Chapter 29: Invalidated

Chapter 29: Chapter 29: Invalidated

The ceremony settled into a rhythm. A name was called, a candidate entered the ring, and their token disappeared among the sigils. Moments later, the array cast everything it found into the air for the hall to judge.

Tessa was called early.

She crossed the floor without looking toward the crowded tiers and placed her token where the evaluator instructed.

POWER CLASS: AWAKENED

Strong essence control followed, then a preliminary standing high enough to send approving murmurs through Nikolai’s Wing.

"Recruitment eligible," the evaluator announced.

The hall waited.

None of the heirs spoke.

"Placement confirmed. Nikolai’s Wing."

Tessa collected her token and returned as calmly as she had gone down, though Raven caught the small breath she released before taking her seat.

None of the heirs spoke.

"You didn’t want anyone to claim you," Raven said.

"Would you?" Thalia asked. "Everyone else gets a show. Tessa would be the one packing her room and learning an entirely new wing before supper."

Tessa reached their row and gave her a flat look. "You know I can hear you."

"I’m explaining your relief."

"I wasn’t relieved."

"Of course not."

Tessa sat down beside them, her token disappearing into her pocket.

Thalia leaned toward Raven. "That was Tessa celebrating. You’ll learn."

"Thalia Marlowe."

Thalia shot upright.

"Oh gods." She caught Raven’s arm. "Don’t watch."

Then, before hurrying down the steps, she looked back.

"No, watch. If I collapse, tell everyone I looked beautiful."

Raven watched while feeling her lips tug to her irritation.

Thalia stood rigid inside the ring while the sigils searched her token. When AWAKENED appeared above her, followed by a standing several places below Tessa’s, she stared at it as though waiting for the array to change its mind.

It didn’t.

Her placement was confirmed without challenge.

Thalia returned with her nose in the air and dropped into her seat.

"I carried that array."

Her hands trembled as she tucked them beneath her thighs.

Brielle’s name came soon afterward.

She descended as though the entire hall had been waiting for her, placed her token among the sigils and stepped into the centre of the ring.

The array flared.

Light flooded the markings beneath her feet, brighter than it had for anyone else in Nikolai’s Wing.

POWER CLASS: TEMPERED

Stable essence control.

Third-highest preliminary standing of the afternoon.

Applause broke across their section. Brielle barely glanced at the result. She had already turned toward the platform, chin raised, her attention fixed on Nikolai.

He gave her a courteous nod.

"Confirmed."

Nothing more.

Brielle’s smile held while she collected her token and climbed back toward them. It held through every congratulation offered along the way.

Only when she sat did it disappear.

She placed the token carefully in her lap and kept her eyes on the array, as though Nikolai’s brief acknowledgment had meant exactly as much to her as she wanted everyone to believe.

Two candidates later, the hall got what it came for.

A broad-shouldered boy with a ducal crest produced a Tempered result and a standing just under Brielle’s, and Rowan’s voice came off the platform before the evaluator finished reading it.

"Rowan’s Wing."

"Contested," Cassian said.

The hall came apart.

"Cassian!"

"Rowan had him first!"

"Five points on Rowan keeping him!"

"You don’t have five points!"

Students climbed onto benches to see over one another. Tokens flashed from hand to hand as wagers were recorded, and somewhere in the upper tiers, a boy began shouting new odds until a prefect caught him by the collar and dragged him down.

Inside the array, the ducal boy’s face flushed. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, chin rising as the noise swelled around him.

Cassian glanced at the result still burning above the floor. "Second-highest control shown today. Seventeen merit marks. I’ll take him."

"His bloodline produces ward-breakers," Rowan said. "Your wing already has two."

"One graduates this year."

"The other outranks him."

The students answered that like a blow had landed.

Cassian’s eyes returned to the boy. The boy stood even straighter beneath the inspection, visibly fighting a smile while two heirs discussed his bloodline, his standing and whether he was valuable enough to keep.

He looked honoured.

He looked, Raven thought, like a horse pleased by the auction.

Cassian leaned back. "Then a third would be redundant. Withdrawn."

Half the hall cheered. The other half erupted in curses as points changed hands across the tiers.

"Claim confirmed," Rowan said.

The array branded Rowan’s crest across the boy’s token. He bowed deeply toward the platform before leaving the floor, while the winners celebrated as though they had secured the placement themselves.

"That," Thalia said happily, "was small. Last year two heirs almost dueled over a triplet set. Most students would give half their entrance points to get contested. It’s the biggest thing that can happen to you down there."

"Being argued over."

"Being wanted." Thalia shrugged. "Same thing here."

Raven turned that over and found it fit nothing she knew, so she filed it and watched the next token go in — and awareness prickled up the back of her neck like a drawn blade.

She looked at the platform.

Dante was staring at her.

Nothing lazy remained in his face. He’d come forward in the chair without seeming to know it, and his amber-gold eyes held the same burning, unanswered thing they’d held in the assessment court, fixed on her as though the question she’d put into him through his own grip had been eating at him ever since.

Raven held the stare. Looking away first had never once helped her.

Her fingers had closed around her own wrist, right where his hand had caught it, before she noticed them doing it—

Thalia’s elbow found her ribs. "Raven. Raven. They called you."

The whispers walked down with her.

That’s the one — the record — Blade’s record. Look at the hair. That’s dye. That’s bleach-house work, my maid had the same. She did it to look like Cassian, watch, she is just a bi—

Raven kept her steps even and her mouth shut, though the last one cost her.

At the array’s edge, the evaluator held out her hand. Raven gave over her token — dark metal, sigil-veined, and bare. No House crest. The evaluator’s assistant glanced at the blank face of it, then at a colleague, and someone in the lower tiers laughed outright.

The token went into the array.

The sigils lit, and ran their search, and faltered. Light crawled halfway around the ring and stalled there, flickering, while the air above the array stayed empty.

No result.

The laughter spread. A boy’s voice carried over it, loud on purpose: "Is this what I think it is?"

Along the tiers, students leaned together in knots, and the word ran ahead of the evaluator’s raised hand, gathering speed as it went, spoken with more relish each time it landed.

Invalidated.

The evaluator’s hand passed over the sigils to reset them.

Raven stood at the edge of the dark ring, and under her ribs, something faint stirred.