Chapter 13
"The council convened at dawn," Sage says, dropping onto the bench beside me with her breakfast tray and the particular urgency she reserves for information she's been sitting on all morning. "All four houses. Emergency session in the upper council rooms."
I pour myself more coffee. "I know. I felt it before I saw it."
She gives me a look. "The bond?"
"The mood. Half the faculty walked through breakfast looking like someone had kicked their dinner." I wrap both hands around my mug. "What did you hear?"
"Enough." She lowers her voice, leaning in slightly.
"Malik got close enough to catch pieces before the warding went up.
They're discussing the null bond situation.
Specifically, whether a partial reaper bond with an unclassified null constitutes a political liability for Nocturne's existing house structure. "
"So they're discussing me without me."
"They've been doing that since orientation." She tears a piece of bread in half. "This is just the first time they've assigned it a session number."
I drink my coffee and don't say what I'm thinking, which is that four houses of supernatural politics deciding my fate over breakfast pastries is somehow less alarming than it should be.
Three weeks ago, that thought would have kept me up all night.
Now it takes a back seat to more immediate problems, like the fact that I can feel Ryder Ashford's presence in the upper floors of this building, a direction rather than a sound, north-northwest, three floors up, radiating the kind of controlled tension that bleeds through a bond when someone is choosing their words very carefully in front of an audience.
"There's more," Sage says.
"There always is."
"They're pushing the engagement forward." She watches my face. "Ryder and Lady Eveline. The announcement is expected by the end of the week. Malik heard one of the council aides saying the bond situation makes the existing political arrangement more urgent to formalize."
Something in my chest does a quick, ugly thing that I don't give permission to, and I press it flat before it gets any traction.
"Smart move," I say. "Politically."
"Angelic."
"It is. A formal engagement puts a wall between the bond and any claim on it. Clean, efficient." I set down my mug. "Very him."
Sage doesn't push it. She's good at knowing when to leave things alone. We eat in relative quiet while the dining hall fills around us with students who haven't been subjects of council emergency sessions before their morning coffee.
Malik appears fifteen minutes later, dropping into the seat across from Sage with the quiet economy of movement that's his default. He has a folded piece of paper in his hand.
"Dragon Heir received a summons from his father," he says, sliding it across the table. "Arrived by courier during the session. Word got out fast."
I unfold it. Official stationery, heavy-weighted, the kind that announces its own importance before you read a word. I don't read it all, just enough to catch the shape of it. Return home. Immediately. The null situation compromises your standing.
"Thane's father wants him back," I say.
"Thane told the courier no." Malik picks up Sage's abandoned coffee without asking. "Apparently in considerably more specific terms."
Sage raises an eyebrow. "How specific?"
"Specific enough that two second-years who witnessed it have been telling the story in rotating shifts since breakfast." He takes a sip. "The Dragon Prince is not going home."
I refold the paper and set it down. "What about Caspian's family?"
A pause. Malik and Sage exchange a brief look, the kind that means they decided together how much to tell me.
"The Thorne family submitted a formal petition to the council," Malik says. "Requesting that the null be contained or removed from Nocturne on grounds of supernatural political instability."
"Contained or removed," I repeat.
"Those were the words."
I nod once. "Good to know where everyone stands."
"Caspian wasn't the one who submitted it," Sage adds quickly. "It came from his father's office. Not him."
"Sage."
"I'm just saying it's not the same thing."
"I know it's not the same thing." I push back from the table. "I have training at eleven. I'll see you both at lunch."
She reaches across and catches my wrist briefly. Not stopping me. Just acknowledging that she knows, and that she's here. I squeeze her fingers once and go.
The training rooms are below the east wing, carved out of the older foundation stone, low-ceilinged and permanent-smelling, like chalk dust and old sweat and something metallic that I've decided is probably just the stone itself and not blood, though I've never confirmed this.
I change into the practice gear they issued at orientation, the kind that absorbs minor magical impact without disintegrating, and start with the basic warm-up sequence Sage taught me the second week.
