Chapter 92 — Bow

Chapter 92: Chapter 92 — Bow

~ Dante ~

The observation grounds had dissolved into panic.

Students crowded against the rails, shouting at the projections as if the competitors inside might somehow hear them.

"Holt!"

"Ellison!"

Three rows below Dante, a girl was screaming at a Warden to shut the feeds off. The Warden stood in front of her with his mouth set and nothing he could tell her.

Nobody was watching a Hunt anymore.

Dante kept both hands locked around the rail. The wood beneath his palms had blackened, and thin trails of smoke curled between his fingers as heat distorted the air around his forearms.

He couldn’t let go.

If he did, he would go back to the boundary, and the Headmaster had already ordered him not to touch it. The Ward had thrown him across the field once.

At the moment, Dante didn’t trust himself to care if it did so again.

On the central display, Raven Rivers was on her hands and knees beneath the weight of two auras. She managed to lift her head an inch before the pressure forced it down again.

Dante’s wolf shoved against the inside of his skin every time she tried to rise.

The view widened as two attackers pinned Brielle’s and Seren’s hands against the ground.

The cracks came through the feed.

Then the screams.

The observation grounds recoiled as though the blow had landed among them.

Dante turned from the projection to the Headmaster.

"Find another way."

The Headmaster didn’t look up. Four Sigil Masters surrounded the emergency array, each working on a different section. Every opening they cut sealed before their instruments had fully withdrawn.

"We’re working on the northern face."

"Then try the south."

"We already have. South and east." Her fingers moved across the glowing lines. "The Ward is following its own commands and ignoring ours."

Behind Dante, the feed carried the sound of Raven being thrown into a tree.

"Try again."

"We are."

"Not fast enough."

"Prymont." The Headmaster finally looked up. "Control your fire. If it reaches this array, you make this worse."

Dante released the rail and stepped back.

The shapes of his hands remained burned into the wood.

Farther along the observation grounds, Rowan hadn’t spoken since Seren went down.

He stood before Ashbourne’s feed without moving. Gold essence trembled around him in short, violent pulses, and three cracks had opened through the flagstones beneath his boots. The nearest students had backed away without being told.

When the attacker pressed down on Seren’s broken hand, Rowan turned toward the Headmaster.

Rowan said nothing.

A fourth crack split the flagstones between him and the Headmaster.

She looked at it, met Rowan’s stare, then bent over the array again.

At the far end of the observation grounds, Nikolai was moving through the surviving feeds.

He had taken control of the western row of surviving projections and was moving through the feeds one by one—the northern boundary, the stream bed, the ridge and the burned stand of pines. He enlarged each image long enough to search the trees before abandoning it for the next.

Dante watched him complete three full circuits before he understood.

Nikolai wasn’t searching for more attackers.

He was searching for Cassian.

No Blade colours appeared on any surviving feed.

"He went east," Dante said.

"He went east forty minutes ago." Nikolai didn’t stop cycling. "Nine feeds east of that clearing are dead."

"Blade knows what he’s doing."

"I know." Nikolai moved to the next projection. "He’s still alone, and he has no idea what he’s walking into. Neither did the people who found them last time."

Nikolai didn’t need to explain what he meant by last time.

Dante had been there.

His attention moved to the projection Nikolai had enlarged.

Two Blade competitors lay beside the northern boundary, one facedown in the mud and the other crumpled against a Ward anchor. Neither moved.

Nikolai changed feeds.

Three Prymont students were scattered along the stream bed. One lay half in the water while another had fallen with both arms wrapped around his head. Blood darkened the back of the third student’s Hunt uniform.

The ridge showed the same thing.

So did the burned pines.

Every competitor outside Raven’s clearing had been beaten down and left where they fell. Some were visibly breathing. Others showed no movement at all.

Another cry rose from behind Dante.

He turned toward the central display.

The attackers were picking Raven up again.

~ Raven ~

Raven had stopped counting how many times they put her down.

Every time she managed to get an elbow beneath herself, the pressure returned and flattened her against the ground. Then it eased just enough for her to try again.

They wanted her to keep getting up.

That was part of some twisted game.

A hand tangled in her hair and forced her head up.

"Look."

Raven looked.

Garrick’s eyes were open, but that was all he could manage. Isolde hadn’t moved since the three attackers brought her down. Mara lay facedown, and Dorian’s outstretched hand had finally gone still.

Brielle was curled around her broken hand, her body shaking. Seren remained conscious, but she couldn’t push herself off the ground.

The hand released Raven’s hair.

"Get up," the leader said.

Raven planted one knee beneath herself and pressed her palm into the ground. The moment she tried to stand, the wound in her thigh tore wider. Her leg folded, dropping her onto her side.

A boot struck her ribs before she could catch herself.

Pain blinded her.

When the clearing returned, one of the attackers had rolled Garrick onto his back and planted a boot across his throat. Garrick’s fingers scraped weakly against the leather, but he couldn’t move it.

The leader looked down at Raven.

"Get up."

The boot pressed harder.

Raven tried to rise.

Her arms refused. She made it as far as her forearms before they gave beneath her, dropping her cheek back into the wet leaves. Blood filled her mouth, and somewhere behind the ringing in her ears, Garrick made a thin, strangled sound.

The leader crouched until his face was level with hers, resting his hands on his knees as he watched her.

Still waiting.

Something hot tore through Raven’s panic.

Raven hated the calm way he studied her, as though he already knew how this would end. Hated every hand that had dragged her, pinned her or decided where she belonged.

These men were deciding how much she could endure. Who they could hurt to make her obey. When she would finally break.

No.

The pressure came down harder, grinding Raven into the earth.

Behind the leader, Garrick’s fingers stopped scraping against the boot.

Then metal dragged across stone somewhere deep inside her.

Raven’s head lifted.

The sound came again, louder—the slow, grinding pull of a chain being drawn taut.

CLANK.

They groaned.

The sound climbed until there was nothing else in the clearing. No boots. No breathing. Not the man crouched a foot from her face. Only black iron under strain.

CRACK.

One chain broke.

The force of it tore through Raven. Her back arched. Light burned across her vision, and the narrow place inside her where her essence had always stopped split open.

It struck every wound at once.

The gash in Raven’s thigh burned so fiercely that her body jerked. Beneath the blood-soaked fabric, torn muscle pulled together and skin sealed over it. The cut along her arm closed from shoulder to elbow. Deep inside her chest, her ribs shifted with a series of sharp clicks.

Raven dragged in a breath.

For the first time since the fight began, nothing caught beneath it.

Then the rest of the clearing rushed into her.

Every breath. Every heartbeat. The movement of leaves beneath shifting feet. The sweet, rotten stink of the black blood coating her hand. Essence tore through her, hot and violent—more than she had ever managed to summon, with still more rising behind it.

The two auras crashed down again.

This time, the power inside Raven rose to meet them.

Essence burst from her in a single violent wave. The weight pinning her to the earth tore away, and leaves exploded outward across the clearing.

The operative reinforcing him staggered back three steps. The leader was driven out of his crouch, his boots cutting two lines through the leaves before he stopped.

Raven planted her palm and rose.

Her body obeyed before she finished asking it to. One knee beneath her. One foot against the earth.

Then she stood.

Her hands were steady.

Raven looked around the clearing.

The black veins. The black eyes. The men and women who had watched her crawl and waited to see how much of her they could tear apart.

Something about seeing them upright felt wrong now.

They should not be standing over her.

No.

They should not be standing at all.

Her gaze settled on the leader.

"Bow."