The next morning.

She was already outside when I stepped out, standing near the tree in the same red dress she always wore, watching the dark forest.

"You do not have to..." I started.

"I know." She fell into step beside me. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

She watched the training without commenting on it. Push-ups, run, the full magic sequence. She stood at the edge of the clearing while I worked through Vector Authority and Hell’s Fire and said nothing until I was done.

"You are holding the Fire too tightly."

I looked at her.

"The grip on it. You are treating it like something that needs to be contained. It does not. It sustains itself. You are spending mana on control that the flame does not require from you."

I looked at the flame above my palm and thought about what she had said.

I loosened the structure around it.

The flame burned the same. The mana cost dropped by roughly a third.

"How did you know that."

"I have a fire affinity. Among others." She said,

I filed it and kept going.

***

She came back to the estate with me and found the kitchen with confidence. The cook, who had been there in the kitchen, took one look at Nythera.

I sat at the table and watched her move through the kitchen.

"You can cook."

"I have had two hundred years to think about what I would do when I was free. Cooking was on the list."

"What else was on the list."

"Many things. Like falling in love, going on adventures with him, having kids... So how many do you want?"

"!!!"

"Are you kidding!"

"Nope"

She made something with meat and it was dark and it smelled like... She set it in front of me and stood on the other side of the table and watched me eat.

I ate.

"Well."

"It is very good."

She looked satisfied.

She took the chair across from me and watched me eat the rest of it with her hands folded on the table.

"You are staring."

"I am watching."

"Is there a difference."

"Staring implies I am not thinking about anything. I am always thinking about something."

"What are you thinking about."

"Whether the recipe needs adjusting."

I looked back at the food.

"It does not."

"Good. Then I am thinking about something else."

She did not elaborate.

I finished eating.

***

After that she followed me to the training ground for the afternoon session and this time she did not just watch.

"Blood magic. You do not have it."

"No."

"You should. You have been giving your blood to a cave for twenty one days. Your body already understands the principle. The formal technique is not far from what you have already been doing without knowing it."

"You are going to teach me blood magic."

"I am going to show you the foundation. What you build from it is your own business."

The foundation was called Sanguine Pulse. A compression and release of blood mana through the circulatory system offensive as a concussive force through direct contact, defensive as a hardening of the body against impact from the inside. Not a spell exactly more like a state.

She demonstrated it on a tree.

The tree lost several of its upper branches.

I looked at the tree.

"Foundation."

"The principle is simple. The application takes time."

It took me two hours to get the first stable pulse running without destabilizing the channels I was already using. When I managed it. Nythera looked at me.

She taught me Crimson Veil after that. A blood mana technique that covered the surface of the body in a layer of compressed mana, absorbing and redirecting impact rather than simply resisting it. Harder than Sanguine Pulse. More applicable to situations where something was going to hit me regardless of what I did about it.

Given recent events that category seemed likely to come up again.

By evening the food was on the table again.

She had made something different from the morning.

I was thinking about what the morning had been missing and had addressed it.

I sat down.

She came around the table and without any particular announcement sat down on my lap, turned my head to the side with two fingers, and bit down on my neck.

I looked at the food in front of me.

Then I picked up the fork and started eating.

The bite was over quickly, but the warmth stayed. It spread through my body along unfamiliar channels, sinking deeper into my reserves than normal mana circulation could reach.

She finished and stayed where she was.

I kept eating.

"You are not going to say anything."

"About what."

"This."

"You need to eat. I need to eat. This is efficient."

She was quiet for a moment.

"You are very strange."

"I have been told that before. Usually by beings considerably older than me."

She laughed.

Then she rested her chin on the top of my head and looked through the window and I ate the rest of the meal with a two hundred year old vampire queen sitting on my lap watching the evening come in through the glass.

The food was better than the morning version.

I did not tell her immediately because I could feel her waiting for it, and making her wait a few minutes seemed like the correct response to sitting on my lap without asking.

"The recipe did need adjusting."

"I know."

I filed that and kept eating.

Later I was going through the plot notes in the diary when she relocated to the chair beside the window.

I looked at the diary.

Then at her.

Then back at the diary.

The evening was quiet and the notes were not going to organize themselves and she was apparently content to sit in the chair and watch the dark outside the window for as long as the dark outside the window was willing to be watched.

I kept working.

***

It was past the second hour of night when she went still.

. She was already on her feet before I looked up from the diary.

She produced a small device, black stone, flat, carved along the edges with some markings pulsed faintly like traveling a long distance.

She looked at it.

"The clan," she said. "They felt the domain."

I nodded.

She picked up her coat from the chair without further explanation and put it on.

"I need to go."

"I know."

She crossed the room and stopped in front of me.

Her eyes held mine for a moment.

Then she kissed me briefly and deliberate and stepped back before I could decide what expression my face was supposed to be making.

"I will find you at the academy," she said.

Then she walked out.

The door clicked shut.

I sat there for a moment.

Something had gone wrong with my facial composure over the last ten seconds, but fortunately there was no one in the room to see it.

Then I picked up the pen and went back to the diary.

The chair stayed empty.