Chapter 67 Fourteen Hours
The council preliminary acknowledgement arrives at two PM.
Bram sends a single message to both our phones simultaneously.
Accepted. Emergency protocol active. Tribunal evidence submission on record. Proceeding.
I am in Ancient Supernatural Languages when it arrives, a class I added this week because Aldara mentioned offhandedly that tamer ability documentation from the earliest cases is written in a dialect nobody at Northveil currently reads, and I thought that was important information to fix, and Professor Thorne who teaches it is a small ancient man who looks faintly surprised every time a student shows up but teaches with the energy of someone who has been waiting for someone to care about this for years.
Of course I care about this, whether I want to care or not.
I read Bram's message under the desk while Professor Throne goes on with his teachings enthusiastically.
And I feel the relief move through me.
Then I feel Rhydan feel it through the bond two floors below where Hockey Strategy is running, and I feel his relief land a half second after mine like an echo, warm and enormous.
I put my phone away and go back to the declension patterns of early tamer dialect and let the fourteen remaining hours tick.
I am the only one present in that class.
After class, I find Zael in the corridor outside the archive.
He has a book under his arm and the expression of someone who has been waiting for someone but is not going to say so, and he falls into step beside me without preamble.
"The tribunal is tonight, any word on the submission?" he asks.
"The submission is on record," I reply. "Bram confirmed that at two."
"That means Elder Valecrest will know by now," he says.
"Yes," I reply. "As he should."
"Indeed, and he will have seen the preliminary acknowledgement," Zael says, "which means he knows the signature chain is documented. The Greymoor working. The Edinburgh connection. All of it."
"Yes," I reply. "All of it."
"So he walks into the tribunal tonight knowing his primary evidence implicates his own operation," Zael says carefully. "And knowing the transfer is no longer possible because the anchor completed."
"Exactly," I confirm.
"In other words, he has nothing," Zael says.
"Not exactly, he has pack authority," I reply. "Until Rhydan is twenty-one. He still has that."
Zael is quiet for a step.
"What does he do with it?" he asks. "When the tribunal fails, I mean..."
I think about what Nox said this morning at breakfast. Men like Elder Valecrest do not accept defeat. They redefine victory.
"I don't know yet," I reply honestly. "But he will do something, that much I am sure of."
"Yes," Zael says. "He will."
We reach the archive door and he stops and looks at me with those steady honest eyes and the late afternoon light coming through the corridor window catching the copper warmth of his dragon nature at rest.
"Veyra," he says.
"Mm?"
"Whatever happens tonight," he says, "after the tribunal... Whatever Elder Valecrest redefines his objective as..." He looks at me directly. "You are not facing it the way your mother faced it."
I look at him.
"She faced it alone," he says simply. "You are not alone. I just wanted you to know that."
The corridor is quiet around us and the mark on my right hand shifts colour in the afternoon light and I think about my mother's voice on the phone saying Don't run and I think about eight people in the stands of an arena last night and I think about a bond that now runs warm and permanent and deep.
"No," I say quietly. "I am not."
He nods once and goes into the archive.
I stand in the corridor for a moment and open my witchcraft and let it read the air of the building around me, all of it, every supernatural signature within range, and I find them one by one.
Dara on the third floor, secondary tamer ability running steady and deliberate.
Petra in the Wind House common room, elemental ability bright and easy.
Cassian in the hockey corridor, wolf nature warm and packbound.
Nox somewhere in the east wing, visible today but the concealment humming at rest beneath her skin, always ready. I'm glad she's becoming more open minded about being seen.
Sera in the Witch common room, coldfire banked low, composure running at full strength, and underneath both of those things something that aches quietly in a direction I already know.
And Rhydan...
Two floors below.
Wolf and dragon both settled and warm and aimed at nothing in particular except existing without fighting themselves for the first time.
"Fourteen hours left," I say quietly to nobody.
My witchcraft reads the air.
Everyone is where they are supposed to be.
For now.