Chapter 208 — Just One More Secret

Chapter 208: Chapter 208 — Just One More Secret

~ Raven ~

"Raven, what the fuck is wrong with you?!"

Brielle was clutching her chest, looking as though she was seriously considering throwing something at her.

"First you nearly get us thrown out for making noise, and now you’re screaming like somebody’s being murdered!"

"I didn’t mean to!" Raven protested, although she could barely tear her eyes away from the papers scattered across the floor.

"Then what the hell happened?"

Raven opened her mouth, but nothing useful came out.

Tessa sighed and crouched to gather the papers before any of them disappeared beneath the beds.

"Honestly, you could have just told us something was there instead of throwing everything across the room."

"I know. I just—"

Tessa stopped speaking when something on one of the pages caught her attention. She brought it closer, adjusting her glasses as she examined the handwriting.

"Wait a moment. Raven, why do you have this?"

Raven noticed the change in her expression, and her stomach dropped.

Oh, fuck.

"Have what?" Brielle asked, already moving closer.

Tessa turned the page toward her, and Brielle’s expression changed almost immediately.

"Hold on. Is that...?"

Raven hurried forward, reaching for the papers.

"Give me that."

Unfortunately, Tessa had already started examining another page.

"Isn’t this from Beyond the Chains?"

Brielle’s eyes widened.

"What?!"

She practically snatched the manuscript from Tessa, scanning the first few lines with increasing disbelief while Raven stood beside them, wondering why Cassian couldn’t have simply handed her the bloody thing like a normal person.

"Raven," Brielle said slowly, turning another page, "why do you have handwritten pages from this book?"

"Because they’re mine."

Both women looked at her, and Raven immediately regretted her choice of words.

"I mean, they’re my belongings. Can I have them back?"

Brielle ignored her, examining the writing more closely.

"This isn’t even the published version. These are scenes from the sequel."

Tessa leaned closer, looking interested.

"Are you certain?"

"Of course I’m certain! I’ve read the first book three times."

"Four," Thalia corrected from behind them.

Brielle turned toward her.

"What?"

"You said you read it four times."

"That’s not the bloody point!"

Raven took advantage of the distraction to reach for the manuscript, but Tessa had already noticed another document lying beside her knee.

She picked it up, unfolded it and began reading. Whatever she discovered made her pause before slowly turning the letter toward Brielle.

"Look at who it’s addressed to."

Brielle glanced over, and Raven knew the exact moment they saw the name written across the correspondence.

Both women went completely still.

Thalia, who had been watching the exchange with growing confusion, stepped closer to see what had suddenly silenced them.

"What’s happening?"

Neither answered. Instead, Tessa slowly raised her eyes toward Raven, her expression caught somewhere between disbelief and dawning suspicion.

"R. Vale?"

Raven swallowed.

Brielle turned toward her, still clutching the manuscript.

"Raven."

"Oh, Goddess."

"Raven Rivers."

She knew that tone. It was the same one Brielle used whenever she was seconds away from doing something extraordinarily unpleasant.

"Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is."

Raven glanced at the letter in Tessa’s hand, then at the manuscript Brielle was holding. There was absolutely no escaping this, especially when both women were staring at her as though they were waiting for her to confess to some terrible crime.

She sighed.

"Fine. Yes, I’m R. Vale."

For several seconds, nobody spoke, and Raven almost dared to hope that they might accept the information without making a scene.

Then Brielle stared at her as though she’d just confessed to setting Valerius on fire.

"You’re fucking WHAT?!"

"Keep your voice down!"

"YOU’RE R. VALE?!"

"Brielle!"

Thalia stepped backward, looking between Raven and the manuscript in disbelief.

"Wait. You wrote Beyond the Chains?"

Raven nodded reluctantly, while Tessa removed her glasses and rubbed a hand over her face.

"Oh, Goddess."

Brielle, however, looked positively furious.

"No. Absolutely not."

Raven frowned at her.

"What do you mean, absolutely not?"

"You have got to be fucking kidding me!"

"Would you stop shouting?"

"Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for the sequel?!"

Raven blinked, not entirely certain what she’d expected Brielle to say, but it certainly hadn’t been that.

"Months, Raven! Months! I’ve been complaining about that bloody author taking forever, and all this time you’ve been sleeping right beside me?"

Thalia covered her mouth, although the laughter escaping her was impossible to miss.

Brielle pointed an accusing finger at Raven.

"And you listened to me complain!"

"Well, what was I supposed to do?"

"TELL ME!"

"I was trying to keep it a secret!"

"From your own roommates?!"

Tessa had recovered enough to put her glasses back on, although she was still studying Raven with astonishment.

"Why didn’t you tell us?"

Thalia nodded, looking equally aggrieved.

"Seriously, Raven. We’ve talked about this book so many times, and you never said anything."

Raven opened her mouth, intending to explain herself, but her attention drifted toward the manuscript still in Brielle’s hands.

The pages, the letters and even the money she’d hidden away were all here, along with the other belongings she hadn’t seen since leaving Blackthorn.

For a moment, she forgot what Tessa had asked.

Cassian had been gone for six days.

Six whole days without telling her where he was going or when he intended to return, and when he’d finally appeared at Valerius, she’d been so relieved to see him that she hadn’t properly questioned his disappearance.

