Chapter 37 — The Blackthorn Twins

Chapter 37: Chapter 37 — The Blackthorn Twins

~ Raven ~

Neither twin moved.

Raven’s fingers curled into her palm. The sight of them pulled at an old reflex in her that made her grit her teeth. Her chin dipped before she caught herself.

No.

She raised it again and stared at the both of them.

Kieran wasn’t looking at her face. His stare had fixed on her Valerius uniform, then Nikolai’s crest at her collar. His jaw tightened as his eyes returned to the crest, as if looking twice might change it.

Alaric said nothing. He took in the token in Raven’s hand, then Brielle, Thalia and Tessa standing beside her. His expression barely shifted, but he had gone completely still.

They knew she had escaped.

It wasn’t seeing Raven alive that had stopped them.

It was seeing her here.

"Alaric." Celeste’s whole posture changed — the wolf sliding back beneath her skin, the fury reshaping itself into relief so fast it was almost impressive.

She crossed toward them with her hands lifting. "Kieran. Thank the Goddess you’re here. Do you know what she’s been—"

Neither of them looked at her.

Celeste faltered mid-step, hands still raised toward brothers who hadn’t spared her a glance.

Raven watched the irritation flick across her face, watched her swallow it, and then watched her do what Celeste always did with a weapon she couldn’t swing herself.

She handed it to someone bigger.

"She’s been telling the entire cafeteria that you hid the mate bond." Celeste moved beside them, feeding it to them piece by piece.

"Two years," Celeste said. "She said you both knew for two years and hid it—from Father, from everyone."

Her eyes stayed fixed on her brothers.

"She told the entire cafeteria that she rejected you. Both of you."

For the first time, her gaze darted toward Raven. It lasted barely a second before sliding away.

Raven remembered that same face across the Blackthorn reception hall. Celeste had stood beside the twins when Raven rejected them. She had heard every word.

Celeste’s fingers tightened in her skirt.

"And now she’s wearing Nikolai’s crest, telling everyone you can’t touch her. That Father can’t touch her." Her voice had climbed, but the final words caught. "Tell them..."

She looked from Kieran to Alaric, still refusing to face Raven.

"Tell them she’s lying."

Kieran’s jaw tightened. Alaric’s eyes returned to Nikolai’s crest when Celeste said they could not touch Raven.

Celeste noticed both.

She stepped closer to her brothers, and whatever uncertainty had caught in her voice disappeared.

The cafeteria waited.

The twins said nothing.

Raven felt the room tilt around that silence. Two hundred students had spent the last ten minutes watching her for proof, and now, table by table, their eyes shifted to the twins for a denial that wasn’t coming.

Somewhere behind her a girl whispered, "They’re not saying no," and nobody hushed her.

Celeste heard it too. Her gaze snapped from one brother to the other, waiting for the correction, and it didn’t come, and something in her expression began to slide.

Kieran broke first. He always had.

"What are you doing here?" The question came out low and furious, and underneath the fury sat something rawer, as though her existing inside this building was a personal insult. "How are you here?"

Raven glanced down at her uniform, then back up.

"What does it look like? I’m a student."

"That’s not—" His jaw worked. "You don’t just—"

"How did you gain admission?" Alaric asked. Cold and precise.

"I passed."

He stared at her as though the answer were in a language he refused to learn. She could see him working the problem behind those flat eyes — the assessment, the sponsorship, the Wing placement, every gate she’d have needed to pass and every gate that should have been locked against her.

"The Headmaster had more faith in the result than you do," Raven said. "Take it up with her."

A choked sound came from one of the tables — a laugh, strangled at birth. Kieran’s head turned toward it and whoever had made it stopped existing.

"You’re coming with us." He looked back at Raven. "Now. We’ll speak privately."

"No."

The word landed flat between them. He blinked at it — actually blinked, as though she’d spoken out of turn at dinner service.

"This is a Blackthorn matter—"

"Blackthorn lost the right to question me when you both stood next to Celeste and watched your family hunt me off the territory."

