Chapter 70 — Why Am I Going Up?

Chapter 70: Chapter 70 — Why Am I Going Up?

~ Raven ~

"I don’t know," Thalia said.

Brielle got off her bed and came over. Tessa had gone completely still, which, for Tessa, was usually a bad sign.

Raven lowered the slate onto the table with exaggerated care.

Very carefully.

Because throwing it through the window would probably count as another disciplinary offence.

Then she walked to her bed.

"Unbelievable."

The wall received that one.

"Eighteen years. Eighteen fucking years I ask this world for one decent thing and it gives me nothing. I want an education, I get old gazettes somebody threw away. I want freedom, I get chased through a forest. I finally get something I actively do not want..."

Her voice rose as she pointed back toward the table.

"...and suddenly Valerius discovers generosity?"

She reached her bed.

Stopped.

Stared at it.

Standing beside the bed had, surprisingly, fixed absolutely nothing.

Raven turned around and marched straight back.

"Explain it."

Thalia blinked. "I’m trying to work out where to start."

"Start with why the number is going the wrong fucking direction."

Something shifted on the Linkslate.

Raven’s eyes caught it.

She snatched the slate back up.

14 — RAVEN RIVERS

She stared at it.

And while it was in her hands, in front of her face:

13 — RAVEN RIVERS

Raven’s head came up.

"Why the fuck am I going up?"

"Endorsements," Brielle said.

"That is a word. That is not an explanation."

"Court Standing isn’t Merit." Brielle took the slate from her and laid it flat on the table. "You didn’t get Twentieth because you’d earned more lifetime Merit than the girl below you. The Court looks at your current standing, and when that standing is under review, students can endorse you."

"Endorse."

"They don’t give you their Merit, and they don’t lose anything." Brielle tapped the glass. "Their own Merit determines how much their endorsement counts. Someone with three years of strong results carries more weight than a first-year who arrived yesterday."

"So one person pressing a button shouldn’t do this."

"One person, no."

Raven looked at the number again.

"How many people pressed it?"

"We don’t know," Tessa said. "The slate doesn’t show us that."

"But you know something."

Tessa gave her a look. "Raven, people have been talking about you since you disappeared upstairs."

That got her attention.

"About what?"

"Rowan House using Redress against a first-year. You refusing to kneel. You telling them to take the Seat before you’d give them what they wanted." Tessa shifted on the bed. "By the time we left the cafeteria, people were already arguing about whether you were insane or whether Rowan had gone too far."

"That was rage. It wasn’t a political statement."

"Doesn’t matter," Brielle said. "Everyone else got to decide what it meant."

Thalia leaned forward. "And it isn’t mostly the House students. That’s the weird part. Scholarship students. Lower-ranked wolves. Omegas. People who’ve spent years watching nobles do whatever they like because their surname gets them away with it."

"They barely know me."

"Most of them couldn’t have picked you out of a corridor two days ago," Brielle said.

"Then why—"

"Because you said no in public," Brielle said, "and nothing happened to you."

Raven sat down on the edge of the table.

She looked at the slate. Then at the three of them. Then back at the glass, where the number thirteen sat glowing beside her name like an accusation.

"So what you’re telling me," she said, "is that half this school is rooting for me."

"Yes."

"On purpose."

"Enthusiastically," Tessa said.

"I don’t want that." Raven dragged both hands back through her hair. "I want a room, a schedule and nobody looking at me."

"So what actually happened up there?" Thalia asked, once Raven had stopped visibly plotting revenge against mathematics.

"Short version."

"Fine."

"The Headmaster was extremely angry." Raven ticked it off on her fingers. "She counted my crimes on her hand and ran out of fingers before I ran out of crimes. Rowan was Rowan. Dante laughed at him twice, which improved nothing. Cassian ate something. Then Rowan tried to start a fight with Cassian over the fact that Cassian doesn’t care about anything, which, in fairness, he doesn’t."

"And the Seat?"

"Deferred. In writing. When she has the report."

Thalia sagged.

"There’s one more thing." Raven turned the crust over between her fingers. "The Founders’ Hunt has been moved. It’s in eleven days."

Tessa’s head came up. "Eleven?"

"Apparently it went up on the boards yesterday. Nobody in that room knew except Cassian, because Cassian reads notice boards and the other three consider that beneath them." Raven shrugged. "She’s moved it so it doesn’t sit in the same fortnight as the Concord Trials."

"Because of the Renewal," Thalia said.

"Because of the Renewal."

"So their fathers are coming." Thalia had gone slightly pale. "And the vampire Houses. And four Cardinal vampire heirs, in this term, in this building—"

"Then she threw me out," Raven said. "Which I want to be clear was the single best moment of my day."

Tessa made a sound.

Raven looked over.

She was sitting very still with her own slate in both hands and her eyes down, and she had stopped listening somewhere around the vampires.

Raven’s stomach went cold.

"Tessa."

"Raven." Tessa raised her head. "You might want to see this."

"I very much would not."

"I know."

Raven took it anyway.

10 — RAVEN RIVERS

Nobody said anything.

Raven looked at the number for a long moment. Then she looked up at the three of them.

"No."

Thalia opened her mouth.

"No."

"Raven—"

"No."

Every slate in the room crackled at once.

Raven sighed deeply and shut her eyes.

Thalia looked down at hers. Then winced.

"Oh, fuck."

Raven opened one eye. "What."

Thalia turned the slate around.

"The Bellringer’s up."

Raven’s face went completely blank.

"Of course he fucking is."

The slate crackled again, and the voice poured into the room, bright and delighted and entirely too pleased with itself.

"Good afternoon, Valerius."