Soren woke up suddenly.
The puppy was on his chest with her ears flat and her tail going in slow circles.
Outside in the hallway, someone was walkinfg with the kind of deliberate quiet that meant they already knew which floor squeaked.
[Troy Minden has arrived at your location. Good luck.]
Soren sat up so fast the puppy rolled into his lap and made a small offended noise.
He put one hand over her snout before she made a second one and looked at the notification again.
Good luck.
The system had never given opinions before.
He filed that away.
He had about thirty seconds before the knock, so he used them to decide what he wanted out of this conversation.
Going in with no goal was how people in this novel ended up dead in chapter two.
What he wanted was simple.
He wanted Troy to leave without knowing anything useful, and he wanted to do it without making the man suspicious enough to come back with backup.
The knock came with three soft taps.
Soren set the puppy on the pillow, walked to the door, and put his hand on the handle.
He knew two things about Troy Minden that Troy didn't know he knew.
The first was that Troy's Spectral Knight sent private warnings when something "smelled wrong," and Troy had always listened to those warnings.
Twice in the book, both times it had saved his life.
The instinct was basically a reflex now.
The second was that Troy's tell, when he was genuinely unsettled, was the muscle in his left jaw doing a small thing before his face went flat again.
Soren opened the door.
Troy was standing in the hallway in the academy's white training uniform.
He was exactly as tall as the forum illustrations had said he would be, which was a stupid thing to notice, but there it was.
"Soren Kane?"
"That's me."
"My system flagged an anomaly on your name."
Soren looked at him and thought: you came alone? So you're curious, not threatened. Good.
"Your what?" he said.
Troy's jaw did the small thing.
Soren had read about that in chapter forty-one, right before Troy broke another tamer's spine.
"Can I come in?"
He did the math in about half a second.
Troy inside the room where Grimm could read him was more useful than Troy in the hallway where Soren couldn't watch his hands.
"Sure," he said, and stepped aside.
Troy walked past him.
The hallway light caught on the sword handle at his hip.
[DING!] — Territorial intrusion detected. Bonded beast [Grimm]: agitation rising. Obsession Index: 32/50.]
[WARNING: beast stress output exceeding suppression threshold. Ambient shadow density climbing.]
Soren glanced at the pillow.
The puppy was sitting up, head turned exactly toward Troy, ears flat against her skull.
The room dropped maybe ten percent darker, not dramatically, just like someone had adjusted a dial.
Troy stopped in the middle of the floor and his hand went to his hilt.
"There's something in here," he said.
"It's the puppy."
Soren said it the same flat way the old woman in chapter seventy used it on Troy to walk him straight past the hidden princess.
He had laughed at that line from his couch in his old life.
Now he was saying it, and it worked the same way it worked in the book, because Troy looked at Grimm and the puppy just sat there with her head tilted three degrees too far.
"That is an F-rank shadow beast," said Troy.
"Yes."
"It is putting out mana pressure I can feel in my teeth."
"Huh?" Soren put a look on his face that said are you okay, man. "Are you out of your mind?"
Troy turned his head very slowly.
Soren had one move left and he used it.
"You should probably go," he said.
"Why."
"Because your knight is already telling you to."
The silence went on for about four seconds.
Troy's pupils did a thing that meant Soren had just handed him information that had no business existing.
For about one second the air in the room said he's going to draw.
Then Grimm stood up on the pillow and made a sound that was not a bark or a growl.
It was something older than either of those things.
Troy took one step back, then another.
His hand never left the sword, but he didn't draw it.
"I'm going to find out what you are," he said.
"Okay," said Soren. "I want to know that too, actually."
Troy walked out and the door clicked shut.
Soren's knees gave out.
He sat down hard on the floor.
Grimm jumped off the pillow, crossed the room, and pushed her blind face into his neck.
Her tail was going fast.
Master, master, master. I didn't let him touch you. I was good, wasn't I?
"You were very good," he said into her fur. "Stop doing that with the shadows."
Mm. I was protecting. I want to protect more.
[DING!] — Obsession Index: Grimm 34/50 (DEVOTION STAGE)]
[DING!] — Soul Friction: 3.1%. Minor symptoms may occur.]
His nose was bleeding.
He wiped it on his sleeve and looked at the red.
He'd wanted Troy to leave without knowing anything useful.
Troy had left knowing that Soren somehow had access to private knight communications, which was not nothing, but it was much better than the alternative.
He'd take it.
...
Somewhere on the other side of the dormitory, in a room with three windows and a mirror that reflected nothing.
A woman with white hair and wolf ears uncurled from a pool of shadow on the floor.
She had heard her master's voice through the walls.
She had felt the protagonist's hand hovering over the sword, and she had felt her master not flinch.
The smile came by itself.
"I see you, Troy Minden," said Yara to the empty room. "I know what they planned for me and I won't go."
She turned back to the shadow pool and let herself sink into it again.
The last thought she had before she slept was that her master had a very good voice, and that she had missed it for a very long time.