Chapter 40 Fear
He is afraid of me.
Not of what I might do. Of what I'm becoming.
Of what I am.
"You're Maren's daughter," he says.
"Yes," I reply.
"You look like her," he says, and the words land differently in his mouth than they did in Aldric's, carrying something that is not nostalgia.
"So I'm told," I say.
Rhydan moves to stand beside me, not in front, beside, and the warmth of him against my arm is steady and deliberate and the elder's eyes drop to the space between us and something tightens in his jaw.
"Rhydan," he says. "Come home. We'll talk properly. Just family."
"We're talking now," Rhydan replies. "This is fine."
"This is not a conversation for an audience," Elder Valecrest says, and the warmth in his voice cools by one precise degree.
"Then you should have come alone," Rhydan replies his grandfather.
The male Vance elder shifts in his chair.
Corvyn sets something on her desk between them, a document, and the elder's eyes drop to it and I watch him read the council filing header and something moves through his expression, fast and controlled and gone.
"Calder," Corvyn says. "The binding arrangement with the Vance family has been submitted as evidence in an active supernatural council review. Any action taken by any party connected to that arrangement constitutes contempt of the review process." She folds her hands. "You know this."
"I know the law, Evangeline."
"Then you know why I'm telling you this."
He is quiet for a moment.
Then he does something I don't expect.
He smiles.
Not warmly. The smile of someone who has just confirmed something they suspected.
"You think the council review protects them," he says.
"It does protect them," Corvyn replies. "By law."
"By law as it stands today," he says. "Laws change. Reviews conclude. Outcomes are not guaranteed." He looks at Rhydan. "I am trying to protect you. Everything I have done has been to protect you."
"From what exactly?" Rhydan asks quietly.
"From what you are," Elder Valecrest replies simply. "From what they will make of you if it goes unchecked. The Drevari. Others. People who look at a dual natured supernatural bonded to an ancient dragon and see a weapon and will not stop until they have turned you into one."
"So you decided to turn him into nothing instead," I point out.
The room goes very still.
Elder Valecrest looks at me.
"I don't believe I was speaking to you," he says, and the warmth is completely gone now, the fire in the room with no exits finally showing its walls.
"You were speaking about me," I respond evenly. "And about the bond. And about what anchoring means. So yes, you were speaking to me."
Rhydan's arm presses against mine slightly.
Not a warning. Solidarity.
Elder Valecrest studies me for a long moment with those cold grey eyes and I hold his gaze and do not move and I feel the dragon's pulse in the foundations below us, warm and steady and enormous, and I feel the bond running bright between Rhydan and me and I feel my tamer ability sitting in my hands like something that has been waiting eighteen years to be exactly this large.
He feels it too.
I watch him feel it and I watch him understand what I am and what I'm becoming and I watch the fear come back into his eyes beneath the composure.
Good.
"We're not finished," he says, to Rhydan, not to me, the deliberate exclusion of me precise and noted.
"No," Rhydan agrees. "We're not."
Elder Valecrest looks at Sera.
"Seraphine," he says, and the name lands like a hand extended, an expectation of something.
Sera holds his gaze for one beat.
Two.
"Good morning, Elder Valecrest," she says pleasantly.
And does not move from where she is standing.
Beside me.
The female Vance elder makes a sound, small and sharp, that carries an entire conversation in it.
Sera does not look at her.
Elder Valecrest looks at Sera for a long moment and then at me and then at Sera again, and I watch him recalculate something in real time, updating his information with this new piece, and the calculation that comes out the other side of it lands in his expression as something colder than anger.
He picks up his coat and starts walking out.
"Rhydan," he says at the door. "What you are becoming is not safe. Not for you. Not for her." He pauses without turning. "Not for anyone who gets too close."
He leaves.
The Vance elders follow, and as the woman passes Sera, she leans close and says something in a language I don't speak, low and fast, and Sera's jaw tightens once before she smooths it out.
The door closes.
The room exhales.
Corvyn looks at Sera with an expression that is carefully neutral. "That was a choice," she says.
"Yes," Sera agrees.
"Your family will respond to it," Corvyn says.
"Yes," Sera says again.
She looks at me then, briefly, and her expression is composed and something underneath it that is not composed at all, something slightly wild at the edges, the look of someone who has just jumped from a significant height and hasn't landed yet.
I give her a small nod.
She gives me one back.
Rhydan is still looking at the door his grandfather walked through, and I don't need the bond to read what's on his face.
I reach over and find his hand at his side and press mine against it briefly, warm and deliberate, and he turns his palm and holds mine for one moment before letting go.
"What did she say to you?" I ask Sera quietly. "The elder. At the door."
Sera is quiet for a moment.
"She said," Sera replies carefully, "that the Vance family does not forgive defection." She pauses. "And that I should say goodbye to Northveil."
I stare at her. "They'll pull your enrolment."
"They'll try," Sera replies, and something enters her voice that is sharp and cold and nothing like the composure she usually projects, something with genuine teeth in it.
Something that sounds like the beginning of her own war.
"Corvyn," I say.
"Already ahead of you," Corvyn replies, and there is a document on her desk that she is already signing, and I catch the header as she turns it.
Emergency Academic Protection. Student at risk of non-academic enrolment interference.
Sera sees it too.
Something moves through her face.
She blinks once.
Corvyn doesn't look up. "Sit down, Seraphine. You have a lot to tell me."