Chapter 60 — You Too, Prymont

Chapter 60: Chapter 60 — You Too, Prymont

~ Dante ~

The boy went down for the fourth time and stayed down longer than he needed to.

"That one was harder than it had to be," he said, from the mat.

"Get up."

"I’m being serious, Heir Prymont. That was a demonstration bout. I can barely walk straight."

Dante rolled his shoulder and looked at his own hand.

He’d put more into the strike than he meant to. That was the second time this morning, and twice was enough to stop calling it an accident. Dante disliked that almost as much as he disliked not knowing why.

"Again," he said. "Slower."

They went again. Dante let the boy get two clean strikes in, because he’d earned them, and because Dante’s attention was not in the training court at all.

It was where it had been since yesterday afternoon.

Rivers.

That was the part Dante kept circling back to.

At the entrance assessment, he had caught her by the wrist. It should have meant nothing. He had made that kind of contact more times than he could count during training, demonstrations and assessments, and normally he would have forgotten it the second he let go.

Except this time, something had come through her.

It hadn’t felt like aura, and it definitely hadn’t been heat. It had been cold instead, a sudden silver-white rush that travelled through his hand and straight into him before he could brace for it.

His wolf had reacted first.

One moment it had been under control. The next, that strange power had struck it like fingers closing around the back of its neck, and for several seconds Dante had felt something he had not felt in years.

His wolf went completely still, then surged forward so violently that Dante had to lock his body down to keep the reaction from showing.

Dante had spent nineteen years with that animal under absolute control. It hunted when he said hunt and it sat when he said sit, and it had never once in his life behaved as though his authority were a matter for discussion.

Around Raven Rivers, apparently, it was.

Then the cafeteria. Then the study.

He didn’t want to think about the study, but his mind went there anyway, worrying at the memory like a tongue against a broken tooth.

Her palm had been flat against his chest, trying to shove him back. Uselessly.

His hand had closed around her wrist, her pulse beating hard beneath his fingers, and somewhere between one question and the next she had ended up far too close.

Close enough that he remembered the heat of her breath.

Close enough that, at some point, Dante had stopped interrogating her entirely.

Underneath his ribs, his wolf pushed awake.

Settle.

It did not settle.

That was what irritated him.

Not the wanting. Dante had wanted plenty of things in his life and taken most of them. Wanting Raven was hardly the problem.

If anything, it made perfect sense.

She had stood in front of four hundred people with a Blackthorn heir’s aura pressing down on her and still refused to bend. Dante knew exactly what kind of thing caught his attention, and defiance had always ranked very fucking high.

What he didn’t like was being overruled.

He’d tested it too, which somehow made the whole thing worse.

Half the Wing had passed through the training hall that morning. Two girls had found reasons to linger and watch him spar, and one of those reasons had been so obvious Dante almost laughed.

He noticed them. Of course he did.

His wolf didn’t.

Not a stir. Not even enough interest to lift its head.

Then Raven crossed his mind—her mouth, her temper, the look on her face when she refused to bend—and the animal in his chest rose immediately.

"Heir Prymont." Someone was leaning on the rail with a towel around his neck. "Is it true about Kieran Blackthorn’s face?"

Dante caught the practice blade the boy threw at him.

"What about it?"

"The whole academy’s on about it. Somebody’s saying he’s still got the mark."

"Then somebody’s right."

A laugh went round the court.

"Do you regret it?"

"No."

He hadn’t either.

Both twins had walked into that cafeteria like the floor belonged to them and the Blackthorn name should have been enough to make everyone else move aside. Dante had put them on that same floor instead, and he’d enjoyed it far more than he probably should have.

The silence afterward had been the best part.

He was reaching for his shirt when movement in the corridor caught his eye.

Students were heading the wrong way.

Only six or seven at first, all moving toward the same end of the building despite second period already being underway. Then a classroom door farther down opened and four more students slipped out, Linkslates already in their hands.

One of them started jogging.

Dante stopped with his shirt halfway over one shoulder and watched.

Then he stepped out and caught the nearest one by the arm.

"What the fuck is going on."

The boy nearly dropped his slate. "Heir Prymont—"

"What’s happening."

"Redress. Rowan filed a House Redress, they’re taking her down to the main hall—"

"Rowan filed on who?"

"The first-year." The boy swallowed. "Raven Rivers."

Everything in Dante went still.

"Continue."

It came out of the boy in pieces, probably in the same order he had heard it.

Something about yesterday’s cafeteria fight. Rowan House losing face in front of the student body. The Blackthorn twins. Celeste. Raven about to lose points from her personal standing, Rowan getting Redress points back, and a formal apology owed to all four of them—

"And there’s a last one," the boy said. "It’s the last condition everyone’s—"

"Say it."

"Formal submission."

The corridor got very warm.

"She has to kneel," the boy said. "In the main hall. To Kieran and Alaric and Celeste Blackthorn. That’s why everyone’s—"

The heat broke out of him hard enough to warp the air.

His Fire Lattice activated a heartbeat later, the dark lines over his heart flaring red-gold beneath his shirt and spreading across his chest.

The boy said, "Fuck," and stumbled backward into the opposite wall, throwing an arm over his face.

Dante closed his hands.

Down.

It didn’t go down. For four or five seconds it kept climbing, his breath going shallow, gold burning up through his vision until the corridor had a bright rim around everything in it, and the animal in his chest wasn’t listening to a single word he said.

He got it back. Mostly.

The air was still shimmering off his shoulders when he straightened.

Because now Dante understood exactly what Rowan had done.

