Chapter 55 — House Redress

Chapter 55: Chapter 55 — House Redress

~ Raven ~

Nobody moved.

Forty people had turned round to look at her and not one of them said anything, and Raven sat there with her pen still in her hand and understood exactly one thing: whatever House Redress meant, everyone in this room was familiar with it already.

Behind her, somebody breathed out.

"He actually filed."

"Over the cafeteria?"

"Shut up—"

Raven leaned toward Tessa without taking her eyes off the front of the room.

"What is Redress?"

"It’s when a House—"

"Heir Rowan." Berry’s voice went straight over the top of her. "You’ll state the grievance. Now, please, since you’ve already taken my lesson."

Rowan turned.

He was, Raven noted with some irritation, extremely good-looking.

Dark hair cut neat, a hard jaw, clean features — the sort of face that would have been easier to dislike if there were anything obviously wrong with it.

There wasn’t.

Rowan looked over the room once, and somehow managed to make forty first-years feel like an inconvenience.

"House Rowan petitions for formal Redress over the public disgrace of members carrying its crest."

He spoke without hurry.

"Yesterday, in the main cafeteria, Kieran and Alaric Blackthorn — both Vanguard, both sworn to Rowan House under standing accord — were publicly humiliated and seriously injured before the student body."

His gaze moved briefly across the room.

"Celeste Blackthorn was disgraced in the same incident. By the end of the hour, recordings had spread through the academy."

A pause.

"Rowan House’s standing suffered with them."

Raven found her voice.

"I didn’t touch anyone."

Rowan kept talking.

"The grievance is filed against the individual whose conduct initiated the incident—"

"I didn’t lay a hand on either of them. I wasn’t the one who—"

"—and the petition is entered under my seal, witnessed, this morning."

He didn’t even look at her.

Raven waited a beat, thinking maybe he would.

He didn’t.

A few heads nearby turned in her direction instead, which somehow made it worse. Rowan had heard her perfectly well. He just kept speaking as though she hadn’t said anything at all.

Raven’s ears went hot.

She pressed her lips together and said nothing.

"Rivers."

Berry had picked up the document.

"You’ve clearly never had Redress explained to you."

Raven said nothing.

"It’s an old academy right. If a House claims a student has publicly damaged its standing, it can demand formal satisfaction."

She turned the page.

"This one is filed against you personally. Not Nikolai’s Wing."

Raven frowned. "What’s the difference?"

"A large one."

Berry looked at Rowan, then back at her.

"If Rowan House had filed against your Wing, Nikolai would be answering it. Two Cardinal Houses would be involved, and none of us would still be sitting in this classroom."

Raven looked down at the seal again.

"But they didn’t."

"No." Berry’s mouth flattened. "They filed against one first-year."

So nobody can turn it into a fight between heirs, Raven thought. There’s just me.

"The requested consequences," Rowan said.

Berry read the terms.

"Deduction from the named student’s personal Academy Points. Corresponding Redress points restored to Rowan House’s collective standing."

The room reacted before Raven did.

A low stir moved through the seats behind her. Two boys started muttering numbers. Somewhere beneath a desk, a slate scraped free.

Raven didn’t need to check the board.

She already knew.

Twentieth Seat.

Hers for less than a day.

One small line on one academy board, but it was the first thing Valerius had given her that nobody could say came from Blackthorn, pity or charity.

And directly beneath it—

Celeste.

Raven’s stomach tightened.

Take enough points from her and Celeste wouldn’t have to beat her for the Seat.

Raven would simply be pushed out of it.

Take enough points from Raven and the board would put Celeste right back where she’d been yesterday.

Raven looked at Rowan.

Her hands tightened slowly in her lap.

She wanted to break his nose.

Berry was still reading. She stopped, went back a line, and frowned at the document.

"You’ve named a House representative for the proceeding."

"I have."

The door opened.

Celeste walked in.

She’d fixed her hair. Somebody had spent time on it, and it fell forward in a careful sweep, and the little red paw print still shone steadily through it in the middle of her forehead.

Raven had expected something. A smirk. A look. The narrow, delighted expression Celeste wore whenever a floor needed scrubbing twice.

Celeste didn’t give her any of it.

She came in, inclined her head to Berry, took the place at Rowan’s left with her hands folded, and stood there perfectly composed — as though nothing had happened in the academic court an hour ago, as though nobody in this building had ever laughed at her.

Raven’s stomach dropped.

She had lived in the same house as that girl for eighteen years. She knew what Celeste looked like when she was winning and she knew what she looked like when she was pretending to win, and this was neither.

This was Celeste holding something.

She knows something I don’t.

"Continue," Berry said.

"Second condition." Rowan didn’t look at Celeste either. "Formal apology from the named student. To Kieran Blackthorn. To Alaric Blackthorn. To Celeste Blackthorn. And to Rowan House."

Raven’s hands were folded on the desk in front of her. She became aware that she was pressing them together hard enough that the semi healed cuts across both palms had started to burn.

She kept them there.

You knew, she told herself. You knew the moment you saw the seal. Don’t you dare give them anything.

"That’s not—" Thalia was already half up. "She didn’t do anything, she was standing there and Kieran tried to force her to—"

The pressure came without warning.

Rowan didn’t move or raise his voice. One moment Thalia was on her feet, and the next the air felt heavier, pressing down across the classroom hard enough to steal the rest of whatever she’d been about to say.

Thalia dropped back into her seat.

Her hand stayed wrapped around the edge of the desk, knuckles white.

Beside her, Tessa caught her wrist and held on.

Two seats down, Brielle started to rise.