SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 694: A Private Visit

Alfons had no idea why an heir of one of the Eight Great Families was waiting in a room of his own house.

He understood even less about why his father had met privately with the matriarch of House Nocthar.

Lady Lysaria au Nocthar did not cross another family's threshold for tea, soft smiles, and hollow words. Vampires rarely wasted a visit. Matriarchs wasted them even less.

Which meant there was a reason. A reason no one had thought to share with him.

'Another of those things that do not concern me,' he thought, the bitterness arriving before he could stop it. 'Like half of what happens in this house. Fine. I suppose I go meet the woman.'

He turned back to Roderic before leaving.

His father had not gone back to his chair. He stood beside it, the crimson lines of his robe catching the low light, red eyes fixed on Alfons with that same unreadable patience.

"I will go see her," Alfons said.

Roderic answered with a small nod.

"Is there anything I should know before I walk into my own room and find a Nocthar heir standing in it?"

Roderic's expression did not shift. "You should listen before you decide what she wants."

Alfons came close to laughing, and didn't. "That is not an answer."

"It is the only one you need."

He lowered his head by the correct degree. "Understood, Father."

"Alfons." He stopped with his hand near the door. "Do not treat her as an inconvenience."

Alfons looked back. "She is waiting in my room, Father. Uninvited."

"That is exactly why I am warning you."

There it was again, that calm trick of making his irritation sound childish before he could enjoy it. He swallowed the answer on his tongue. "Yes, Father."

Roderic dismissed him with a flick of his hand, and Alfons left.

The corridor felt colder than before, or the meeting had drained the heat from his blood. He moved through the family wing alone, his steps ringing off polished white stone and red-veined marble. Servants bowed their heads as he passed. None asked where he was going. None would dare.

His room was not far, but the walk handed his mind more room than it needed.

Selendra au Nocthar.

He remembered her. They had crossed at Councils, formal gatherings, those polished performances where the children of the Great Families were stood near one another to pretend future enemies could be raised on courtesy. A few bows. A few words. Nothing he would call a bond.

A true bond between heirs of the Eight was rare, and for good reason. Families smiled across banquet tables and honed their knives behind closed doors. Today's pleasant acquaintance could be tomorrow's rival, obstacle, hostage, or corpse, depending on who reached for power first.

That was the world they had inherited. Or the world they had been fed until they learned to chew it on their own.

His thoughts drifted before he could leash them. Zafira du Zar'khael. And, because his mind had developed a taste for self-harm, Trafalgar du Morgain. Again. Always him.

Zafira had been near him since childhood. Not often, since Councils did not meet every week, but every few years if something happened. They had played in those short gaps before titles turned into cages and names began to outweigh the bodies carrying them. Back when a laugh was only a laugh. Back when a girl looking at him did not read as a political calculation.

Alfons had liked her. Worse, he had told her. And Zafira had turned him down with that maddening honesty of hers, as if refusing him weighed no more than correcting an error in a book.

He could not say if that was the day his hatred of Trafalgar began. Maybe not. Maybe it grew later, fed by comparisons, rankings, and the way Trafalgar kept turning up wherever Alfons wanted to stand. But Zafira had been the first cut that felt personal.

As children, the world had looked smaller. Now they were grown, and every smile arrived with a family crest behind it.

He reached the corridor to his private rooms. Two Vaelion guards waited outside. They bowed at the sight of him, and neither looked surprised that he had come.

So they had known she was there. Of course they had. Everyone in this house had known before he did tonight. He was nearly impressed by the consistency.

Alfons stopped at the door. No one announced him. Why would they? It was his room. He set his hand to the handle and pushed it open without knocking.

The chamber beyond held the pale wash of evening through the tall windows. His desk untouched, his shelves in order, the curtains half drawn, silver light falling through in narrow bars. Selendra au Nocthar stood at the window, her back to him, looking out over the ring of towers and the dark land beyond.

For an instant she did not move. Alfons stepped inside. Before he could speak, she beat him to it.

"You finally arrived, Alfons au Vaelion. I will be honest, you kept me waiting quite a while."

Alfons halted halfway across the room. So much for going unnoticed. He shut the door behind him. "If you wanted me, you know perfectly well I am at the Academy. You could have come there. Instead you waited in my house, in my room, while I had no idea why an heir of one of the Eight Great Families was sitting inside the home of a possible enemy."

Selendra turned from the window. Her face carried a calm that did not fit the moment, with no apology in it, no embarrassment, not the smallest awkwardness at standing in a room that was not hers.

"True," she said. "That is a good observation."

Alfons looked at her flatly. "How generous of you."

"It would have been easier to find you at the Academy. But my mother had business with your father. Things I know nothing about." Her eyes held his. "Or perhaps I know everything about them. Who can say?"

Alfons felt his patience fray at the edges. "Could you stop circling the point?"

That amused her, if only a little. "Yes. Of course."

"Thanks for not wasting my time, then?"

"I wanted to see you, and this place is private. That made it better than the Academy."

"For what?"

Her gaze slid once to the closed door, as though weighing it for ears he could not see. When it came back to him, the amusement had thinned out of it.

"For what I need to tell you."