Chapter 78 — Two First-Years

Chapter 78: Chapter 78 — Two First-Years

~ Raven ~

The pulse collapsed again.

Raven lowered her hands and shook them out while the instructor moved down the line behind her, saying something to the boy at the end about his stance. Sweat had already glued her collar to the back of her neck.

She glanced up at the gallery before she could stop herself.

Alaric was still there.

Staring.

Fine. Stare.

Raven flexed her fingers and reset her stance.

Whatever had suddenly made her interesting to him could wait. If Alaric wanted to stand up there and study her like a problem he hadn’t solved yet, that was his business.

"Rivers. You’re gripping."

"I’m concentrating."

"You’re gripping." The instructor didn’t stop walking. "Essence isn’t a rope. Stop pulling on it."

Raven let her shoulders drop. She got two counts of steady light between her palms, then three, then the whole thing guttered out like a candle in a draught.

Somebody down the line managed six and looked extremely pleased about it.

Congratulations.

She reset her hands and tried again, because there was nothing else to do with a problem except keep walking at it, and because whatever Alaric Blackthorn had come to see, she was not going to give him the version where she quit.

By that afternoon, the Founders’ Hunt had taken over Valerius completely.

Every training court was still occupied an hour after lessons ended. Fourth-years crossed the south bridge in pairs with long equipment cases balanced between them, and for once nobody seemed particularly concerned that half of them were out of uniform. Outside the drill hall, two boys were arguing loudly about whether a Wing could replace a competitor after the seals had been registered, neither noticing Raven waiting for enough space to squeeze past.

Even the notice board outside the lecture halls had changed twice since breakfast.

Raven stopped in front of it on her way back to Nikolai Wing and read through the latest postings.

FOUNDERS’ HUNT — SEALS CLOSE AT SECOND BELL. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Underneath that were three notices about restricted floors, one about the ward rotation, and a list of equipment collection times by Wing.

Nothing explaining what the Founders’ Hunt actually was.

Raven had already asked the others. That had gotten her nowhere, mostly because they knew no more than she did. Thalia had collected half a dozen rumors and contradicted herself twice while repeating them. Tessa had gone through the notice boards looking for actual rules and found none. Even Brielle, who usually had an answer for everything Valerius-related, knew only the same scraps every other first-year had picked up from listening to older students talk.

Apparently, that was deliberate.

Whenever one of them asked an upper-year directly, the answer was some variation of you’ll find out.

Three days.

Raven stared at the equipment notice for another moment.

Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than being thrown across a drill court by strangers in wolf masks.

She made it as far as the stairwell before reconsidering that thought.

Better not tempt Valerius.

The common room was loud when she came in.

Thalia had claimed the low table by the hearth and covered it in her own belongings, Tessa sat cross-legged on the floor beside it with a bandage half unwound from her forearm, and Brielle occupied the one good chair with a book she wasn’t reading.

"There she is," Thalia said. "You look terrible."

"Thank you."

"Not badly terrible. Athletically terrible."

Raven dropped onto the end of the bench and started working her boot off. "The instructor thinks I strangle my own essence."

"You do," Brielle said, without looking up.

"You’ve never watched me do it."

"I don’t have to. You strangle everything."

Tessa laughed into her bandage.

Thalia’s slate crackled on the table.

She picked it up with one hand, still talking. "Anyway, I’ve decided I’m not going to the second bell collection because the queue last cycle went round the whole—"

She stopped.

"Oh."

Tessa looked up. "What?"

"It’s up." Thalia sat forward so fast she knocked her own cup over onto the rug. Nobody moved to fix it. "The roster. The Hunt roster’s up."

Brielle’s book came down about an inch.

Raven pulled her other boot off. "That’s the five people?"

"Five from every Wing." Thalia was already scrolling. "One fourth-year, one third, one second, and then two first-years. That’s the part everyone fights about, the first-year slots, because you can’t just hand them to whoever won the most drills, it has to be—"

"Thalia," Tessa said. "Read it."

"I’m reading it." She held the slate up closer to her face. "Fourth-year, Garrick Holt. Fine. Everyone knew that. Third-year is — oh, it’s Mara Ellison. Mara’s going to be unbearable about this for a month. Second-year, Dorian Hale."

Raven looked up and frowned at the last name but said nothing.

"Dorian’s fast," Tessa said.

"Dorian’s smug."

"He’s both."

Thalia’s thumb moved down.

"First-year representatives." She paused for effect, because of course she did. "Brielle Vance."

Brielle didn’t move.

Raven watched her for a second, which was far more interesting than the name on the slate.

"There it is."

Brielle finally looked at her. "There’s what?"

"That face."

"I don’t have a face."

"You do when you’re pleased."

Brielle glanced back at the roster as if it had suddenly become fascinating. "It’s a Hunt roster, Raven. Not an award."

Raven’s grin widened.

"You’ve gone red."

"I have not."

"Tessa, has she gone red?"

"Ears," Tessa said. "Definitely the ears."

"That’s just the fire."

"The fire’s behind you," Raven said.

Brielle shut the book on her finger and glared at all three of them at once, which took some doing.

"Congratulations," Raven said, and meant it, because there was nobody else in that Wing who had earned it more and everybody in the room knew it. "Seriously. You’re the best first-year they’ve got."

"Obviously."

"There she is."

Thalia snorted. "Right, and the second one is—"

She stopped.

Raven was still watching Brielle pretend the chair had become uncomfortable, so it took her a moment to notice that Thalia hadn’t finished the sentence.

Then she looked over.

Thalia’s eyes came up off the slate and landed on her.

Raven frowned. "What?"

Thalia opened her mouth. Closed it.

Raven started laughing.

"No."

"Raven—"

"No." She was still laughing, and she could hear how it sounded, and she couldn’t stop it. "Absolutely not. Give me that."

Tessa looked between them. "What? What is it?"

"She’s about to say something extremely stupid." Raven pointed at Thalia. "Do you know what I am? Officially. On paper. In the academy’s own handwriting."

"I know what you—"

"Nascent." Raven counted it off. "I failed an entire stage of my own classification in front of four examiners. I can’t hold a pulse for four counts. There are girls in this Wing who could put me through a wall on their way to breakfast and not spill anything."

Brielle’s book had come all the way down now.

"They’re sending five people into a competition that moves House Points," Raven said. "Real ones. They wouldn’t put me in that."

Thalia said nothing.

"The academy wouldn’t fuck with me like that."

Thalia looked back down at the slate.

Then she read the second name.

"Raven Rivers."

Nobody said anything.

The fire cracked. Somewhere on the floor above, a door banged and two people started shouting about a missing pair of boots.

Raven stopped laughing.

She got up, crossed the rug and took the slate out of Thalia’s hands, because there was a mistake in it somewhere and she intended to find it herself.

The notice sat plain at the top. Wing crest. Registration seal. Second bell.

She scrolled past the older years without reading them.

FIRST-YEAR REPRESENTATIVES

BRIELLE VANCE

RAVEN RIVERS

The two names sat one under the other with nothing between them, and beneath both of them, in smaller script the academy had clearly not thought worth softening:

FOUNDERS’ HUNT — COMMENCES IN THREE DAYS.

Raven looked at her own name for a long moment.

"...Oh, fuck off."