Chapter 238 — Something Inside Her Mind

Chapter 238: Chapter 238 — Something Inside Her Mind

~ Raven ~

The stranger’s smile disappeared.

For several seconds, he simply stared at Raven, looking so genuinely surprised that she might have found his reaction amusing if she weren’t already furious.

Then his eyebrows drew together.

"You can feel that?"

Raven tightened her grip around her Linkslate, taking another step away from him.

"Of course I can fucking feel it! What the hell did you think you were doing?"

He didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he studied her with an expression that was becoming increasingly difficult to read.

Raven could still feel the unfamiliar pressure lingering around her thoughts, and although it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as the Dreamwalker’s attacks had been, the sensation was enough to make her pulse quicken.

She’d spent far too long dealing with one bastard who enjoyed interfering with her mind, and she had absolutely no intention of allowing another to do the same.

"I said stop," she warned, raising her free hand as her essence began circulating through her body.

The stranger barely seemed to hear her.

"You’re resisting it," he murmured, his crimson eyes narrowing slightly. "That’s unusual."

Raven stared at him in disbelief.

"Did you seriously expect me to just stand here and let you do whatever you wanted?"

Something about her response appeared to interest him even more.

He tilted his head, studying her with the same concentration he’d shown when examining her training earlier, although there was considerably less amusement in his expression now.

Raven didn’t like that look.

She’d seen enough of it from the people who became interested in her unusual abilities, and she was beginning to suspect that the last thing she needed was another powerful noble deciding she was something worth investigating.

"Whatever you’re thinking, forget it," she warned, preparing to contact the academy authorities.

But before she could finish, the unfamiliar pressure returned.

This time, Raven felt it more clearly.

It was almost as though something had brushed against the surface of her consciousness, searching for a way to influence her thoughts.

She stiffened, immediately attempting to push the sensation away.

Her wolf stirred beneath her skin, responding to the disturbance with a sudden surge of uneasiness.

Raven had already learned that she could resist certain forms of mental interference, but whatever this vampire was doing felt different from the Dreamwalker’s abilities.

He wasn’t trying to drag her into another world or overwhelm her awareness with illusions.

Instead, his influence seemed to encourage a particular thought, attempting to make her accept something she had no intention of agreeing to.

Yet as Raven concentrated on resisting it, something unexpected happened.

The pressure seemed to encounter another obstruction somewhere deeper within her consciousness.

It wasn’t quite the same as her wolf’s resistance, and the sensation was so unfamiliar that Raven briefly lost track of what she was trying to do.

A sharp discomfort spread behind her eyes.

She gasped, pressing one hand against her forehead as the training court blurred.

What the hell?

The stranger’s eyes widened.

He took an involuntary step forward, staring at her with an expression of genuine astonishment.

"That’s..."

Raven barely heard him.

Something shifted inside her mind, and before she could understand what was happening, an image flashed across her consciousness.

She was standing in a forest.

Enormous trees surrounded her, their branches stretching high above the unfamiliar ground, and somewhere ahead stood the enormous trunk she’d already seen in her previous visions.

Raven’s breath caught when she recognized the black-haired girl standing before it.

The child had spread her arms protectively, refusing to move even as several masked figures approached.

This scene again!

She’d seen it during the Founders’ Hunt, and again after rescuing Deb from the Dreamwalker.

But this time, the images were moving so quickly that she barely had time to understand what was happening.

One of the masked attackers attempted to move past the black-haired girl, only for the child to throw herself against him.

He shoved her aside, sending her stumbling, but she scrambled back to her feet and positioned herself before the tree again.

Raven could hear the desperation in the girl’s voice as she shouted something at the approaching men, although the words were too distorted for her to understand.

Then her attention shifted toward the enormous trunk.

The smaller child was there.

She was crouching behind the tree with both hands pressed over her mouth, trembling as she watched the confrontation unfold.

Raven instinctively moved closer, desperate to finally see the girl’s face, but before she could reach her, the forest began dissolving.

The trees disappeared, and suddenly sunlight filled her vision.

Raven found herself looking into a familiar room, where the same black-haired girl was laughing as a man lifted her into the air.

He swung her around before lowering her to the floor, crouching in front of her as though saying something that made her laugh even harder.

Raven recognized him from her earlier vision.

He was extraordinarily handsome, and there was something affectionate about the way he watched the child.

The girl reached forward and pressed both hands against his cheeks, squeezing his face while he pretended to protest.

Then a door opened.

A woman entered the room, and the little girl’s entire expression brightened before she hurried toward her.

The woman bent down to welcome her, gathering the child into her arms.

For a moment, Raven found herself watching what appeared to be an ordinary family enjoying a peaceful afternoon.

The man and woman seemed to be the child’s parents, although Raven couldn’t understand why she was being shown something so personal about people she didn’t recognize.

Who were they?

And why did the black-haired girl appear in both this happy scene and the terrifying forest?

Raven attempted to look more closely at the woman.

She could see her arms wrapped around the child, along with the dark fabric covering her shoulders, but whenever Raven tried to focus on her face, her attention seemed to slip away.

It was the same frustrating sensation she’d experienced during her previous vision, as though something was preventing her from seeing the very thing she wanted to understand.

Raven tried again, concentrating harder, but the moment she attempted to make out the woman’s features, the room began to disappear.

The sunlight faded, and the figures in front of her dissolved into a terrible whiteness.

Raven struggled to hold on to the image, unwilling to lose another opportunity to understand what she’d been seeing.

But the scene continued breaking apart.

The man disappeared, followed by the woman, and before Raven could understand what was happening, a scream tore through the silence.

