Chapter 3: Vampire still in the room
Vael looked at her for a long moment. Then she wrote something in the folder. "There will be a formal assessment of the bond in one week. Until then, standard rules apply. Summons remain within academy boundaries. Any aggressive action by a summon against students or faculty is grounds for contract review."
"Understood," I said.
"One additional note." Vael’s pen paused. "The strength of your binding is already drawing attention from outside the academy. I would expect contact from interested parties within the month. Noble houses. Possibly the royal court’s summoner division." She looked at me with the direct steadiness of someone giving a genuine warning. "I would encourage you to be thoughtful about which interests you align with early on. Early alliances are difficult to exit."
"I appreciate the advice," I said. And I meant it.
She dismissed us with a nod.
In the hallway outside, I stopped walking and turned to face Seraphine properly for the first time since the ceremony.
She looked back at me with those crimson eyes, fully attentive, that faint smile still present at the corner of her mouth.
"Ground rules," I said.
One perfect eyebrow rose slightly. "Oh?"
"You do not act against anyone in this academy without my explicit instruction. Not students. Not faculty. Not visitors. If you perceive something as a threat to me you come to me first before you do anything about it."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Anything," I said.
"You are very young," she said, not unkindly. "Threats do not always announce themselves with enough time for consultation."
"Then your threshold for what counts as an immediate threat better be high. Someone being rude to me is not a threat. Someone challenging me to a duel is not a threat. Someone pointing a weapon at my face is not a threat unless they actually move to use it." I held her gaze. "I need to operate in this environment without leaving bodies. Do you understand?"
She studied me with an expression I could not fully categorize. There was something in it that was warm and also evaluating, the way someone looks at a thing they already decided they wanted but are still measuring the details of.
"You are not what I expected," she said finally.
"What did you expect?"
"Most summoners who reach deep enough to find me do so from desperation. Tremendous ambition or tremendous fear. They want power because something is chasing them." She tilted her head. "You reached with intention. Like you already knew I was there."
The observation landed a little too close to accurate.
"I knew what I was looking for," I said, which was technically true and gave away nothing useful.
She smiled again. Warmer this time. "No bodies without instruction," she said. "I will manage."
"Thank you."
"You are welcome, my master."
She said it the exact same way as before. Like the words meant something she had not translated for me yet.
I turned and walked toward the dormitory wing.
My room assignment was in the north hall, upper floor, single occupancy as befitting a Duke’s son. The room was smaller than my bedroom at the estate but well-furnished, a desk, a wardrobe, a window that looked out over the training grounds. I dropped my bag on the desk and stood at the window for a moment looking out.
Seraphine settled into the chair by the window like she intended to stay there and opened absolutely nothing to read because she did not need to perform the appearance of occupying herself. She just sat and was present in the way that very old things are present, completely comfortable with stillness.
"You will need to sleep at some point," she noted.
"So will you?"
"No," she said pleasantly.
Right. Vampire.
"Then I would appreciate if you did not watch me sleep."
"I make no promises."
I turned from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. "How much do you know about this place? The academy, the political situation, the summoning hierarchy?"
She considered. "I have been dormant, not absent. Awareness filters through even in sleep. I know the broad strokes of the last three centuries. The specifics of the current moment are less clear to me."
"Then I will fill you in as we go. What I need from you right now is straightforward. Observe. Learn the environment. Tell me things you notice that seem unusual. Do not react to anything without checking with me first."
"You want me to be your eyes," she said.
"I want you to be my partner," I said. "There is a difference."
Something shifted in her expression. Still composed, still wearing that elegant calm, but underneath it something that was quieter and more genuine moved through briefly. "Partner," she repeated.
"You are not a weapon I summoned. You accepted the contract which means you made a choice. I intend to treat you accordingly." I looked at her directly. "But partnership works both ways. I need you to trust my judgment even when your instincts tell you something different."
She was quiet for a moment that stretched long enough to make me aware of it.
"I will try," she said. "That is the most honest answer I can give you."
It was better than I had expected honestly.
"Good enough," I said.
Dinner in the academy was taken communally, long tables in the main dining hall, first years at the outer tables, older years toward the center. I took a seat near the end of one of the first year tables and Seraphine stood at the wall behind me because she did not eat food and sitting at a dining table for no reason would have been strange even by her standards.
Three students sat near me within the first five minutes. Not out of friendliness exactly. More out of the particular social gravity that forms around people who have done something remarkable. They wanted to see what I was up to close range. I recognized the type. In every school environment there are people who track power early and position themselves near it.
I made conversation. Easy, pleasant, not too revealing. I asked about their summons. People love talking about their summons. Within ten minutes I had learned that the boy on my left named Daren had summoned a mid-tier fire spirit and was extremely proud of it, the girl across from me named Tessaly had a scout-class hawk and was focused on going into intelligence work after graduation, and the quiet one at the end whose name I had not caught yet had summoned something he was not describing in detail, which was interesting.
Then Evelyne walked in.
She entered with two other noble daughters at her sides, found her table with the efficiency of someone who had already memorized the room layout, and sat down. The griffin was not with her, summons were housed in the beast quarter during meals, but she carried herself with the same composed certainty regardless.
She sat directly across the hall from my table.
Which meant that when she looked up from her plate ten minutes into the meal she looked up directly at me.
I was already looking at her.
For the second time that day we held eye contact for a moment. This time she did not look away first. She held it for a beat, then two, then looked back down at her food with no change in her expression at all.
Behind me, at the wall, I heard Seraphine make a sound so soft it barely qualified as a sound. Not quite a hum. More like the quietest possible version of the note someone makes when they file information away under a category they already had a folder for.
I did not turn around.
I looked back at my own plate and thought about the next three months of the academy’s first year curriculum and every event I knew was coming and how much work I had ahead of me.