Chapter 43 — Taken Before Dawn

Chapter 43: Chapter 43 — Taken Before Dawn

~ Raven ~

"What the fuck?"

The shape beside her bed didn’t move.

Raven stared up at it, still half tangled in sleep, waiting for the darkness to turn it into something sensible. Thalia sleepwalking. Brielle hovering over her because Raven had somehow annoyed her in her sleep. Anything except—

Her eyes adjusted.

A dark wolf mask stared back at her, its carved eyes empty. Whoever wore it was dressed entirely in black, without an academy crest or House colour anywhere. Gloved hands hung loose at their sides.

That’s not Thalia.

The figure reached for her.

"Goddess’s teeth—" Raven jerked back, her voice cracking. "I have a knife."

It was locked inside her storage chest, three steps away.

"Somewhere," she added.

The hand kept coming, so she stopped negotiating and kicked.

Her heel drove into the figure’s knee.

The masked wolf grunted—a man’s grunt—and lurched sideways. Raven was already twisting across the mattress, fighting the blankets tangled around her legs as she scrambled for the other side.

A hand caught her arm.

Another pair of hands closed around her other one. She hadn’t even heard the second intruder move.

Raven struck backward with her free hand, caught the carved muzzle and pulled. The mask shifted. A woman’s jaw flashed beneath it before an arm locked around Raven’s waist and dragged her hard against a chest that felt like a wall.

"Let—go—"

The room woke all at once.

Tessa surfaced first. She took one look at the masked shapes standing between the beds and screamed—properly screamed, every breath laced with curses Raven hadn’t known the quiet girl possessed.

"GET OUT! WHO ARE YOU? GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER!"

Thalia scrambled backward until her shoulders struck the wall, clutching her blanket to her chest.

"What do you want?" Her voice cracked. "What the hell do you want?"

Brielle woke up swinging.

No questions. No pause to work out what was happening. Her fist came off the pillow and caught the nearest intruder across the face hard enough to knock his wolf mask sideways. Then she was out of bed, driving toward the door with her shoulder lowered.

The masked wolves said nothing.

Not to Tessa’s screaming. Not to Thalia’s questions. Not even the man Brielle had punched, who calmly straightened his mask and stepped back into her path.

Male or female, Raven could only tell them apart by their builds. They all wore the same black clothes, the same carved masks.

And every one of them remained silent.

That silence frightened Raven more than the masks did.

Academy staff would have barked orders. Prefects would have threatened punishment. Anyone with a reasonable excuse for entering a girls’ dormitory before dawn would have led with it.

Raven’s stomach went cold.

Blackthorn.

Three seconds later, the thought collapsed under its own weight.

Blackthorn wouldn’t need masks. They would want Raven to know exactly whose hands were dragging her away. And no House, however furious, would invade a Cardinal Wing to abduct four unrelated girls in their nightclothes.

Which left Raven with nothing.

No name. No reason. No idea what these people wanted.

Somehow, that was worse.

Raven drove her elbow backward until the arm around her waist loosened. She tore free, stumbled two steps toward the door—

And saw a masked wolf grab Thalia on her way out.

Raven turned without thinking. She threw herself onto his back, hooked an arm across the eye slits of his mask and sank her teeth into his wrist through the glove.

He swore—the first word any of them had spoken.

Tessa’s washbasin struck him in the shoulder.

A boot followed.

Then the entire water jug.

Apparently, Tessa had decided her role tonight was artillery.

"NEXT ONE’S THE LAMP!"

Brielle was still fighting. She had driven one attacker into the wardrobe and was trying to put another through the door. Whatever signal that sent, it worked.

More masked figures poured into the room.

Beyond them, the corridor was screaming.

Not one voice.

Dozens.

A hand caught the remains of Raven’s sleeve. She twisted away, leaving the intruder holding a strip of cloth, and stumbled through the doorway.

The entire residence had come apart.

Every door stood open. Girls were being dragged from their rooms all along the corridor, some fighting, some crying, most doing both. The masked wolves moved through the chaos with the calm patience of people working their way down a list.

A first-year sprinted for the stairwell. She made it four steps before two figures peeled away from the wall and folded her over one of their shoulders.

Across the corridor, another girl had half-shifted in panic. Fur covered one arm and claws had burst from her fingers, but the transformation had stopped there. She stood trapped between forms, snarling at anyone who came close.

Objects flew from the open rooms.

A lamp.

A chair.

The lid of someone’s storage chest.

Near the washroom, a small, furious girl was holding off a masked wolf twice her size with a hairbrush.

Raven respected her enormously.

Nobody knows.