Suddenly, she saw blood spreading across pale stone.

A hand reached desperately toward something beyond her sight, and the familiar skull beneath a broken crescent flashed before her eyes.

Then the black-haired child appeared again, her mouth wide open in a scream Raven couldn’t hear.

Everything around her seemed to collapse, and although Raven tried to move toward the girl, she could no longer tell where she was standing.

Somewhere beyond the confusion, she heard a man’s voice.

It sounded distant and distorted, as though someone were calling to her from the other side of a wall.

Then the pressure inside her mind shifted, and Raven suddenly found herself gasping for breath.

The training court returned so abruptly that she stumbled backward, barely managing to remain upright.

Her hand flew toward her forehead as she struggled to steady her breathing.

For several seconds, she couldn’t make sense of what had happened.

The forest, the children and the man and woman from the sunlit room had all disappeared, leaving her standing beneath the training court’s lights with her heart pounding painfully against her ribs.

What the fuck was that?

Raven slowly raised her head.

The vampire was staring at her.

Gone was the easy amusement he’d worn since their conversation began. His crimson eyes were wide with surprise, and for the first time, he appeared genuinely uncertain about what he was seeing.

Raven’s confusion gradually gave way to anger.

The bastard had done something to her mind, and she was certain of it.

She didn’t know how he’d managed to trigger the vision or whether he’d intended to show her those memories, but there was no mistaking what had happened.

He’d tried influencing her thoughts, something inside her had resisted, and then she’d found herself trapped in that strange vision again.

After everything she’d endured with the Dreamwalker, the thought of another supernatural bastard reaching into her consciousness was enough to make her furious.

"What the fuck did you just do to me?" she demanded, taking a step toward him despite the lingering dizziness.

The stranger didn’t immediately answer.

He was still examining her with an expression Raven couldn’t quite understand, although his attention seemed to be focused on something other than her anger.

Eventually, he frowned.

"That shouldn’t have happened."

Raven stared at him.

"What shouldn’t have happened?"

"I was only trying to influence your attention," he replied slowly, his crimson eyes returning to hers. "You shouldn’t have reacted like that."

Raven felt another wave of anger.

"You were trying to influence my what?"

He seemed almost surprised by her reaction, as though he hadn’t considered that she might object to what he’d done.

"It’s a simple mental technique," he explained. "It shouldn’t have caused you any harm."

Raven couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

"You tried manipulating my mind because I wanted to report you, and you’re standing there telling me it shouldn’t have caused any harm?"

The stranger didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, his gaze sharpened, and Raven had the uncomfortable feeling that her anger was becoming little more than an inconvenience to him.

"Tell me something," he said, his expression growing more serious. "Has anyone ever interfered with your mind before?"

Raven went still.

The question caught her completely unprepared.

How the hell had he known to ask that?

She remembered the Dreamwalker, the pain he’d inflicted and the terrifying experience of struggling against somebody who could manipulate her perception of reality.

But she had no intention of discussing any of that with a stranger who’d just attempted to do something similar.

"That’s none of your fucking business."

The vampire regarded her for another moment before speaking again.

"Whatever stopped my influence wasn’t ordinary resistance."

Raven’s fingers tightened around her Linkslate.

"What are you talking about?"

"I’ve encountered people trained to resist mental techniques before," he explained, his earlier amusement almost entirely gone. "This was different."

He paused, seemingly considering how to describe what he’d encountered.

"It was almost as though something else was preventing me from reaching you."

Raven felt her stomach tighten.

Something else?

Her wolf had already protected her from supernatural interference before, but that didn’t explain the strange sensation she’d experienced when the vampire’s influence reached deeper into her consciousness.

She still didn’t understand what had triggered the vision, and she certainly wasn’t comfortable with the way he was talking about her mind as though it were something he had a right to examine.

"Listen to me," Raven said, forcing herself to straighten despite the discomfort lingering behind her eyes. "I don’t care what you think you discovered. You’re going to explain exactly what you did, and then you’re going to tell me why you thought you had the right to do it."

The vampire looked at her for a moment, and Raven noticed the way his expression changed from surprise to something considerably more interested.

Whatever he’d encountered, it had been unusual enough to capture his complete attention.

Then he spoke quietly.

"Someone’s been inside your mind."

Raven felt the blood drain from her face.

The stranger’s eyes narrowed slightly, as though he’d finally recognized something about the resistance he’d encountered.

"No," he murmured, almost to himself. "That’s not quite right."

Raven stared at him, her thoughts racing as she tried to understand what he meant.

The Dreamwalker had invaded her mind, of course, but the vampire was speaking as though he’d encountered something entirely different.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded.

He looked at her again, his expression growing increasingly serious.

"There’s something there. Something deliberately—"

BANG!

The training court doors flew open with enough force to make Raven flinch.

She turned sharply, still struggling to understand what the stranger had been saying, only to find two familiar figures standing in the doorway.

Cassian was at the front, and Raven had never seen him look quite so furious. His usual composure was gone, replaced by an expression so cold and openly hostile that she almost didn’t recognize him.

Dante stood immediately behind him, his Fire Lattice already active beneath his skin. Faint red-gold markings glowed along his arms, and the air surrounding him shimmered with heat as he stared toward the vampire.

Raven’s eyes widened at the sight of them.

What the hell were they doing here?

She barely had time to process their arrival before Cassian stepped forward, his gaze fixed entirely on the stranger.

"Sevrin Veyrholt," he growled, his voice carrying a fury Raven had rarely heard from him. "What the fuck did you do to her?"