A Court of Pain and Sorrow

The warrant

Rhaella wanted to go back home for a couple days.
She sent Dante's office a permite to do so and it came back rejected.

So she sent it again. And again. And again.

He always rejected it.

She demanded a reason, an explication.
She didn't get any.

Everytime she went to his office, the doors were guarded by criminals who didn't let her in.

Everytime she tries to approach Dante in the Guild's hallways, someone stopped her.

But Rhaella didn't give up.
She kept sending permites every day.

And every day, they got rejected.

***

Rhaella insisted the Ravens kept training with Hugo.
She ordered it, actually.
And seeing that Dante didn't opposed, it remained like that.

She also insisted they all trained fully equipped with the cloak, armor and mask.

It was simple, the masks were suffocating, the armors were heavy and the cloak was a necessary bother in winter if they didn't want to freeze to death.

She remembered how overwhelmed she felt in her first purge, the suffocating sensation of wearing the mask.

She didn't want her or her Ravens to feel that every time they went on a mission.

None of the other affiliations wore their masks or equipment, only them.

Apparently, they had become quite tye show for the kids that lived in the Guild with their criminal parents.
Everyday, when they trained, children came to see them spar, shoot and fight with swords wearing their masks and armours.
The older members of the Guild came as well from time to time.

They became the show of the Guild's location here in Prythian.

***

Two weeks after the ceremony, Rhaella found out she was famous outside the Guild.
They all were.

Dante had made sure the word got out about the Ravens and their little but huge crimes.
Even June, who couldn't come out as the murder of the Blackward's was now know for being a spy at court. For the possibility of her being anyone.

Their names didn't come out, obviously.
Only their code names did.
But still, they were already feared.

And that, the not being able to choose what people knew or when they knew pissed Rhaella off. Especially because of how she found out what Dante had done:

"Raven Death?" One of the children who saw them train daily said, shyly approaching Rhaella who still had her mask off, unlike the other Ravens, who were already leaving to shower.
No one approached them when they didn't have their masks on in the training room. They didn't know how to address them without them.

Or if they should.

Rhaella knelt down in front of the kid.

"Yes?" She asked.

The little boy was the pure image of innocence with his big blue eyes and blond hair.
She wondered if Lorcan, Lysander and Maxa, who grew up here, were like that kid years ago.

"My mommy gave me this." He said, extending a paper. "She said I could give it to you if I wanted to."

Rhaella furrowed her eyebrows beneath the mask and took the paper while the boy looked at her, waiting for a reaction from the Raven Death.

She unfolded the paper and saw a warrant for her and the other Ravens.

It was a mere sketch of the six of them aligned together in their uniforms.
The paper read: