“The lord wishes to see you,” Aldrick said with a bow of his head. He was a narrow-faced man in a fitted suit. He was her father’s head butler.

Alyx looked between the darkening sky and the manor’s entrance. Cass wasn’t here either and it was getting late. Still, she couldn’t exactly refuse a summons from him, not when she had worked so hard to get it.

“Of course,” Alyx said finally. “Now?”

“Now,” the man said. “Please follow me.”

As if she needed help navigating from the front door to his study. As if this wasn’t her home. As if it wasn’t the place she’d lived for the past ten years.

She followed him anyway.

They walked in silence, Telis and Marco a step behind her.

At the study door, Aldrick turned and gave her a courtesy half-bow. “We have arrived.”

“Thank you, Aldrick,” she said, forcing herself to match his courtesy. This was the procedure for guests and they both knew it. But to refuse him here was the same as refusing seeing the lord.

This wasn’t Aldrick’s decision to summon her this way, though she doubted he disagreed. No, this was her father’s choice to treat her like this.

This was yet another reminder.

She was not welcome here. She was not his daughter.

Aldrick knocked on the door. “Miss Alyx to see you, my lord.”

‘Miss Alyx,’ he said. ‘Miss.’

As a daughter of the Veldor family, she should be addressed as ‘Lady’.

As a martial with achievements, she should be addressed as ‘Dame’.

He called her ‘Miss’ instead. Polite. But only polite if you believed her to be nothing more than a family-less noncombatant.

“Send her in,” her father called from within.

The butler opened the door for her and gestured for her to enter. She did. The door shut behind her before Marco or Telis could follow.

Not an accident.

Her father did not look up from the papers he was working on at his desk. His quill scratched across the page in no particular hurry. As cool and collected as he tried so hard to appear.

“Greetings, father,” Alyx said with a half bow in front of his desk and waited for him to acknowledge her.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, he moved the page he was working on to one side and set his quill down. “Kohen said you wanted a word with me?”

Alyx’s hand clenched at her side as she straightened. That single sentence dripped with his casual dismissal. If his son hadn’t specifically asked him to see her, he wouldn’t have bothered.

That it was true only made it worse.

“Well?” he said.

“I am entering the Festival,” Alyx blurted out.

“Best of luck,” he said.

Alyx’s hand clenched tighter. “I will win the bond of one of the dragons. And when I do, you will acknowledge me as your heir.”

A single slender eyebrow rose. “Will I now?”

Alyx nodded and forced herself to meet his eyes. They were dark pits, pulling her apart piece by piece, like she was a strange puzzle suddenly dropped in front of him, rather than the daughter he didn’t need.

“You assume you will beat Kohen?” There was a disbelieving laughter in his voice. Mocking. Thick and disapproving.

“Despite our level difference, I have already beaten him in a duel.” Despite the difference in opportunities their father had repeatedly given Kohen and not her. She left that unsaid. “You think the dragons will have interest in a man with so little power?”

His lips curled in a scowl.

“And if not me, and not Kohen, who would you make your heir?” Alyx asked. Neither of them brought up Ahryn. Neither of them needed to.

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“If, somehow, Kohen does not manage to bond with a dragon and you inexplicably do, we can discuss this then.”

Alyx shook her head. He would just find some other reason to refuse her if she did not pin him down now.

“I appreciate the confidence you place in me, being so unwilling to accept a contract contingent on something you claim cannot happen. I can only assume you do, in fact, believe I can do it,” Alyx taunted him.

His scowl deepened. “Do not mistake my disinterest in making a deal which has no benefit to me with believing there is even the smallest chance you can win.”

“Then what would make this worth it for you?” Alyx asked.

“When you lose, I want you to leave this house,” he said. “Renounce the name Veldor and leave my city.”

His city, huh? Her grandmother—his mother—was alive and well and probably would be long after he was dead, but it was still ‘his’ city. She kept the scoff off her face. “Is that all?”

“You won’t survive a day beyond these walls without our name to back you,” he scoffed.

“Fine,” Alyx said. Truthfully, if she couldn’t claim one of the dragons—if she couldn’t redeem her mother’s reputation—she didn’t want to stick around, anyway. There was nothing left for her here except the dragon.

“And if you win, you renounce your mother’s house,” he added. “My heir should belong to my house and my house alone.”