Yesterday, standing over both Blackthorn twins, he had told them plainly that if Rowan had a problem with him, Rowan knew where to find him. Dante had meant every word. He had spent half the night expecting Rowan to show up at his door.

But of course he hadn’t.

Rowan had always been a coward about getting his own hands dirty.

Not because he couldn’t fight. That would have been easier to respect.

He just liked everyone believing he was better than the rest of them.

Dante started fights. Rowan filed petitions. Dante broke rules in public. Rowan found some old academy law, wrapped whatever he wanted in procedure and stood there looking like a fucking saint while somebody else paid for it.

That was what Dante had never been able to stand about him.

So instead of coming to Dante yesterday, Rowan had gone after Raven and somehow turned it into something righteous.

Then he had tied the whole thing back to Dante’s disciplinary record and taken her to the same cafeteria where it happened, in front of half the academy.

Not because Raven was the real problem.

Because Rowan wanted to get at Dante without ever having to face him directly.

The corridor was empty. The boy had gone.

Under Dante’s ribs, his wolf had stopped raging and settled into something much simpler, and it wanted exactly one thing.

Go.

For once, Dante had no argument with it.

He moved fast, and the heat came with him.

By the second corridor, he no longer had to tell anyone to move. Students felt him coming before they saw him and pressed themselves against the walls, clearing a path as the air warped around him.

The closer he got, the worse it looked.

Students from every Wing, all flowing the same way. Two instructors standing outside their own classrooms doing nothing about it. A boy climbing on a bench outside the main hall to see over the heads of the crowd already jammed in the entrance.

Hundreds of them.

Rowan hadn’t organised a proceeding.

He’d organised a fucking audience.

Dante reached the back of the crowd and put his hand on someone’s shoulder to move them—

And heard her voice.

He stopped.

"—learned it off gazettes people threw away. Three months out of date, usually, half of them with something spilled on them."

The hall was dead silent. Her voice carried all the way to the doors.

"I knew the rankings. I knew the Court had Seats and I knew who held them before I’d ever seen a picture of the gates. I used to read about the Trials while I was washing up and think about what it would be like if somebody ever let me try."

Dante stood in the crush of bodies and did not move anyone else out of the way.

"I wanted to compete. That’s all. I wanted to find out how far I could actually get if the thing that mattered was what I did."

A pause.

"I thought this place was different."

Something in Dante’s chest turned over sideways.

"Four hundred of you walked out of lessons. To watch a Great House put a first-year on her knees." Her voice didn’t shake. "I’m disappointed."

He started forward then, quietly, edging along the wall until he could see through the gap between two heads.

And stopped again, for a completely different reason.

Raven Rivers was sitting on a cafeteria table.

Not standing. Not kneeling. Sitting on the edge of it with her heels hooked on the bench like a girl waiting for a friend, in front of Rowan, both Blackthorn twins, Celeste, a Cardinal witness, an instructor, a prefect and half the academy.

Eating somebody else’s breakfast.

Dante’s mouth started to go up and he shut it down.

Rowan’s face was coming apart in slow degrees. Dante watched it happen and enjoyed every fucking stage of it.

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

There it is.

"Take the points." Her voice had gone rough. "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."

Dante’s wolf went quiet.

"Fuck House Rowan."

Dante’s brow went up.

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

She threw one hand out at the packed cafeteria.

"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.

Dante almost laughed.

Almost.

Because Raven turned back to the Blackthorns, and whatever had been wild in her face settled into something else.

"Take the points."

Her voice had gone rough.

"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."

Dante’s amusement disappeared.

His wolf went quiet.

He had heard her talking about those old gazettes only moments ago. Heard her tell four hundred people how she used to read about Valerius while washing dishes, how she had known the rankings and the Court before she had ever seen the academy gates.

She wanted this place.

Not the Cardinals. Not the fucking Houses.

This.

A chance to find out what she could become when what she did mattered more than where she came from.

And now she was sitting on a cafeteria table offering all of it back rather than put her knees on the floor.

Raven turned away from Rowan.

She looked at the Blackthorns first, then at everyone packed around them.

"Listen to me."

Something in the room changed.

Raven drew in a deep breath.

"All of you."

The last whisper died.

"Raven Rivers does not kneel."

Dante stopped breathing for a second.

She pointed at the cleared floor.

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

Her voice rose.

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

Silence.

Complete fucking silence.

Dante stared at her.

Yesterday, he had called what he felt interest.

In the study, with her pulse beating beneath his fingers and her face inches from his, he had still been able to call it that.

Interest was beginning to feel like a very small word.

A laugh slipped out of him.

Low. Amused. Entirely impossible to hold back.

Heads turned toward the rear of the cafeteria.

The students nearest Dante saw him first. Then they saw the red-gold light burning beneath his shirt and the heat bending the air around his shoulders, and the crowd opened in front of him.

Dante walked through.

He barely looked at Rowan.

Barely looked at the twins.

His eyes stayed on Raven.

She saw him coming, and something in her expression changed. Not relief. Of course it fucking wasn’t.

Dante smiled.

"Disappointed?"

Her eyes narrowed.

His smile widened.

"Funny. You’re the only thing in this damned academy that hasn’t disappointed me yet."

Nobody made a sound.

Raven stared at him.

Under Dante’s ribs, his wolf practically preened.

For one very satisfying second, he thought he had finally managed it.

Raven Rivers had nothing to say.

Then she lifted the half-eaten piece of meat in her hand and pointed it straight at him.

"Oh, fuck you too, Prymont. I wasn’t excluding you."