was or why Melissa had looked at her the way she had.

And she wasn’t about to hand the name over simply because the Headmaster had asked nicely.

"She said I deserved a chance at the assessment," Raven answered. "That was all she ever told me about it."

The Headmaster didn’t blink.

"Melissa recommended you personally."

"I know."

"She has not written to this academy in years."

That Raven hadn’t known.

She kept her face still anyway.

"Then you know more about why she did it than I do."

The Headmaster held her gaze.

Raven held it back.

Eventually the woman changed direction.

"Why did they want you?"

Raven almost laughed.

"I don’t know."

"Rivers."

"I said I don’t know."

The Headmaster’s voice hardened slightly.

"A coordinated group infiltrated a sealed Founders’ Ward, dismantled two Hunt teams and Marchmont, then deliberately shaped the entire attack around keeping you alive and accessible. They ignored opportunities to finish other students because those students were useful as leverage against you."

Raven’s jaw tightened.

"That was not opportunistic violence. Somebody sent them into that forest specifically for you."

"I know."

The words came out louder than her throat wanted. Pain scraped down it immediately, and Raven stopped long enough to swallow.

"I’ve been lying here thinking about exactly that," she continued, quieter. "Whoever they were, they knew something about me that I don’t. Worse, they knew it before I did."

"And in eighteen years there was nothing? No unusual incident. No servant who said something strange. No reaction from another wolf?"

"Nothing."

Raven pushed herself slightly higher against the pillow.

"Every person who knew me before I walked through your gates thought I had no wolf at all. That wasn’t some secret everybody whispered around. It was the entire fact of my life."

The Headmaster remained silent.

"Your own assessment couldn’t properly read me," Raven went on. "The Guardians couldn’t make sense of what they were seeing. You were standing there."

"I remember."

"Then what exactly do you think Blackthorn knew that I didn’t?"

The Headmaster didn’t answer.

Raven stopped.

That was the problem, wasn’t it?

The Headmaster had entered this room expecting Raven to possess some missing piece. A childhood story. A family name. A strange warning from Melissa. Something that could make what happened in the clearing fit inside a shape she understood.

Raven had nothing.

And from the look on the Headmaster’s face, neither did she.

They had reached the end of the road from opposite directions.

Raven shifted against the pillows.

"My turn."

One eyebrow rose.

"I’m not certain you’ve earned a turn."

"How did they get inside your Ward?"

The Headmaster’s jaw tightened.

There it was.

"The Ward was altered before the Hunt began," she said.

Raven listened.

"Someone laid a second working beneath the original inscription and routed it through the same channels. It remained dormant through activation, inspection and the opening stages of the Hunt. Once our protections sealed around the forest, the second working activated and inverted the Ward’s functions."

"So everything meant to keep danger out kept us in."

"Essentially."

"And nobody found it."

The Headmaster’s expression cooled.

"It survived every standard inspection. The Ward is formally reviewed twice each year by three separate offices, in addition to the certification performed before every Founders’ Hunt."

Raven stared at her.

"Three offices."

"Yes."

"And whoever did this fooled all three."

"Yes."

"Plus whoever checked it before we went inside."

"Yes, Rivers."

Something moved behind the Headmaster’s expression and disappeared again.

"We have not yet established who laid the secondary working. Nor have we established how the operatives entered the Ward without registration seals."

Raven lay quietly for a moment and allowed the implications to settle.

Someone had worked beneath the existing inscription without damaging it, knew exactly how Valerius inspected the Ward and understood which parts of the working would escape notice. They had also known where the students would be, when the forest would seal and which protections would activate around them.

Raven looked at the Headmaster.

You don’t do all of that from outside.

The Headmaster watched the conclusion arrive on Raven’s face.

"One more question, Rivers."

The Headmaster stood.

"In eighteen years at Blackthorn, or since arriving here, did anyone ever suggest that your wolf might be unusual? An instructor, servant, healer. Anyone."

"They suggested I didn’t have one."

"That is not the same thing."

"No."

Raven looked down at her hands.

"It isn’t. But it’s all anyone ever gave me."

The Headmaster nodded once and turned toward the door.

Her hand had almost reached the handle when Raven remembered.

"The one Blade left alive."

The Headmaster stopped.

"The captive," Raven said.

"Yes."

"You put him in the lower cells."

"We did."

Raven waited.

"So what did he say?"

The Headmaster remained facing the door.

For a moment she said nothing.

That was enough.

Raven already knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.

"He killed himself."

Raven stared at her.

For a second, she thought she had heard wrong.

"When?"

"Several hours before dawn."

Her stomach tightened.

"With what?"

That was when the Headmaster finally looked back at her.

"We don’t know."

Raven’s brows drew together.

"He had nothing on him that should have made it possible."

Ah.

Of course.

"So we have nothing."

"We have a great deal," the Headmaster said. "None of it is an answer."

That sounded uncomfortably accurate.

She opened the door.

Then paused.

For the first time since entering the room, something in her expression changed in a way Raven couldn’t immediately read.

"Melissa sent a message for you."