Chapter 74 — Get Out

Chapter 74: Chapter 74 — Get Out

~ Raven ~

For a moment, nothing happened.

He was still smiling. Raven could still feel him inside her head, cold pressure working against the parts of her mind that refused to open. The grey continued creeping inward at the edges of the white.

Then something moved beneath her feet.

Not movement exactly but a sound.

Deep enough that she felt it before she heard it.

THOOM.

The white trembled.

The impact travelled up through the soles of her feet and into her bones, rattling through her ribs before rolling outward into the endless distance.

The smile came off him.

Raven looked down.

There was a crack under her foot. A hairline, no thicker than a thread.

White light burned inside it.

THOOM.

The crack shot outward. It forked, and forked again, and ran off past her in three directions, and the light coming up out of it was bright enough to throw her shadow onto nothing at all.

He stepped back.

Not deliberately. Raven saw the movement happen before the rest of him seemed to realize he had made it, the same instinctive retreat her own body had betrayed her with earlier.

Only now it was him.

For the first time since she had opened her eyes in this place, he looked uncertain.

The pressure inside Raven’s skull broke.

She dragged in a breath as though she had just surfaced from deep water.

Something behind her ribs answered.

That presence.

The thing she had spent eighteen years straining to feel, always so faint she sometimes wondered whether she had invented it.

Here, it was not faint.

CLANK.

Raven’s eyes widened.

CLANK.

The sound came from behind her.

Chains.

Enormous links dragged across whatever passed for ground in this place, each one striking with enough force to send a tremor through her feet.

His attention snapped past her shoulder.

He froze.

Raven did not turn.

She did not need to.

The empty space behind her filled.

Heat pressed against her back, sudden and immense. Then came a breath, deep and slow, powerful enough to stir her white hair forward around her face.

A growl followed.

It started so low Raven felt it through her feet before the sound reached her ears. It climbed through her legs, into her ribs, until the entire white expanse seemed to vibrate with it.

CLANK.

The chains pulled taut.

Something huge shifted behind her. The links scraped forward, screamed against the strain—

And stopped.

Still chained.

Whatever had answered her had not broken free. It had only come as far as the bindings allowed.

Apparently, that was far enough.

The man finally found his voice.

"So the mutt’s awake."

He tried to sound bored.

He failed.

"How touching."

Raven smiled.

He saw it.

"You—"

Whatever he meant to say disappeared beneath a curse.

He immediately attacked.

The pressure crashed down so violently Raven nearly folded beneath it.

Darkness poured into the white from every direction. The distant grey deepened to black and rushed toward her while the cold drove into her mind without any of the patience it had shown before.

He was forcing his way in now.

Raven’s teeth clenched.

Behind her, the wolf’s growl rose. Chains shrieked as the enormous presence strained against them, and its fury came through Raven so strongly she could no longer tell where the animal ended and she began.

But this time, she did not wait for it to save her.

Raven stepped forward.

Her foot came down.

BOOM.

A crack tore open beneath her heel.

White light erupted through it.

The man jerked.

Raven bared her teeth.

A growl came out of her throat, rough and unfamiliar, nothing like any sound she had ever made while awake.

Then she pushed.

She had no idea how.

She only knew she wanted him gone.

Thunder rolled through the endless white.

More fractures shot outward beneath Raven’s feet, racing in every direction, silver-white light blazing through them until the ground looked as though something underneath it was trying to break free.

His body flew backward.

He landed hard and dug in, but the white split beneath his feet and dragged him farther before he managed to stop.

Raven walked toward him.

Behind her, the wolf came with her as far as its chains allowed. The links scraped across the fractures until they snapped taut again, holding the enormous creature back.

The man’s composure finally broke.

The lazy amusement vanished. So did the measured voice and the careful movements he had worn since she arrived.

He swore at her and shoved back.

Cold slammed into Raven’s mind.

He reached for memories, found resistance, abandoned one path and drove at another. Each time he tried to set his grip, the white seemed to tear it loose before he could hold on.

