Seven o'clock. The vault below the East Tower.
I went down alone. Lucien had offered to walk with me. So had Liora. I'd told them both no — not because I didn't want company, but because what I needed to do in the next hour required a room with one person in it, and Sera's room only ever held one.
The vault was where I went when nothing else worked. The academy's secondary Valdrake archive — a small chamber set behind a leyline-sealed door in the East Tower's lower levels, accessible only to the Valdrake heir of record, untouched for the four months since I'd unsealed it the night I bonded with Nihil. The Headmaster had not entered. The faculty had not entered. The room was mine because the bloodline registry said so, and because no one in the academy had argued otherwise.
Inside, Sera's symbology covered the walls.
