Chapter 81: Demi-Vampire
The academy fell behind them as the road climbed through the hilly region outside the city.
Morning air, cool and quiet. The unpaved path winding between jagged rock slopes and stretches of green on either side. The palace visit should have felt significant. The kind of trip that warranted preparation and conversation.
Instead, Leon was suffering.
He leaned forward as he walked, hands on his knees, dragging his feet across the gravel. "I’m tired."
Nicholas looked back at him. "We’ve been walking for twenty minutes."
"TWENTY MINUTES OF SUFFERING." Leon straightened up and gestured at the empty road with both arms. "Where’s the carriage? We’re representing the academy. She—" he pointed at Seris— "is the future princess, theoretically. At minimum there should be something with wheels."
Roselle offered him the gentle smile she kept for situations like this. "Once we reach the main thoroughfare we can hire one. A little longer."
Leon let out a sigh of theatrical proportions. "I hope you’re right, Roselle. I genuinely hope you’re right."
Nicholas smirked, folding his hands behind his head. "I didn’t realize the seventh-ranked student in the academy had such pathetic endurance."
Leon’s exhausted expression evaporated instantly. "Oh, you want to do this?"
"Sure."
"Let’s talk about the first-ranked student then." Leon’s grin sharpened. "What happened to him when Alden actually got serious? Four-on-one, and he lost. Fell from first all the way down to third." He shook his head with exaggerated sadness. "How the mighty."
The vein on Nicholas’s temple made itself visible. "You bastard—"
"Maybe the academy’s former number one isn’t quite what everyone spent the year thinking."
"Just wait until the third round—" Nicholas’s voice had gone several degrees hotter, and there was actual heat coming off his hands now— "I’ll take first back and I’ll prove I wasn’t fighting at full power before, and I’ll show you exactly—"
"Sure, sure."
"—exactly why I was—"
"You guys get along too well." Roselle giggled into her sleeve.
"GET ALONG?!" Both of them turned on her simultaneously.
"Are you blind?!" Nicholas pointed.
"We’re clearly fighting!" Leon yelled.
She shook her head with a quiet laugh and turned back to the road.
Then her eyes drifted to Seris.
The Vice-President was walking a few steps ahead of the group, which she always did. But Roselle had been watching her peripherally for the last ten minutes and something was off. Seris’s gaze was fixed straight ahead, not moving when Leon said something funny, not turning when the banter got loud. Her posture was present and her pace was correct and none of it felt like she was actually here.
Roselle stepped up to match her stride.
"Vice-President Seris?"
Seris’s eyes shifted to her. "Yes?"
"Are you all right?" She kept her voice gentle. "You seem a little dull today."
A beat.
"Dull?" Seris tilted her head. The smile appeared — perfectly constructed. "What do you mean? I’m always like this."
"You’re usually calm," Roselle said. "This is different. You look like you’re somewhere else entirely."
Seris’s eyes drifted forward again. "Oh." One small pause. "Was I?"
She shook her head. "My apologies. It’s nothing."
’Was I really showing it that much?’ Seris adjusted her breathing so silently that no one would notice. ’I need to be more careful with my expressions and keep my emotions under control.’
Roselle watched her for another moment.
Is it about Augustus’s suspension? No. When the disciplinary committee announced it, Seris had looked slightly relieved, if anything. It was not that.
’Then what is it?’
She was still turning the question over when—
"Watch out, Roselle!"
Nicholas’s voice cracked with sudden panic.
Roselle turned her head toward the rocky cliff above the road.
FWOOSH.
A blazing arrow was already there — crimson fire roaring around its shaft, the tip pointed directly at her face, close enough that the heat hit her skin before she could fully process what she was seeing. Her body didn’t move. There wasn’t time.
A pale hand crossed in front of her face.
Seris caught the arrow between two fingers.
The crimson flames wrapped violently around her hand, scorching the pale skin of her palm. She didn’t make a sound. One casual flick of her wrist and the arrow flew sideways into the brush, where the unnatural fire died out against the dirt.
"Vice-President!" Roselle grabbed her arm immediately. "Are you okay? Your hand—"
"It’s nothing." Seris shook her hand free, gently but definitively.
There was a dark burn mark across her palm. She didn’t look at it.
"But you’re—"
"I said it’s nothing."
Her voice stayed even, but her eyes had already moved upward to the crest of the cliff.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
A slow clap echoed across the empty hillside. It sounded deliberate and patient, like someone who had been waiting a long time for this exact moment and was thoroughly enjoying its arrival.
"That’s very senior-like of you, Seris." The voice came from the top of the cliff, carrying easy and clear through the morning air. "Taking care of your juniors like that. Good job."
Everyone froze.
Roselle’s eyes moved to the figure standing at the cliff’s edge, backlit by the morning sun.
The breath left her.
Leon turned, and his face went the color of someone who has just had the ground removed from beneath them. "P-President... Augustus?"
Nicholas stared. His arms dropped. His voice came out barely above a whisper. "Why?" His eyes stayed on the figure. "Why did you join them?"
Augustus Solaris stood at the edge of the cliff.
His face was still recognizable. The golden hair, the broad shoulders, the posture of someone who had never learned what it felt like to be unsure of himself.
But something had been done to him. Or he had done something to himself.
His ears came to elongated points through his hair, unmistakably not human. His teeth, when his mouth moved, caught the light — longer than they should be, sharper, the kind of teeth that belonged to something that hunted. Crimson mana seeped from his skin in slow, continuous threads, like dark fog coming off something burning cold.
And behind him were dozens of vampires stretched along the cliff’s edge in disciplined silence — some in heavy dark armor, some with curved blades, others with bows already drawn. Every pair of eyes down the line glowed the same dim crimson, fixed on the four people on the road below.
None of the students below could move.
It was not because they had counted the enemy forces or analyzed the strategy. They were frozen because what they were looking at simply did not fit into anything they had ever trained or prepared for.
The Crown Prince of the kingdom, standing at the head of a vampire warband, inside human territory as a demi-vampire.