Chapter 53 — Aggressively Low-Key

Chapter 53: Chapter 53 — Aggressively Low-Key

~ Raven ~

The first laugh slipped out before she could stop it.

It wasn’t loud. Just one short, ugly sound that carried farther across the quiet court than it had any right to.

Celeste’s expression changed almost immediately. Confusion came first, like she couldn’t quite believe Raven was laughing at her. Then her eyes narrowed, and color began creeping up her throat into her cheeks.

That was new.

Celeste had spent eighteen years looking beautiful while making other people miserable. Apparently, doing it with a glowing paw print on her forehead was harder.

Raven put a hand over her mouth.

Stop. You are in public. You are trying to be a person nobody notices.

She got it down to a breath. She nearly had it.

Then her eyes went back to the middle of Celeste’s forehead, where the little red paw sat glowing steadily through a very carefully arranged sweep of pale hair.

You have no place among wolves with blood and names and futures, said Celeste’s voice, from a kitchen, nine days ago.

And Raven thought about crawling up a silver platform on her elbows at four in the morning with her palms split open, doing it precisely so she would not have to wear that.

The second laugh got away from her completely.

Around them, the academic court began to go quiet in patches.

A conversation died six feet to Raven’s left. Then another behind it. Heads came up, and followed Raven’s line of sight, and found what she was looking at.

A boy from another Wing snorted into his fist. His friend elbowed him hard enough to stagger him. A Rowan House girl turned and gave them both a look that should have removed skin.

"Is that Blackthorn?"

"She failed?"

"Shut up — shut up, she’s looking—"

Two slates came up at chest height, angled with enormous casualness at nothing in particular.

Raven’s laugh very nearly died in her throat.

Bellringer.

Then she thought about it for one more second, and decided that if that theatrical bell-shaped bastard could freeze her mid-scream in front of the whole academy and put it out before breakfast, and then fail to run this, she was going to find him herself and make it a personal matter.

"Very low-key," Thalia murmured.

"I’m aware."

Tessa had turned her face away and was studying a pillar with tremendous concentration. Her shoulders were not cooperating.

Brielle wasn’t laughing.

Raven frowned not because she wasn’t laughing but something about her posture tugged at her. Brielle stood with her arms folded and her eyes fixed on the woman beside Celeste, and she hadn’t looked away once.

Raven’s amusement dropped a little.

Celeste took a step forward.

Her humiliation had finished converting. Her chin came up, her hands came open, and the air around her began to gather—

"Celeste."

Isolde Marchmont did not raise her voice.

Celeste stopped like she’d hit glass.

Isolde’s gaze went to Celeste’s forehead. One unhurried look, long enough to be a comment.

Then she turned away from her, and Celeste stood there in front of over forty people wearing her mark with nothing to hide behind.

"Raven Rivers," Isolde said.

"Isolde Marchmont," Raven said.

She’d meant it to come out flat. It came out slightly careful, and she disliked that.

Isolde’s attention moved past her shoulder.

And changed.

"Vance."

Beside Raven, Brielle’s spine went a fraction straighter.

"Marchmont."

A whisper went through the students nearest them, fast, like water finding a crack. Somebody said Marchmont and Vance and got hushed so hard it was audible.

"Your mother must have taken the Wing selection well," Isolde said pleasantly.

"She managed."

"I imagine there was a letter."

"There was a letter." Brielle’s chin didn’t move. "I’m surprised yours had the time to discuss it."

Two older students exchanged a look. One of them let out a breath through his nose.

Thalia’s eyes had gone enormous.

Isolde smiled. It was small and it wasn’t friendly or hostile.

"You’re exactly as pleasant as I remember."

"I could say the same."

Well, Raven thought. That explains the not laughing.

Isolde turned back, and her eyes went briefly to the insignia at Raven’s collar.

"Twentieth Seat on your first day."

Raven waited for the knife.

"Impressive."

Raven blinked.

She had prepared for perhaps nine cultured different insults and had nothing whatsoever ready for that.

"Thank you," she said, cautiously.

"Keeping a Seat on the other hand," Isolde said, "is considerably harder than taking one."

There it was.

Around them, three girls with crescent-marked insignia reacted at once — one looked straight at Raven’s collar, one leaned toward her friend and whispered behind her hand, and the third just stared at Raven like she was trying to figure her out.

Celeste had had enough.

"Isolde, you should know that she—"

"I do know."

Isolde didn’t look at her or raise her voice, and Celeste’s sentence died on the floor between them.

"The Bellringer was thorough this morning," Isolde said to Raven. "You’ve made yourself difficult to miss."

"I’ve been trying extremely hard to accomplish the opposite."

Isolde’s eyes stayed on Raven a beat past the end of the conversation. Not unfriendly but more like she was measuring her.

Then the First Bell rang out across the court.

"I wouldn’t recommend opening your first real academic day by losing points for lateness," Isolde said, and moved off.

Celeste went after her, rigid, the paw print glowing on her forehead all the way down the court.

At the last moment Isolde glanced back — not at Raven.

Brielle held the look until it was gone.

Then kept watching the space where it had been for several seconds longer than she needed to.

"You know her," Raven said.

"Our families know each other."

Thalia made a sound like a cat with a bone in it.

Raven turned. "What."

"Know each other." Thalia flapped a hand. "That’s — Raven, that’s like saying the twins and Dante had a small disagreement in a cafeteria."

"Marchmont and Vance have been going at each other over the Crown Wardenship for about six generations," Tessa said, hitching her bag up. "Two Houses, one post. Every time it comes open they both put a name in."

"We’re going to be late," Brielle said.

She set a pace that made Tessa’s bruised leg complain and Thalia hurry to catch up, and she did it without once looking back at the court, which was how Raven knew the subject was supposed to be closed.

Thalia held out until the second staircase.

"You know she isn’t First Seat just because she’s a Marchmont."

"Thalia."

"There’s the bloodline, obviously, they’re all—" Thalia lowered her voice without slowing down. "But she awakened at sixteen."

Raven looked over. "Awakened what?"

"Later," Brielle said this time with a warning in her tone.