But what if he’d gone to Blackthorn?

Raven felt something unpleasant tighten in her stomach as she remembered his unexplained ruffled look and how little he’d told her about where he’d been.

She knew how heavily the Blackthorns guarded their estate, particularly the private areas of the House. Even someone as powerful as Cassian couldn’t simply enter another Great House’s territory without risking serious consequences if he was discovered.

And if Aldric Blackthorn found out that the Blade heir had secretly entered his estate, there was no telling what sort of trouble might follow.

Fuck.

She looked at the manuscript again, wondering how Cassian had even known where to find it.

She hadn’t told him about the floorboards, and she certainly hadn’t asked him to retrieve anything. Yet he’d somehow brought back the very things she’d been certain were gone forever.

The possibility frightened her far more than she expected.

Cassian was powerful, certainly, but that didn’t make him invincible, and the idea that he might have risked his life simply to recover her belongings left Raven with an uncomfortable feeling she couldn’t quite explain.

She didn’t know whether she wanted to thank him or curse at him for being such a reckless bastard.

More troubling was the question of why he’d gone to such lengths in the first place.

He’d understood how much her writing meant to her, apparently well enough to do something completely ridiculous to recover it, and Raven had no idea what she was supposed to do with that information.

For years, those pages had been one of the few things in her life that truly belonged to her. She’d written them in secret, hidden them carefully and spent countless nights working on a story nobody at Blackthorn was supposed to know existed.

Now they were back in her hands because Cassian Blade had apparently decided that recovering them was worth whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into.

And after everything that had happened between them at the Ball, Raven wasn’t certain she could bear thinking too carefully about what that meant.

"Raven!"

She startled and looked up to find Brielle standing directly in front of her.

"What?"

"We’ve been talking to you!"

"Oh."

Tessa frowned, studying her expression.

"Are you alright?"

Raven glanced at the manuscript again before nodding.

"I’m fine. Just... surprised."

Brielle looked thoroughly unconvinced, but before she could resume the interrogation, Raven reached for the letters in Tessa’s hand.

"Listen, there’s something I need you all to promise me."

The three women exchanged looks, and Thalia was the first to ask what she wanted.

"Nobody can know I’m R. Vale," Raven explained. "Not the other students, not the Luna Court, nobody."

Brielle frowned.

"Why?"

"Because I don’t want the attention, Brielle. I’ve already got enough people sticking their noses into my life without giving them another reason."

That, at least, was something none of them could reasonably dispute.

Tessa nodded first, returning the letters to Raven.

"Of course. It’s your secret."

Thalia agreed immediately, while Brielle hesitated just long enough to make Raven suspicious.

"Brielle."

"Oh, fine!" She threw up her hands. "I won’t tell anyone, but you owe me an explanation about that sequel."

Raven sighed as she added the letters to the bundle.

"Goddess, you’re impossible."

"And you’re a bloody liar!"

"I didn’t lie!"

"You let me complain about being abandoned by an author who was sleeping three feet away!"

Thalia started laughing again, and even Tessa couldn’t quite suppress her smile.

Raven retrieved the remaining pages before Brielle found another reason to confiscate them, carefully gathering everything into the wrapping and placing the bundle safely on her bed.

Now that she had it back, she had no intention of letting those idiots scatter it across the room again.

Unfortunately, the interrogation wasn’t over.

"Actually," Brielle said, folding her arms, "I’ve got another question."

Raven immediately disliked the look on her face.

"What now?"

"Do you have any more secrets?"

Raven opened her mouth.

"Of course I don’t h—"

She stopped before finishing the sentence, suddenly aware of what she’d almost done.

The three women stared at her.

Fucking hell.

Brielle’s eyes narrowed.

"No."

Tessa straightened, looking at Raven with renewed suspicion.

"Raven?"

Thalia glanced between them.

"Wait. There’s more?"

Raven bit her lower lip, and whatever hope she’d had of escaping the conversation disappeared when Brielle noticed.

"You have got to be joking," Brielle muttered, looking personally betrayed.

Raven rubbed her forehead, wondering whether she could simply climb out of the window and disappear for the rest of the evening.

Unfortunately, she’d already decided to stop hiding everything from her friends.

They’d worried about her, defended her and kept trying to understand what was happening even when she’d refused to explain herself. And after everything they’d revealed about their own lives tonight, continuing to lie seemed rather unfair.

Besides, if she was going to trust anyone with something this ridiculous, it might as well be the three women who had somehow tolerated living with her through one disaster after another.

She glanced toward the manuscript again before sighing.

"Fine. There’s something else."

Brielle looked at her in disbelief.

"Goddess, how many lives have you been living?!"

"Will you let me finish?"

Nobody answered, although the expressions on their faces made it painfully obvious that they were preparing themselves for something dreadful.

Raven drew a breath, suddenly wondering how she was supposed to explain something she barely understood herself.

"I think I might be the Alpha Queen."

Thalia stared at her for several seconds before turning away, walking back to her bed and sitting down as though her legs had suddenly stopped cooperating.

Brielle’s mouth fell open.

And Tessa’s glasses slipped crookedly across her face without her seeming to notice.