Chapter 8: Formal Invitation.
The answer came immediately after he knocked on the door of his father’s office, after which, Elian had to take an especially deep breath so he wouldn’t let himself run away immediately once things went wrong.
"Come in."
He slowly opened the door, blinking his eyes to adjust to the difference in light levels.
His father’s room was, as always, dimmer than the rest of the house—heavy curtains half-drawn against the evening sun, ledgers stacked with more care than affection along the shelves.
Lord Edric sat behind his desk with a single sealed letter in front of him, the wax stamp still catching the light. He didn’t look up right away.
"Sit," he said, which wasn’t really an invitation so much as a formality neither of them questioned.
Elian sat. The chair across from his father’s desk had always felt too big for him, even now, and he made himself keep his spine straight instead of folding into it the way he wanted to.
"There’s a letter, asking for you." his father said, finally glancing up
Elian’s stomach did something complicated. He’d known this was coming, in the abstract—everyone in the house had known, ever since the party, ever since the word Everbloom had left the vault and made its way, inevitably, into rooms far outside their own—but knowing a thing was coming and hearing it confirmed were, apparently, still... two different experiences.
"They... want me?"
"They want the boy who awakened a six-generation dormant artifact in front of forty witnesses and academy scouts who wrote seven separate reports about it."
His father said it without inflection, which somehow made it land harder than if he’d sounded impressed.
"Whether they want you specifically, in all the ways that might matter, I couldn’t say."
That stung a little, though Elian suspected it wasn’t meant to. His father had never been cruel—just unfortunately precise, in a way that occasionally cut regardless of intent.
"Are you going to let me go?"
Edric Valcourt finally slid the letter across the desk, unopened.
"It’s addressed to you. Not to me." A pause.
"That’s new too." This time his father genuinely sounded taken aback, the barest amusement leaking out of his otherwise perfectly held together voice.
Elian picked the letter up, turning the seal over once in his fingers before breaking it—The crest of the royal academy of Lucenhall pressed into dark wax, unfamiliar and formal in a way that made the whole thing feel suddenly, irreversibly real.
His father watched him read it, saying nothing, though Elian caught him glancing through his peripheral vision, just once, toward the staff propped by the door—the same look he’d worn at the top of the vault stairs the night of the Attempt, gone before Elian could fully name it.
The letter was shorter than he expected—formal opening addressing Elian of Valcourt, official seal, an invitation to enroll at Lucenhall Royal Academy of Arcane Arts for the coming term, references to ’an artifact-bonding event of considerable note’ and ’a place reserved pending confirmation.’ No flourish. No excitement. Just the flat, procedural language of people who dealt in prodigies often enough that one more barely rated adjectives.
Elian read it twice before he trusted himself to set it down.
A long moment passed, both Elian and his father deep in thought.
"They want an answer within the fortnight," he said when the silence grew too deafening.
"I’m aware."
His father leaned back slightly in his chair, folding his hands, realising that his lie about not reading the letter has been seen through.
"I wasn’t..." He hesitated. "Going to open your correspondence, Elian. I was going to hand it to you regardless of what it said. I simply wanted to know what I was handing you."
"And?"
Edric Valcourt leaned forward.
"And it’s an invitation, not a summons. You could refuse it."
His father’s tone stayed level, careful with the delivery of his next words.
"Nobody would think less of you for it. A term at home, more training with your brother, a formal Attempt announcement instead, there are slower ways to do this."
Elian looked at him for a moment, trying to read what was underneath that sentence, because it didn’t sound like his father actually believed any of it.
"Do you want me to refuse it?"
The question landed harder than he meant it to, Elian immediately regretting the fact.
His father didn’t answer right away—just looked at the letter on the desk, and then, briefly, at the staff by the door again, that same flicker of something unreadable crossing his face before it smoothed back into composure.
"No," Edric said finally. "I don’t."
"Then why offer me the option?"
"Because it should be yours to take. Not mine to hand you." He said it quietly, voice barely more than a whisper.
"I made choices for you your whole life based on what I assumed you’d never be able to do. I’d like to stop making that particular mistake."
Elian didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t an apology, not exactly—his father didn’t really do those—he couldn’t, to be exact.
But it was close enough to one that it caught Elian off guard.
"I want to go," he said, before the silence could stretch too long.
Something in his father’s shoulders eased, very slightly, like a decision he’d already made privately had just been confirmed out loud.
Elian stood.
"Then you’ll go." Edric Valcourt reached for a fresh sheet of paper, already composing the reply in his head before he’d picked up the pen.
"I’ll have Roderic arrange an escort for the first leg of the journey. And Elian,"
Elian paused at the door, staff in hand, waiting.
"Whatever happened to you in that vault," his father said, not looking up from the letter he’d started writing,
"I hope Lucenhall gives you room to understand it properly. Better room than I ever gave anyone."
He didn’t explain what he meant by that.
And Elian didn’t ask.
But he carried the sentence with him out of the room anyway, turning it over the way he’d turned the letter’s seal, sure there was more to it than his father was willing to say yet.