Chapter 21 What Corvyn Knows
Corvyn talks for a long time.
She starts with the basics and moves outward from there the way someone does when they've been holding a story together for years and are finally putting it down carefully rather than dropping it.
My mother, Maren Calladine, arrived at Northveil twenty years ago from a small supernatural community in rural Vermont. Unawakened. Ember House. The ability presented in her second month, faster than any previously documented tamer case at that point. The dragon-natured individual she bonded with was Aldric Valecrest, Rhydan's father, then nineteen, already established at Northveil, already heir to the pack.
"They didn't choose the bond," Corvyn says. "Nobody chooses it. It chose them. The way it always does."
"But Elder Valecrest," Rhydan says. "His own son..."
"His own son was bonding with a girl from an unranked Vermont community with no pack affiliation and no supernatural status," Corvyn says carefully. "From Elder Valecrest's perspective, the bond was a complication to a succession that had been planned for thirty years."
"So he called in the Vance family," I say.
"Not immediately," Corvyn says. "First he tried to separate them through other means. Transferring Aldric to a different programme. Social pressure. Family obligation framing." She pauses. "None of it worked. A stage-three bond is not a social problem. It doesn't respond to social solutions."
"So then the Vance family," Rhydan says.
"So then the Vance family," Corvyn confirms. "He contracted them to perform a binding on your mother, Veyra. Not on Aldric. On Maren."
The fire in the grate pops.
"Because binding the tamer..." I say slowly.
"...would destabilise the bond without touching the pack heir directly," Corvyn says. "Elder Valecrest is very intelligent and very careful. He understood that binding Aldric would harm Maren. He decided the inverse was acceptable."
I stare at her.
"He was going to have my mother bound," I say.
"He had already arranged it," Corvyn says. "Maren found out three days before it was scheduled to happen."
"And she ran," I say.
"She ran," Corvyn confirms. "She came to me first. I helped her leave the academy safely. She withdrew under a formal academic reason, which I documented, and the case file was closed to prevent anyone tracking her through official channels." She meets my eyes. "The notation in different handwriting at the bottom of her file is mine."
The room is very quiet.
"Where is she?" I ask.
Corvyn looks at me steadily. "Safe," she says. "And aware that you're here."
Everything in me goes still.
Every. Single. Thing.
"She knows I'm at Northveil," I say.
"She has known since your acceptance letter was processed," Corvyn admits. "She asked me not to tell you immediately. She wanted you to have time to find your footing before," she pauses. "Before all of this."
"She knew this would happen," I say. "She knew I'd bond."
"She suspected," Corvyn says carefully. "Tamer ability runs in bloodlines. She knew what you might be. She wanted you to come here because Northveil is the safest environment for an awakening tamer, because I am here and she trusts me." She pauses. "And because she wanted you to understand what you are before she tried to explain what happened to her."
I look at the desk and breathe slowly.
Beside me, Rhydan is very still.
"My father," he says. "After she left, what happened to him?"
Corvyn looks at him with something that is the closest thing to gentle I've seen from her. "He went home," she says. "He's been managing an unresolved stage-three bond ever since. Without his tamer..." She pauses. "It's not something a person does well."
"He knows about me," Rhydan says. "About my dragon nature."
"He's known since it first presented," Corvyn replies. "He recognised it immediately."
"And he said nothing," Rhydan says, the disappointment in his voice is very loud and clear.
"He is not a free agent in his own family," Corvyn says carefully. "He never has been."
Rhydan's jaw is very tight and he looks at the fire and I look at his profile and the grief sitting in it, clean and enormous, the grief of someone who has just been handed a completely different version of their father than the one they'd been carrying.
"Elder Valecrest," I say. "Does he know that we've bonded?"
"He knows Rhydan's dragon nature has presented," Corvyn says. "He knows a tamer is at the academy. He knows the timing." She pauses. "He's not a slow man."
"The fortnight you mentioned," I say. "He's going to try the same thing he tried with my mother."
"He's going to try to bind you," Corvyn says. "Yes."
"On school grounds," I say. "Which you said requires your authorisation."
"Which I will not give," she adds.
"But off school grounds..." I say.
Corvyn is quiet.
"He needs me to leave the academy," I say. "Or he needs to get the binding done without your knowledge."
"Or," Rhydan says quietly, "he removes me from Northveil. Takes the bonded individual out of proximity. Performs the binding on me, off grounds, and takes his chances with the destabilisation."
The three of us sit with that.
"Can he do that?" I ask Corvyn. "Legally. Under pack authority."
"Until Rhydan turns twenty-one," she says. "Yes."
Rhydan turns twenty-one in eighteen months.
I can see him doing the same arithmetic.
"Then we need something that makes that option impossible," I say. "Before he moves."
Corvyn reaches into her desk drawer again. This time she places a thick folded document on the desk.
"There is a provision in Northveil's founding charter," she says. "A supernatural protection clause for bonded pairs on school grounds. It predates pack law and it supersedes it in this specific circumstance." She taps the document. "If the bond is formally registered with the academy as an active tamer bond, pack authority cannot remove either party from the grounds without academic tribunal review. The process takes a minimum of four months."
We both stare at the document.
"Formal registration," Rhydan says. "What does that require?"
"Both parties present," Corvyn says. "Both parties willing." She looks between us. "And both parties honest about the current stage of the bond."
Rhydan looks at me.
I look at him.
Two weeks ago he told me I wouldn't last a semester.
Now we're sitting in a headmistress's office discussing formally registering a supernatural bond that neither of us asked for and both of us are already inside.
"What happens after the four months?" I ask.
"By then," Corvyn says, "you will either have enough evidence of the Elder's interference to pursue formal supernatural council complaint, or the bond will have reached a stage where the question of pack authority becomes legally irrelevant."
"Because at stage three..." I say.
"...a tamer bond supersedes all other supernatural affiliations," Corvyn confirms. "Pack, bloodline, or otherwise."
Rhydan is quiet for a long moment.
Then he looks at me with those grey eyes and the complicated thing running through them and says, "It's your choice. It involves you more than it involves me. He can only pull me. He can't touch you without the binding."
I think about my mother running from this school twenty years ago. I think about Aldric Valecrest spending twenty years managing half of himself. I think about the warmth in my hand that won't fade and the way the arena felt last night when the hit landed and something in me reached out without asking permission.
"Register it," I say.
He holds my gaze.
Nods once.
Corvyn slides the document across the desk.