Chapter 62 Monday
Monday at Northveil runs the way Mondays run everywhere, with the specific grudging energy of a week starting whether anyone is prepared for it or not.
Except this Monday has forty-six hours left on a window that closes at a tribunal, and I know it and Rhydan knows it and the dragon below knows it, and the ordinary Monday texture of the academy moving through its morning, lockers and breakfast and Professor Roderick running Pack Dynamics with his usual brisk discomfort, feels simultaneously very normal and very thin.
Like paper over something that is about to push through.
Corvyn's office at eight AM.
All of us, Rhydan and me, Bram, Aldara who arrived last night and whose silver-streaked hair and calm brown eyes I now see clearly in daylight for the first time, and Corvyn herself behind her desk with the ward anchor sitting between them and a copy of the tribunal summons beside it.
"The formal council submission," Bram says, opening a document on the desk, "is ready. The signature chain from the Greymoor working, traced through the Edinburgh operative to the original suppression investigation fifteen years ago, is documented in full." He looks at Rhydan. "Once submitted, Elder Valecrest's tribunal claim becomes simultaneously his biggest mistake because the submission evidence directly implicates the planted working as the cause of the ability expression he is using as evidence against you."
"He used his own operation to provide our defence," Rhydan says.
"Yes," Bram replies, with the specific dry satisfaction of a man who has been doing this for twenty-two years. "He did."
Corvyn looks at Aldara. "The council will accept emergency submission?"
"Given the active tribunal threat and the documented Drevari involvement," Aldara says, "yes. Priority processing. We will have preliminary acknowledgement within twenty-four hours."
"Which gives us the window," I say. "The anchoring."
Everyone looks at me.
"Tonight," I continue. "On the ice. Both natures in alignment. The documentation from Zael's case files, the ward anchor, and Aldara as official council witness." I look at Rhydan. "Before the tribunal can accelerate. Before Elder Valecrest receives anything that contradicts what Nox is sending him tonight."
Corvyn looks at Rhydan steadily. "It is your choice," she says. "Both of yours."
Rhydan looks at me.
I look at him.
"Tonight," he says simply.
Corvyn nods once.
"Then we prepare," she says to no one in particular but the entire room simultaneously.
Morning classes run and I attend them because normal is the best cover for abnormal and because sitting alone thinking about tonight is considerably worse than Supernatural History with Professor Crane who is covering Tamer Bond Documentation this week with the specific timing of someone who was briefed and chose a very elegant response to it.
Zael finds me after class.
He falls into step beside me in the corridor and says nothing for a moment and I walk with him and let the silence be what it is and wait.
"Tonight?" he asks finally.
"Yes," I reply.
"I want to be there," he says. "I told you that from the beginning."
"I know," I reply. "You can be there."
He is quiet for another step.
"The mark," he says carefully. "That the dragon leaves on the tamer... I told you it is permanent and visible." He glances at me sideways. "I did not tell you what it looks like."
I look at him. "Tell me now."
"In every documented case," he says, "it appears on the right hand. Where the tamer ability lives strongest." He pauses. "It looks different for each pair. Dragon scales. A brand. A light. Something specific to that particular dragon's nature."
I look at my right hand as we walk.
At the warmth living there.
At the green witch light that has been pulsing through it since Sunday morning.
"I am not afraid of a mark," I say.
"I know," he replies. "I just wanted you to know what you were choosing. All of it."
"Thank you," I say. "Genuinely."
He nods.
We reach the junction where our paths split and he stops and looks at me with those steady honest eyes and says, "For what it's worth, you are the strongest tamer documented in recorded history and you have been one for less than a month." He pauses. "Whatever happens tonight, you are truly ready."
I look at him.
"I am truly terrified," I say honestly.
"Yes," he says simply. "That is what being truly ready feels like."
He walks away.
I stand at the junction and press my warm right hand flat against my chest and breathe.
Tonight.
Sera finds me at lunch.
She drops into the seat across from mine without asking, sets her tray down, and looks at me with those sharp eyes and the warmth running at precisely calibrated levels, and underneath my witchcraft reads her intention and finds the real thing sitting below the surface like a stone under water.
She wants to know if tonight is happening.
She wants to be there.
Not for the documentation. Not for the cold witness record of it.
She wants to watch Rhydan at the moment the bond completes and understand finally and completely what Veyra Calladine is to him that she herself can never be.
The wanting of it is enormous and painful and she has no idea I can feel it.
"Tonight," she says, casually, reaching for her water.
"Possibly," I reply.
"The window closes at the tribunal," she says.
"Mm," I reply.
She looks at me over her glass and the calculation moves behind her eyes and beneath it, unguarded for one half second, something that aches.
"I want to witness it," she says. "Officially. On behalf of my family. The documentation."
"I know," I reply.
"Will you allow it?" she asks.
I look at her across the lunch table, at the composed beautiful face and the coldfire ability humming beneath her skin and the ache she does not know I can feel, and I think about a girl who was handed an agenda before she could question it and who is slowly, carefully, building her own path out of it, and I think about what she told me in the courtyard last night and what it cost her to say it.
"Yes," I reply. "You can witness it."
Something moves through her face... relief and warmth and underneath both of those things something else, something that looks ahead to the moment of witnessing and what she will see there, and I feel it against my witchcraft like a chord played in the wrong key.
Beautiful.
And painful.
And not yet finished wanting something it cannot have.
"Thank you," she says, warmly, composed, entirely Sera.
I eat my lunch.
And underneath the table, my right hand pulses warm and green and tonight rushes toward us whether we are ready or not.