Alyx’s hands clenched at her sides. This wasn’t an unexpected requirement. But she had still hoped he wouldn’t make it. Not when she’d just gotten it.

Could she do it?

“You can’t,” he taunted. “I saw the way your eyes lit up when the Duchess granted you Aris’s name last night. It’s all you’ve ever wanted, to cling to your disgraceful mother’s rotten legacy. You cling to failures of the past and consider it pride.”

Alyx’s hands twitched, but she forced them to keep from clenching. She didn’t want him to know he was right.

He probably noticed anyway.

“Fine,” she said. “When I win—when I beat your sons, when you name me your heir—I’ll renounce her house.”

“You will renounce her house before I name you my heir, if you somehow manage to become a Dragon Knight and neither of those useless boys do.”

“Fine.” The word ground out of her mouth like gravel. But she had his word. There was no witness, but he was too proud to go back on a deal once made.

He nodded and picked up his quill. “Is that all?”

Her heart sunk. She didn’t know why, but it did. He had called her here for business. Just business.

He had never shown interest in her as a daughter. Never so much as looked at her except to weigh how much shame her existence alone brought him.

“Announce it.” It was a spur-of-the-moment idea.

“Excuse me?” His quill slammed down on the table.

“Announce to Kohen, if no one else, the terms of our deal,” she repeated.

He looked like she’d slapped him.

In a sense, she had. She’d just, unsubtly, implied he could not be trusted to uphold his end of the agreement. It was a wild insult to his honor.

But what would he do? The worst he could do to her was challenge her to a duel and kill her. But someone of his level challenging someone like her would only drag his reputation through the mud further. If it was an acceptable method of dealing with her, he would have done so years ago.

No. Most likely he’d refuse, but that would just imply he had no intention of following through with the deal, proving her point. She could work with that.

“Kohen,” he said, cutting off her line of thought. “I will tell Kohen. Perhaps it will light a fire in that boy. Is that acceptable?”

Alyx nodded.

“Good. Then, if there is nothing else, I have one other matter.”

Alyx froze. She had fully expected to be summarily dismissed at this point. What else could he possibly have for her?

“You invited a guest, I have heard.”

It wasn’t a question, but Alyx nodded anyway.

“Who is she?”

What to say? How did one explain Cass? What would he even believe?

She started with the lie. “I met her on my way to the Valley. She’s a sorceress. The mercenary team I hired did not have a mage, so she seemed like a good addition. She seemed more trustworthy than the rest of them, at least.” It wasn’t a subtle jab, but he didn’t react. “She then saved me several times once we were inside the valley.”

“But who is she?” he repeated.

Alyx shrugged. “Cass Yuan. Sorceress.”

“I heard she resisted Noble Suggestions. You cannot lie to me about this,” he snarled.

Alyx blinked. This was news to her.

Who would have used Noble Suggestions on her and then tattled to her father about it? It could only have been Kohen.

The sway of that status effect relied on a couple of things: the difference between the noble ranks of the parties involved, the distance from the seat of that nobility, and the Wll of the skill user against the Res of the target.

Kohen wasn’t exactly the highest ranking noble as one of many grandchildren of the grand duchess, but he was still up there and in the center of the Veldor family’s sphere of influence.

If Cass could resist him by the weight of some nobility from across realms…

Alyx wasn’t sure what her rank would need to be, actually. Queen? Empress? Grand Empress? Were there higher ranks?

But that seemed unlikely.

Cass had never implied she was nobility, much less royalty. And, although she carried an unusually sheltered outlook, it was one that almost precluded royalty for its very softness.

“Maybe her Resolve is just higher than average,” Alyx said with a shrug. “She is a sorceress.” And Cass’s Focus was monstrous, she knew that much.

“Higher than Kohen’s Will combined with his noble rank? At her level?”

Alyx scratched the back of her head. Okay, when he put it like that, it sounded ridiculous too.

Kohen was level 28 and, as a spellsword, Will wasn’t a stat he would have ignored. Could he really have less Wll than Cass’s Res?

“Fine. Keep your secrets to yourself,” he said finally. “But if she turns out to be a spy for a foreign power, I do not care what achievements you might have made or how badly Kohen may have failed. I will not have a repeat of Aris attached to my name.”

Alyx nodded, her expression darkening at the mention of that name.

“You are dismissed,” he said, taking a paper from his pile of work and his pen.

He didn’t so much as look up again as she exited the room.