His outline flickered.

The edges of his shoulders blurred.

"Get out," Raven said.

"No."

She pushed harder.

The chains behind her screamed.

The wolf roared.

The sound plunged into every glowing fracture beneath them, and the light surged.

Raven stared directly at the place where his face refused to exist.

"I said get the fuck out of my head."

Everything broke.

The white split in every direction at once.

Great sections of it lifted and twisted as thunder became one continuous tearing roar. Light exploded through the fractures until there was almost more brightness beneath them than white above.

The man came off his feet.

He reached for Raven.

His arm stretched toward her, then distorted as something seized him from behind and began ripping him away.

Whatever connection had allowed him inside her mind was coming loose.

For the first time, there was no amusement in him.

No superiority.

Only rage.

"You think this changes anything?" His voice broke apart beneath the roar. "I’ll make you regret this! I’ll make every fucking day you have left in this academy hell!"

Something inside Raven stopped.

Not the force throwing him out.

That kept going.

But Raven heard one word with perfect clarity.

Academy.

His body jerked.

He had heard it too.

For one fraction of a second, he stopped fighting.

Raven’s eyes narrowed.

"This academy?"

He said nothing.

That silence hit harder than an answer.

He wasn’t some nameless thing reaching her from somewhere beyond Valerius.

He was here.

Somewhere inside the academy.

He had a face she could actually see when she was awake. A name. He walked these corridors. He could have passed her without her knowing. He could have been sitting twenty feet away while she ate.

His voice came again, furious now.

"Just you watch, bitch."

The force dragged him farther away.

Raven’s thoughts raced.

Someone at Valerius.

Someone powerful enough to get inside her head.

Someone who already hated her.

Celeste came to mind first, but Raven discarded her almost immediately. Celeste hated her, certainly, but nothing about this felt like Celeste. Celeste wanted people watching when she hurt someone. She wanted Raven humiliated where everyone could see it.

The twins?

No.

Neither Alaric nor Kieran had ever needed to hide what they wanted from her.

Then Raven remembered an empty stone corridor.

Gold pressing against her chest.

Rowan looking down at her when there was nobody around to intervene.

You didn’t look nearly this nervous in the cafeteria.

Still stubborn. Just not quite as comfortable without the crowd.

Raven stared at the blurred figure being torn away from her.

"...Rowan?"

He went still.

Barely.

Just a tiny catch in his body before the force pulled him farther away.

It could have meant nothing.

Raven did not think it meant nothing.

Then the white swallowed him.

Every fracture snapped shut.

The thunder vanished.

The heat disappeared from behind Raven’s back, and the chains cut off halfway through the next scrape.

The entire place folded inward.

White rushed over her.

Raven woke with a gasp.

She was sitting upright before she understood that she had moved, both hands twisted into the blanket as she dragged air into lungs that could not seem to get enough of it.

Afternoon light stretched across the floor.

Tessa’s bed.

Thalia’s bag where she had dropped it.

The window.

The wall.

Raven stared at each one until they stayed where they were supposed to be.

No white.

No thunder.

No man.

She remained there until the room finally felt solid again.

Something warm touched her upper lip.

Raven wiped at it.

Her fingers came away red.

She stared at the blood.

Another drop followed.

The inside of her mouth tasted faintly of copper, and a hard ache had settled behind both eyes, pressing outward.

Raven lowered her feet to the floor and waited for the worst of it to ease.

Then she reached inward.

Her wolf was there.

Barely.

A distant pulse beneath deep water, just as it had always been.

Nothing like the enormous creature that had stood behind her.

Raven slowly loosened her grip on the blanket.

Academy.

He had said it while screaming at her.

Then he had stopped.

Which meant whoever he was, he was here.

Somewhere inside Valerius right now, wearing an ordinary face while Raven sat bleeding in a locked room because he had reached into her head without ever touching her.

She wiped the blood from her upper lip with the back of her wrist.

Then she stared at the opposite wall.

"...Rowan?"