The assessment hall doors let Raven out into daylight, and the daylight was full of people.
The courtyard beyond the steps had disappeared under uniforms.
Gray in every direction — students packed along the colonnades, crowded onto the fountain rim, hanging off the stair rails of the buildings opposite, hundreds of them, all drawn by the same line on the boards.
Somebody had shattered Cassian Blade’s record, and the whole academy had come to see who walked out.
The conversations died in patches.
Near the steps first, then outward, row by row, until the courtyard stood quiet and every eye in it had landed on her.
Raven stopped on the second step.
One second.
Just one, while her heart forgot its rhythm.
Then she felt it.
Dozens of light touches brushed over her skin at once.
Raven went still.
Essence reached for her from every side, sent out by the stronger wolves in the courtyard.
It pressed against her, testing, searching, trying to find the wolf everyone expected to be there.
Her breath caught.
For one awful moment, it felt as though the entire courtyard had its hands on her.
Her shoulders drew in before she could stop them.
Then the touches began to disappear.
One after another, the wolves pulled their essence back.
The looks around her changed almost immediately.
Curiosity gave way to confusion.
Then the whispers started.
“An omega?” “That’s impossible.” “She barely has a wolf.
I couldn’t even find—” “Move,” someone called from the back, bored already.
“Servants shouldn’t block the entrance.
We’re waiting for the actual candidate.” Laughter rippled somewhere to her left.
A tall girl near the front frowned up at the doors behind Raven.
“Wait.
Why did she come out of there?
That hall’s sealed.” The whispers surged again, and a boy on the fountain rim laughed above them.
“She’s obviously the servant.
Followed whoever broke the record.
You think that broke a Blade record?” The courtyard took the explanation and swallowed it whole, because a servant made sense and an omega rewriting history did not.
And with the mystery solved to their satisfaction, the nearest students came up the steps at her.
“Who’s your master?” “Which House?” “Was it one of the Cardinal Heirs?
It was, wasn’t it—” “Tell us.
Did they leave alread—” “What did the run look like?
You saw it, you had to have—” “I—” Raven started, and three more questions buried it.
The circle tightened.
Bodies pressed in from the sides, cutting the daylight into slices, and the air went close and hot with breath and essence and too many voices.
Somebody behind her shoved forward for a better view.
Raven pitched off the step.
Her bad ankle refused the landing, her weight came down wherever it could — and it came down hard on a polished black boot.
Silence, instant and total, in a three-pace circle.
The boot’s owner looked down.
He looked at the scuff her heel had left across the shine.
Then he looked at Raven, and he had the kind of face that had never once been told no.
“Watch where you’re going, servant.” “I’m sorry.” She said it at once, plainly.
“Someone pushed—” His shoulder hit hers, deliberate, a full-weight bump that sent her two stumbling steps sideways, and the circle laughed.
Raven caught her balance on the rail.
Heat climbed her neck, familiar heat, and she breathed once through it before straightening.
“I already apologized.” Her voice stayed level.
It cost her, but it stayed level.
He wasn’t finished.
Being that kind of face, in front of that many people, he couldn’t be.
His hand shot out and closed around her wrist.
“Did I say you could walk away?” Raven yanked her arm free.
She didn’t think about it.
Her wrist twisted out through his thumb the same way it had twisted out of Dante’s grip minutes ago, and by the time she realized what she’d done, her arm was already back against her chest and half the courtyard had seen it.
The boy stared at his empty hand.
Around him, dozens of people had just watched a supposedly omega servant shake him off like a dog shakes off water, and he felt every single pair of eyes doing the math.
His face darkened past embarrassment into something uglier, and he reached for her again with a curs— The assessment hall doors opened.
Every head in the courtyard snapped up.
Dante came out first, hands in his pockets, and Cassian followed a pace behind.
The effect ran through the crowd like a current — girls near the steps went straight-backed all at once, whispers sparking between them, while the boys studied Cassian’s face instead, hunting his expression for damage, for anger, for anything that said his record’s death had touched him.
Nobody was looking at Raven anymore.
She slid backward out of the circle, along the rail, down the far side of the steps, and put the fountain between herself and the doors while four hundred people asked their questions at somebody else.
“Who broke it?” “Was it you?
Prymont, was it you—” “Why hasn’t anyone come out?
We’ve been standing here—” Dante smiled pleasantly and said nothing worth hearing.
Cassian didn’t even do that much.
The questions piled higher, climbing over each other, the front rows pressing in on the steps— The Headmaster stepped out behind them.
“Enough.” One word, and the courtyard went so quiet Raven heard the fountain running.
The Headmaster’s gaze swept the crowd once, taking attendance of every face, answering none of the questions hanging in the air.
Then it traveled out, past the fountain, and found Raven halfway across the courtyard and still moving.
“Miss Rivers.” Raven stopped.
Turned.
The Headmaster folded her arms.
“Exactly how were you planning to find your way around an academy you’ve never set foot in?” The courtyard’s attention flickered toward her, but only flickered — the record still owned them.
Raven stood with her escape half-made and no answer in her hands.
“I hadn’t thought that far,” she admitted, quietly.
The Headmaster sighed at the sky.
“Come with me.” Raven crossed back through the crowd’s edge and followed her.
Most of the students had already turned back to the Cardinal Heirs, still chasing their mystery — though here and there a head tracked her instead, and a few frowns followed her all the way out of the courtyard.
Miss Rivers, the tall girl mouthed to her friend, and her frown deepened.
The Headmaster walked fast, and Valerius unrolled around them.
Covered walkways with sigil-lines running silver through the paving stones.
A training green where a formation of third-years moved through stances in eerie unison.
An arched bridge over water so clear Raven saw the carp turn beneath their shadows, and past it a tower whose upper floors seemed built of glass, throwing afternoon light across half the grounds.
Every hall they passed was older, cleaner, and larger than anything in Blackthorn territory, and she gave up trying to map the turns and settled for keeping the Headmaster’s shoulders in sight.
They stopped at a double door of dark wood on the third floor of the glass-topped tower.
The door was already open.
The Headmaster’s stride broke.
Her frown arrived before her words did.
“Who opened my office?” “I did,” a male voice said from inside, unbothered, in no hurry at all.
The irritation drained out of the Headmaster’s face and left something wearier behind.
She pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Of course you did.” She walked in.
Raven followed — and stopped two steps past the threshold.
A young man sat in the Headmaster’s own chair like the office came with him.
One leg rested over the other.
A document hung lazily from one hand, half-read, and he hadn’t stood — didn’t shift, didn’t straighten, didn’t offer the chair back to the woman who ran the academy.
Dark hair fell clean across his brow, and his face — Raven was getting tired of this.
First Dante, then Cassian, now this one, put together fine enough to make staring feel rude, wearing his ease like other people wore titles.
Do all the men in this academy look like this?
she thought, and cursed herself for thinking it.
The young man finished his line of the document at his own pace.
Then his eyes came up.
Emerald — deep, vivid green — and they passed over the Headmaster entirely and settled on Raven.
He smiled.