Chapter 59 — Disappointed III

Chapter 59: Chapter 59 — Disappointed III

~ Raven ~

"Do you honestly think," Raven said, "that I still give a fuck about the points?"

Something shifted through the cafeteria, a collective stir as hundreds of people understood what she was saying.

Everyone here knew what those points meant.

Twentieth Seat.

And Raven had just told them she was willing to lose it.

She looked past Rowan to the twins.

"I rejected you."

Kieran’s shoulders tightened.

Raven looked from him to Alaric.

"Both of you. In your own house, in front of your own people. And I’d do it again."

Kieran’s jaw flexed.

"Yesterday, you stood right here and told me to kneel." Raven’s voice rose, and this time she made no effort to pull it back down. "You put your aura on me and tried to force me onto this floor."

She pointed at the stone between them.

"I still didn’t kneel."

Her eyes moved to Celeste.

"So your sister found an academy rule, dragged everybody back here, and now you think I’m going to kneel because a piece of paper says so?"

A laugh caught somewhere in Raven’s throat.

"Are you fucking serious?"

"You—" Celeste stepped forward. "You will do exactly as—"

"You waited two years."

Raven continued forcing it out.

"Two years," Raven said. "The two of you knew for two fucking years."

Her voice cracked higher, and she didn’t care.

"You watched me carry your plates. Watched everyone in that house call me wolfless and useless, and neither of you said a word. You just waited until I was old enough for the rejection to count."

She was pointing at them now. She couldn’t remember lifting her hand.

"Sons of bitches. Both of you."

Her arm swung toward Celeste.

"And her. Your bitch of a sister, who’s spent years telling me what I am and what I’ll never be, standing there with a fucking loser paw print on her forehead while she gets an entire academy to do her dirty work for her."

Somewhere in the crowd, somebody sucked in a breath.

Another voice whispered, "Oh my God."

Raven barely heard either of them.

"Fuck House Rowan."

This time she looked directly at Rowan.

"Fuck Blackthorn. Fuck this Court. And fuck the Seat too, if this is what I have to do to keep it—"

She threw a hand out at the whole hall, at the packed benches and the raised slates and the Vanguards along the wall.

"And fuck all the Cardinal heirs, if this is what this academy thinks power is supposed to look like."

At the edge of the cleared floor, Cassian frowned.

Raven caught it.

Barely anything — just the slightest pull at his mouth, his head tipping a fraction as he looked at her.

Still, she understood.

He hadn’t wanted to be here. He’d checked Rowan’s petition properly, hadn’t twisted a single rule against her, and when it mattered he’d been the one to make sure nobody could force her onto her knees.

And she’d just told him to go fuck himself along with everyone else.

A small stab of guilt slipped through the anger.

That one might have been unfair.

Too late. She’d said it. And she was too far down the hill now to stop for anything.

She looked back at the Blackthorns.

"Take the points."

Her voice had gone hoarse.

"Take the Seat. Put Celeste back on it, I don’t care, take every line off every board in this academy with my name on it."

She sat on the edge of the table, hands braced against her knees, four hundred people staring back at her.

Raven looked at Rowan.

Then the Blackthorns.

Then past them, at everyone else packed into the cafeteria.

"Listen to me."

Her voice carried farther than she expected.

Raven drew in a breath, deep enough that it hurt, and raised her voice.

"All of you."

The last whispers died.

"Raven Rivers does not kneel."

She pointed toward the floor they had cleared for her.

"Not to Blackthorn. Not to Rowan House. Not to any fucking person in this academy."

Her throat burned, but she shouted the last words anyway.

"I will not kneel. Not now. Not ever."

Nobody moved.

The silence stretched until Raven could hear her own breathing.

And into that silence came everything anger had kept pushed away.

The points.

Twentieth Seat.

The Redress record.

Cassian standing there as a Cardinal witness.

Every word she had just thrown across this cafeteria, now witnessed, recorded and impossible to take back.

The consequences settled over her all at once, cold and horribly clear.

She was royally fucked.

Behind her, Thalia had both hands over her mouth and looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be sick or cheer.

Tessa said something under her breath that sounded like a prayer with swearing in it.

Brielle was staring at her, and it was a look with something that looked like respect.

Celeste’s face was white. She had not got what she came for. Again.

Kieran’s jaw was locked hard enough to see from across the room, and his hands had closed at his sides.

Alaric hadn’t moved at all. He hadn’t stopped watching her either, and whatever was happening behind his face, it wasn’t what Raven had expected to find there. He looked absolutely shocked.

Cassian was still frowning, but he had turned fully toward her now. Whatever boredom had been in his face was gone.

And Rowan’s face had gone genuinely ugly with shock, because Raven hadn’t simply refused him.

Into all that silence, from somewhere at the back of the packed hall, came a low chuckle.

Raven went cold.

She knew that laugh.

Heads began to turn. The crowd near the rear entrance shifted, and shifted again, and started to come apart.

Heat rolled through the gap before she saw him — a wave of it, moving out across the hall, and every wolf it touched flinched.

Dante Prymont stood in the doorway with his eyes burning amber-gold and the air shimmering off his shoulders.

He did not look at Rowan. He did not look at the twins, or at the Vanguards, or at any of the four hundred people between them.

He looked straight at Raven.

His mouth curved.

"Disappointed?" Dante’s smile widened. "Funny. You’re the only thing in this damned academy that hasn’t disappointed me yet."