Raven didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to; the cafeteria was doing the listening for her. "You made your choice. Go ask Celeste if you need something explained. She’s good at stories."

Kieran’s eyes flared — not fully, but the wolf was there, pushing up behind them. And under the anger, plain enough that Raven almost pitied him, sat disbelief.

The dish girl had never once held his gaze. The dish girl had never spoken to him without my lord stitched to the end of it. He kept looking at her mouth as though the words must have come from somewhere else.

Get used to it, she thought. That girl drowned in your father’s banquet hall.

He reached for her arm.

Raven stepped back out of range and let her voice carry to every table in the room.

"I rejected you. Both of you. I don’t belong to Blackthorn, and I don’t go anywhere privately with either of you."

"You don’t get to decide that alone," Kieran said.

"Which part of rejecting you sounded uncertain?"

"Neither of us accepted it."

Alaric’s voice cut through the whole cafeteria, quiet as it was.

For one heartbeat, nothing.

Then the room went up.

It wasn’t whispering anymore — it was noise, open and spreading, students turning to each other, half-standing to see over heads, the same words ricocheting table to table.

It’s true. All of it. The servant was mate to both heirs — and she rejected them — and they said it, they just said it themselves—

A laugh escaped from one of the tables. Celeste spun toward it, her face going white.

Then Alaric’s voice came from somewhere behind Raven.

"Neither of us accepted it."

Raven turned sharply.

A girl two tables away held a narrow rectangle of black glass in one hand, no longer than her palm. A thin silver edge enclosed its smooth surface, and a red rune pulsed just above it. Several students held identical pieces aimed at Celeste and the twins.

The girl touched the rune. It disappeared. She slid her thumb across the dark glass, and its surface brightened.

Celeste appeared within it, small but unmistakable, standing between her brothers with one hand wrapped around Kieran’s sleeve. The girl had angled the glass toward the student beside her. She touched the image showing her.

It began to move.

"Neither of us accepted it," the tiny Alaric said again.

Raven frowned at the glass. It had swallowed the last few moments—faces, voices and all—and now it was giving them back.

Celeste understood what it was before Raven did.

Her eyes darted across the cafeteria. More red runes vanished as students lowered their glass rectangles and began replaying what they had captured. Her own face stared back at her from every direction.

Her breathing shortened. She looked from one device to the next, then clutched Kieran’s sleeve harder.

Only minutes ago, she had demanded that the cafeteria expose Raven as a liar.

Now half the room could show everyone exactly which one of them had lied.

Raven looked straight at Alaric.

"I wasn’t asking permission."

Kieran lunged for her arm again.

A hand cracked against his wrist and knocked it aside, and Brielle planted herself between them.

"Fuck’s sake, Raven. You couldn’t have warned us?" She said it sideways, without taking her eyes off the twins, and then squared up to them properly. "Whatever happened at Blackthorn, that’s Blackthorn’s problem. She wears Nikolai’s crest now. You put hands on her inside Valerius, you’re making it Wing business — and Wings don’t forget."

"Move," Kieran said.

"No."

She held her ground, but Raven was close enough to see what it cost — the tension running down Brielle’s blocking arm, her weight settled low, the stance of someone standing in front of a moving carriage and knowing it.

Kieran knocked Brielle’s arm aside and stepped through the space she had been guarding.

Alaric came with him. Neither brother slowed. Brielle held her ground until Kieran was almost against her, then stepped back under his pressure.

They kept coming.

She retreated again, then again. Her heel struck a chair, and Thalia caught her before she fell into the table behind them.

Tessa moved forward.

Alaric looked at her.

He said nothing. His expression did not change. He simply watched her take that first step and waited for the second.

It never came.

Nobody else in the cafeteria moved to help. Two hundred students, and not one of them so much as scraped a chair.

So this is what Vanguard means, Raven thought. Everyone here grew up on their stories. I only grew up in their house.

Kieran stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the color bleeding through his irises — not the plain amber of an ordinary wolf.

Something deeper ran under it, a burning blue-white at the rim, like the hottest part of a flame.

The first weight of his aura settled over her shoulders.

"Kneel," Kieran said.