The thought cut cleanly through the noise.

Nobody in this building knew what was happening. Whoever these people were, they had entered every locked room at the same time.

Then the masked wolves guarding the stairwell stepped aside.

Nobody gave an order. They simply moved, clearing a path as smoothly as the cafeteria had cleared for Dante.

One figure walked through the middle of them.

Taller than the others. Broader too. It took its time coming down the corridor, unconcerned by the screaming students and the furniture still flying from the rooms.

Oh, Raven thought. That one’s in charge.

The leader stopped in the centre of the corridor and released its aura.

The pressure hit without warning. Screams broke off throughout the residence, and Raven staggered as an invisible weight came down across her shoulders.

Students dropped everywhere.

The girl near the stairs went flat. The half-shifted student collapsed as her claws withdrew and the fur disappeared from her arm. Thalia folded almost immediately, huddling against the doorframe with her hands over her head.

Tessa fought it down to one knee and stayed there, swearing through clenched teeth in one low, unbroken stream as though sheer obscenity might keep the rest of her off the floor.

Brielle lasted the longest.

She braced herself with both hands against the wall, arms trembling under the invisible weight. For several seconds, she remained upright through what looked like pure spite.

Then her legs gave out.

Raven stayed standing.

She didn’t understand it either.

The aura ground against her shoulders and spine, patient and enormous. It carried the same command Kieran’s aura had pressed into her in the cafeteria.

Kneel.

Everyone kneels.

The floor is right there.

Her knees buckled. Raven caught herself against the wall, teeth bared as she fought for breath.

Something caged inside her chest surged upward to meet the pressure.

Awake and furious.

Her eyes began to burn. Heat gathered behind them, spreading until the edges of her vision turned pale—

Hands seized her from every direction.

Three sets. Four.

They caught her while the aura still had her hollowed out. Cold bands snapped around her wrists, and sigil-lines flared across the metal before sinking into her skin.

Raven fought anyway.

It changed nothing, but the alternative had never suited her.

Wonderful.

Kidnapped by people with a uniform policy.

They marched the students out exactly as they had found them.

Barefoot. Dishevelled. Dressed for bed.

The finest academy on the continent, and its entire first year was being paraded through the halls in their nightclothes.

Nobody was allowed to collect shoes or a cloak. One girl reached for hers and earned restraint bands for the attempt. The students who continued fighting were bound like Raven. Everyone else was herded downstairs in a long, shuffling column while masked wolves paced along both sides.

Raven kept her roommates in sight.

Thalia was pale and stumbling. Tessa was still working through an apparently endless supply of curses. Brielle walked with her chin raised, studying every guard as though deciding which coffin would fit them best.

Whenever the four girls drifted toward one another, a masked figure stepped between them.

Questions came from every direction.

Frightened ones. Furious ones. Demands to know where they were being taken.

One girl kept shouting, "Do you know whose daughter I am?"

She received the same answer as everyone else.

None.

At the next stairwell, another column was forced into theirs. Boys this time, dragged from a different residence in the same state as the girls—barefoot, half-dressed and furious.

The gates lay to the right.

Their captors turned left.

They continued deeper into the academy, past the lecture halls and down another flight of stairs.

Not out, Raven realized. In.

Invaders took hostages toward the exits. These people were marching a hundred first-years into the heart of the school they had supposedly attacked.

Which meant this probably wasn’t an invasion at all.

The realization should have eased the pressure in Raven’s chest.

It didn’t.

The column passed beneath one final archway, and the space beyond it opened.

The Grand Drill Court stretched beneath the moon, an enclosed training ground large enough to swallow the cafeteria twice over. Cold light poured through the high lattice ceiling and fell across painted boundary lines covering the floor in patterns Raven didn’t recognize.

A raised platform stood at the far end, its silver-worked surface catching the moonlight.

More masked figures waited along the walls.

Dozens of them.

Motionless.

The last students were forced inside, and the doors slammed shut behind them.

The sound rolled around the court twice.

Then everyone started shouting.

Demands. Threats. Questions. Someone was crying. A boy yelled his House name at the ceiling as though his family might hear him from there.

"Let us out!"

"Who are you?"

"You can’t do this!"

Students pressed forward against the line of masked wolves, their fear sharpening into anger now that there was nowhere left to run.

One masked figure stepped away from the wall.

It walked alone to the centre of the court and stopped where all the painted lines met.

"Welcome, pups."

The word did not improve anyone’s mood.

The shouting grew louder. Uglier. Several students surged forward until the masked wolves along the boundary moved to stop them.

The figure in the centre raised one hand.

"It is time for your First Howl."