Draco came to a stop.
Ash lifted his head and looked at the assembled family in front of him.
The man was tall and had brown hair and silver eyes. There was an ease in his bearing, in his posture, that marked him as someone used to formal situations. A glass held loosely in one hand.
Beside him stood a lady with snow-white hair and bright green eyes that showed none of the uncertainty in meeting someone else.
She seemed calm and collected. And in front of them both was a girl.
She looked about Ash's age. She shared her mother's snowy white hair but had crimson eyes.
Bright crimson, almost fiery in colour, but the feeling they gave off was the opposite of warm. Instead, they were cool and dark, like two unlit flames that had lost their ability to generate warmth.
Ash looked at her.
And continued looking, despite the fact that he didn't realize how long he'd stared, until she turned her head and returned his stare with a glare that was flat and unwelcoming and said very clearly that she had noticed him staring and had no patience for it.
He looked away immediately.
'What the...' Ash wondered. 'We just met and she's already glaring at me like that?'
He had no idea what he had done.
Probably the staring. Most definitely the staring. He had not meant anything by it but, given that this was one of the first people in the world his age whom he had met for the first time, he had not been able to resist.
He focused ahead of him and remained silent.
It was the man with the brown hair who spoke first.
"Greetings, Lord Vulkan," he said, stepping towards Draco and offering his hand. "It's good to see you."
Ash watched his father.
Draco studied the extended hand and then the face offering it. He studied them for long moments that felt as if some kind of pressure had built up in the air between the two nobles.
Ash glanced at both.
There was something that made him wonder. Five years of watching Draco from afar had taught him to notice the subtle hints of what was going on.
The stance Draco chose was somehow different from the one he would assume when everything was alright. But now, for the first time ever, he wasn't quite sure which.
He found himself wishing it wasn't alright – or rather, not really wishing, just briefly pondering it – because nothing at all had happened during those hours of birthday celebration.
But, of course, even a simple clash of interests between noble families would make the evening a lot more exciting.
Then Draco moved.
He reached out for the offered hand and pulled the other nobleman into a strong hug.
"It's good to see you, my friend," Draco murmured.
"It's good to see you too," replied the man in question without hesitating. For a moment, they embraced, and then parted.
Ash looked at his father's face.
He had never seen this expression on his face. Not even once in the last five years. Even the surprise of hugging was not as surprising as Draco's expression right after that. It was a full-fledged smile.
A wide, genuine smile that stretched his lips up to his eyes and altered his face completely. Not that controlled smile from earlier on the staircase. No, something else.
It turned out his father was capable of smiling like this.
Ash had never known this.
'Does he act this distant only with his own children?' Ash wondered, staring at his father's smiling face, 'Does he do this to everybody but us?'
He filed the thought away and said nothing.
"Let me introduce you to my son, Ash," said Draco, turning and extending his hand towards the man. "Ash, this is Viran Doss Aeltharyn, one of my oldest friends."
Ash turned to the man.
"Greetings, sir," he said, bending in a graceful bow.
He did so as easily as if he had been trained for decades; indeed, he had practiced the proper manners for long years now, under Rose's tutelage.
'What a cool name,' he thought as he finished the bow.
Despite being immersed in this world for the last five years, he often found himself surprised by strange names he would hear.
He knew from books in the library that the names there were important; in their structure they contained the history of a family. Still, he had not yet grown used to hearing them.
Ash straightened up.
"You seem a polite young man," Viran said with a broad smile. He was smiling down at Ash with the easy warmth of someone who genuinely meant it.
Ash smiled back.
"Thank you, sir," he said.
But he realized there was the girl with the crimson eyes somewhere nearby the man; he could sense her cool presence as if she was giving off some kind of cold breeze.
So he continued looking at his father's old friend and smiled.