OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

002 || With Silent Support

CHAPTER TWO —    With Silent Support ..

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          She could hear their questions loud and clear though not a soul had yey brought voice to that singular thought that made Daphne Ravinstill into the perfect subject of attention in the morning, when somewhere in the Capitol, her father was reciting the Treaty of Treason in front of cameras, but she stood instead amongst Academy students.

The question almost asked itself, especially with her brother on the screen of the broadcast they were staring up at. Look at him, Daphne thought. Smug looking bastard. Albert Ravinstill looked powerful and it was showing all over him that he knew just how powerful he was being painted by standing there, two steps behind, to his father's right, with the entire Panem watching him. Albert was all her father ever needed and each televised event did wonderfully in reminding her of that.

Though everyone was casting fugitive glances at her — or rather, because of it — Daphne smiled.

All of a sudden, Coriolanus wished he hadn't seated them in the front row. They were far too exposed there for him to even phantom shifting in closer to her, far less to reach his hand out and take hers as a gesture of solidarity; if anything, doing so might have made things even worse in terms of rumors and gossip surrounding the relationship between Daphne and her father, which was one difficult can of worms.

Nonetheless, Coriolanus knew that look in her eyes when he saw it from the corner of his sight. Her stellar, relaxed smile might have fooled a commoner, but never him, for he wasn't in the slightest just 'some guy' in her life. He couldn't exactly claim to know the faintest thing about what she was going through, save for the brief explanations Daphne spared sporadically and sometimes not even when prompted to do so, but truth was, though he didn't know first hand how it felt to be insignificant in the eyes of a parent, he sure was no stranger to the sensation he experienced each time he witness the significance of the Snow family depleting in the public eye. Those two surely were similar instances, he believed.

Much like all the assembled faculty of the Academy, Daphne heard the swayed steps of Dean Highbottom as he walked down the runaway splitting the auditorium in half. Indifference defined all students' reaction to the dean's appearance — after all, the president was yet to finish reading the treaty —, but it was Daphne's indifference that would have to be short lived as the tangled steps came to an abrupt stop besides her marginal front row seat.

The dean leant over with a whisper on his lips. "Do you think he even realized you're not there with him?"

Whatever the dean had just told Daphne — the whisper had been too quiet for Coriolanus to hear over the sound of the broadcast, even if he was seated right next to her —, for a brief moment, he experienced the strange feeling existing between fearing for his life and absolutely boiling with rage over the matter. Daphne's smile had vanished as if it had never been on her lips to begin with. That look on her face when she turned to stare at the Academy's head teacher was something of true horror, something that would get anyone of lower rank than her own a one way ticket to Dr. Gaul's laboratories.

Unsurprisingly, Highbottom seemed pleased to be met with such a hateful pair of eyes. Without a shred of remorse, he played a disgustingly false game of innocence. "Sorry, my dear," he placed a hand over his chest, "is that the faulty ear I just spoke into?"