Chapter 99 — The Lead

Chapter 99: Chapter 99 — The Lead

~ Raven ~

It ended gradually.

One moment Raven was still shaking against Thalia, trying and failing to pull enough air into her lungs, and the next she realised the worst of it had passed.

She stayed there for a while longer with her face pressed into Thalia’s shoulder before becoming aware of how tightly she was still holding on. Both fists were twisted into the back of Thalia’s uniform, pulling the fabric halfway out of her belt.

Raven loosened her grip slowly, one finger at a time, and finally sat back.

Her throat felt scraped raw. Her eyes burned, her nose was running, and she’d soaked most of Thalia’s shoulder.

"Sorry."

The word barely came out.

Thalia didn’t tell her it was fine. She didn’t make a joke out of it either. She simply stayed on the floor beside Raven as though there was nowhere else she needed to be.

Tessa left the door long enough to place a cup of water within Raven’s reach, then returned to her spot nearby, giving Raven space without actually leaving her alone.

On the bed, Brielle had completely stopped fighting with the last of her bandage.

She was watching Raven now.

Not one of them said anything about the crying.

Raven wiped her face with her sleeve and focused on getting her breathing back under control. The embarrassment she’d expected eventually arrived, but to her surprise, there wasn’t much of it.

After everything else, crying into Thalia’s uniform hardly seemed like the worst thing that had happened to her lately.

A minute later, she stopped caring altogether.

As she shifted, something pressed against her hip.

The package.

Raven reached into her pocket and pulled out what the Headmaster had given her. It was flat, no bigger than her palm, wrapped in dark oilcloth and sealed with a plain grey wafer she didn’t recognise.

Alone, the Headmaster had told her.

That was the instruction. I’m passing it on as given.

Raven turned the package over once in her hands.

"I uh...need a few minutes."

Thalia’s head came up immediately.

"You’ve just—"

"I know."

"Raven, you can barely—"

"Thalia."

Brielle was already getting to her feet.

She crossed the room, caught Thalia beneath one arm and pulled her up.

"Come on."

"But she’s—"

"She asked for a few minutes."

Thalia gave Raven one last worried look, but she let Brielle steer her toward the door. Tessa followed without argument, pausing only long enough to nudge the cup of water closer to Raven before leaving.

None of them asked what was inside the package.

The door shut behind them.

Raven waited until their footsteps faded, then got to her feet, turned the key in the lock and sat on the edge of her bed.

Only then did she break the grey seal.

Inside the oilcloth was a mirror.

Not an impressive one. It was small enough to fit comfortably in one hand, with a plain iron frame and glass clouded slightly along one edge, the sort of thing Raven imagined a soldier might carry rather than something that belonged on a noblewoman’s dressing table.

A folded slip of paper rested beneath it.

Thumb to the frame, both corners. It will find me. Burn this. — M.

Raven read it twice before putting the note aside.

Then she pressed her thumb against both lower corners of the frame.

The glass softened beneath it.

For a moment, her own reflection remained.

Pale face. Swollen eyes. Hair in a state she was not going to think about.

Raven found herself looking longer than she meant to.

She had spent the last few days avoiding reflective surfaces without consciously deciding to do it, and now there she was, apparently still Raven Rivers despite everything that had happened in the forest.

She didn’t have anything useful to think about that.

Then her reflection thinned.

The glass shimmered once, and somebody else’s face appeared.

Melissa.

Behind her was the lodge Raven remembered: the low beam overhead, the shuttered window with the re-cut sigil carved into its frame and the same grey light coming through around the edges.

Melissa didn’t bother saying hello.

Her eyes moved over Raven’s face, paused for a moment around the swelling beneath her eyes, then lifted and settled on Raven’s gaze.

Something changed in Melissa’s expression.

It disappeared before Raven could identify it.

"Clara told me what happened."

Raven waited for the name to mean something.

It didn’t.

"Clara?"

Melissa frowned.

"Clara. She—"

Then she stopped.

Understanding arrived.

"Oh. You know her as the Headmaster."

"Right," Raven said. "Of course."

Raven sat with that for a moment.

It had genuinely never occurred to her that the Headmaster had a first name.

She had watched the woman stand before courts and run an academy, yet somehow Raven had always thought of her as though she’d been born thirty years old behind a desk with Headmaster already attached to her.

Melissa had known her before any of that.

Probably when Clara had been Raven’s age.

The thought was strange enough to linger for a second, but Raven had more important things to worry about.

"What is going on, Melissa?"

Melissa didn’t answer immediately.

Her gaze shifted away from the mirror toward the shuttered window, or perhaps something beyond it. Her fingers moved once against the iron frame before going still.

"This isn’t the first time I’ve seen something like this."

Raven’s attention sharpened.

Melissa’s expression hardened, anger bleeding through now.

"Just like what happened two years ag—"

She cut herself off.

For a second, neither of them moved.

Melissa stared through the mirror as though the words had escaped before she could stop them. The anger was still there, but now something else had joined it.

Recognition.

She had remembered who she was talking to.

Her jaw tightened.

"Forget that."

Raven didn’t.

She watched Melissa’s face instead, and one memory from the lodge rose immediately above the rest.

The photographs along the wall.

Several of them had black ribbon tied across the corners.

Melissa had passed those faces every day Raven stayed there without ever letting herself look for too long.

Raven understood.

"They had something to do with your family, didn’t they?"

Melissa went completely still.

"That is not the focus here."

Raven held her gaze for another second, then let it go.

Not because she believed her.

Because Melissa was the first person since the Hunt who seemed capable of giving Raven something other than another question, and Raven had no intention of shutting that door by pushing too hard, too soon.

"Fine," Raven said. "Then tell me what shadow wolves actually are."

Some of the tension eased from Melissa’s hand.

"Properly?"

"That would be nice."

Melissa gave her a tired look.

"The problem is that nobody actually knows."

Raven frowned.

"Helpful."

"I’m serious." Melissa leaned slightly closer to the mirror. "The oldest records we have are over four hundred years old, and even those describe shadow wolves as something people already knew about. Whatever caused the corruption began long before the earliest surviving accounts."

"So nobody knows where it came from."

"No. Only what it does."

"But they were once wolves."

"True," Melissa said. "That’s the part people forget once the stories become stories."

Her voice settled into the same flat, practical tone she’d used at the lodge whenever she explained something unpleasant.

"It usually spreads through a bite. Once the corruption gets into the blood, it doesn’t stop there. It reaches the mind, then the wolf, and starts changing both. Pain matters less. Anger comes more easily. Instinct gets harder to control. Eventually the body begins changing too."

Raven remembered black hide stretched over visible ribs and limbs too long for the bodies carrying them.

"And the person?"

"Most lose themselves."

"Most?"

"Some take longer than others."

Raven turned the mirror slightly between her hands.

"The ones in the Hunt," she said. "Were they the same as the two at the quarry?"

"No."

"They smelled the same."

"Because the corruption was the same," Melissa said. "From what Clara described, there isn’t much doubt about that."

"Then why weren’t the ones in the Hunt like the wolves at the quarry?"

Melissa’s expression tightened.

"Because the quarry wolves had already lost themselves to the corruption."

Raven frowned.

"Lost themselves how?"

"They weren’t thinking anymore. They were simply reacting to hunger and aggression."

Melissa paused. "You remember the one at the quarry. I put a spear through its head and it still dragged itself toward you."

Raven’s mouth tightened.

"I remember."

"The ones inside the Ward were different."

Melissa’s fingers went still against the frame.

"They could still think. They watched you, coordinated their attacks and responded to signals from one another."

Raven looked down at the mirror.

"So it was still the same corruption."

"Yes."

"Then why hadn’t it turned them into what we saw at the quarry?"

Melissa was quiet for a moment.

"That’s the part I can’t explain. Whatever had been done to them, they were corrupted without becoming mindless."

That sat between them for a moment.

Then Raven asked, "How many have you seen like that?"

Melissa didn’t answer immediately.

The hesitation was small.

Raven noticed anyway.

"Two years ago," Melissa said eventually, "was the last time I found evidence of corrupted wolves that could still think, communicate and operate together."

Raven lifted her eyes.

"You were looking for them."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Melissa’s expression warned her.

Raven let that question go too.

Melissa continued.

"I followed everything I could find. Witnesses. Bodies. Rumours. Anything that might have led me back to whoever was behind them."

"And?"

"Every trail stopped."

Raven frowned. "Stopped how?"

"Completely." Melissa leaned slightly closer to the glass. "Not faded or overed. One moment there was something to follow, and after that there was nothing. No bodies. No witnesses. No sign of where they went."

"And you never found another one?"

"Not like those."

Melissa’s gaze shifted briefly toward the shuttered window.

"Shadow wolves still turn up. Wolves too far gone to save. Infected settlements. That never stopped."

Something hardened beneath her voice.

"But wolves that could still think through the corruption? Follow orders? Speak?"

She shook her head.

"Not one in two years."

Raven watched her.

"You thought whoever was behind them was gone."

"I thought I’d lost them."

"Until the Hunt."

Melissa looked directly at her.

"Until Clara told me what happened."

The lodge behind her had gone very quiet. Somewhere beyond the edge of the mirror, a shutter knocked softly against its frame.

Raven thought of the figures in the clearing.

The black veins.

The way their leader had watched while the others hurt them, waiting to see what Raven would do.

"So the Hunt gave you something."

"It did."

"A new trail."

Melissa said nothing.

Raven shifted forward.

"What?"

Still nothing.

Her fingers tightened around the iron frame.

"What did the Hunt give you, Melissa?"

Melissa held her gaze.

"You."

Raven went still.

Melissa’s voice dropped.

"You’re the lead."