No magic. Just the physical form, the footwork patterns, the way you learn to distribute weight before anything else.
I'm twenty minutes into it when the door opens.
I don't stop. I finish the rotation and come back to center stance before I turn around.
Thane Valorix is standing at the edge of the mat.
He's in training gear, which means this wasn't an ambush, exactly, or at least not one he had to plan the wardrobe for. Dark shirt, practice pants, no jacket. He looks bigger without the academic uniform adding structure around him, which I hadn't thought was possible.
"The schedule shows this room as open," I say.
"It is open." He steps onto the mat. "I'm allowed to use it."
"So am I." I turn back to my stance. "Then there's no problem."
He crosses to the opposite side of the mat and starts his own warm-up, which I'm not going to watch, so I redirect my attention to my footwork and hold it there.
We work in parallel silence for a while.
It's not comfortable silence. It's the kind you build a wall out of and then stand on both sides of it.
"My father wants me home," he says.
"I heard."
"Did you hear what I told his courier?"
"Apparently half the second-years did, so yes."
Something that might be a short, reluctant sound comes from his direction. Not quite a laugh. Close enough to be interesting.
"The council session this morning," he says. "They're going to try to use the bond as leverage. Against you."
I pause, then keep moving. "I know."
"Ashford's engagement announcement will make it worse, not better. It signals that the bond is being politically managed, which signals to everyone else that the bond is real enough to need managing." He stops moving. "People will come at you harder because of it."
"People have been coming at me since orientation." I complete the rotation. "I'm still here."
"This is different."
I face him. He's stopped his warm-up entirely, standing in the center of the mat with his arms at his sides and his jaw set, and his dark eyes are doing that thing where they're more focused than they're pretending to be.
"Are you trying to help me?" I ask. "Because it sounds like you're trying to help me, and I want to be clear that I find that confusing given your general behavior pattern."
"I'm providing information."
"That you could have sent in a note."
"Notes can be intercepted."
"So this is a security measure. Very practical." I reach for my water. "Thank you for the intel. You can go back to your warm-up."
He crosses the mat toward me. Not slow, not aggressive, just deliberate, and I resist the instinct to step back because I don't owe him the retreat.
"You're going to get yourself killed," he says. "Not because you're weak. Because you don't understand how these systems work and you walk through them like the rules don't apply to you."
"The rules were written by people who assumed I'd never exist. I'm not sure they do apply to me."
"That's exactly what I mean."
He's close now, and before I register the full sequence of it, his hand comes up and catches my shoulder, turning me, and the next moment my back hits the mat.
He's over me, knees bracketing my hips, both my wrists pinned above my head in one of his hands.
Not rough. Precise. A demonstration, not an assault, which doesn't make it less of an unwelcome surprise.
"This," he says, "is what happens when you assume the rules don't apply to you. Someone with more experience takes you down before you've finished your sentence."
I look up at him. "Get off me, Valorix."
"I will. When you stop pretending that attitude is the same as preparation."
"Let go of my wrists."
He doesn't. He's studying my face with the kind of attention I've only seen from him in unguarded moments, when he doesn't know I've caught him looking.
Up close, his eyes aren't quite as dark as I always assume.
There's gold in them. It flickers when the light hits right, the way fire moves behind glass.
"You're not afraid," he says, quiet enough that it's not a performance.
"Of you? No."
"You should be. I'm stronger, faster, and I have considerably more training. The only rational response to this position is fear."
"Then I'm irrational." I test the grip on my wrists. Solid. He's not exerting full strength, but he doesn't need to. "Are we done with the lesson?"
He doesn't answer immediately. His gaze moves over my face, the way someone reads a document they're not sure they're interpreting correctly.
"You're going to destroy everything," he says.
The words land flat and strange, and I go still.
"Is that a threat?" I ask.
"I don't know." His voice has changed. Gone from direct to something else, something rougher around the frame, like words being said for the first time and not quite fitting the mouth they're coming out of. "It might be a fact. It might be something else."
"Those are very different things."