ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Kaine’s cold gaze remained on the screen. "Useful target. Correct principles. Strong understanding of overlooked access. But the report is too controlled. Too neat. It presents conclusions without enough visible strain in the method. Either Hunter gathered more than he wrote, or he is hiding the route he used to gather it."

The room became even quieter.

Liam looked forward.

Seraphina’s smile deepened. "A fair concern."

Kaine continued, voice flat. "In this field, an overly perfect report can mean several things. Fabrication. Method concealment. External assistance. Magical advantage. Or deliberate omission. If the superior officer cannot tell which it is, the report becomes useful and suspicious at once."

Charlotte’s eyes moved toward Liam with obvious interest.

Liam still did not react.

Seraphina resumed walking, her steps soft against the floor. "Professor Kaine is correct, irritatingly enough." She approached the back of Liam’s chair. "Your report is good, Mr. Hunter. Very good. The target selection is thoughtful, the conclusions are clean, and the restraint is... almost admirable."

Liam felt her presence behind him before she leaned closer.

Her voice lowered until only he could hear it, soft enough to brush the edge of his ear without reaching the other students. "But I would appreciate it if you brought me your original report. This one is far too boring to grade you on."

Liam said nothing.

Seraphina lingered there for one breath longer than necessary, then straightened and walked away as if nothing private had been said. By the time she reached the front of the room again, her expression had returned to its public amusement.

"Forty-five out of fifty," she announced.

Charlotte’s brows lifted.

A few students reacted with quiet surprise, especially since Charlotte’s score had been the highest until that moment. Liam did not care about the number. Seraphina did not either, not fully. He understood the score for what it was: something for the class to hear, a public grade attached to the public version of his work. The real evaluation would come later, once she had the untrimmed material she already knew existed.

Seraphina turned the screen off with a graceful flick of her fingers, and the blue light dissolved into faint sparks that vanished before reaching the floor.

"Well," she said, facing the class with her hands folded lightly before her, "you all survived the first true review of your observation work. Some of you even managed not to insult the concept of intelligence while doing so."

Several students looked exhausted.

Charlotte looked entertained.

Liam looked like he wanted the class to end.

Seraphina continued, "Having done this much, you should be better prepared for next week’s theory paper. You may mark Professor Kaine’s words, it will not be pleasant. Tactical Espionage theory is not memorizing pretty definitions and hoping your handwriting earns mercy. You will be expected to apply principles, assess risk, identify weaknesses in method, and explain what can be exploited without embarrassing yourselves."

A quiet wave of defeat passed over the students.

One girl sighed openly before catching herself.

Seraphina’s smile turned sweet. "Yes. Despair early. It saves time."

Kaine pushed away from the wall.

Seraphina clapped her hands once. "Professor Kaine will take over from here."

Whatever hope remained in the room died immediately.

The next portion of class unfolded exactly as expected: cold, efficient, and unpleasant. Kaine did not waste time praising anything. He took the weaknesses from the reports and turned them into drills of thought, interrogation, and scenario breakdowns. He asked what a failed observer should do if noticed on the second day, how to alter routine without confirming guilt, when to abandon a target, when to continue, and how to report incomplete information without making it sound like incompetence.

Whenever a student answered too vaguely, Kaine cut through the answer with enough precision to make the student wish they had stayed silent. Whenever someone tried to sound clever, Seraphina smiled from her desk as if watching a small animal approach a trap.

By the time the academy bell finally rang to signal the end of the day, most of the class looked more drained than they had when reviewing the reports.

"Dismissed," Kaine said.

The students rose with varying levels of relief. Chairs shifted. Papers were gathered. Charlotte stretched in her seat before standing, somehow looking both bored and satisfied with herself. She glanced toward Liam, likely preparing to say something about his score or Seraphina’s interest, but Liam was already moving toward the front of the room instead of the door.

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed with curiosity.

Liam ignored her and approached Seraphina, who had returned to sitting on the front desk with one leg crossed over the other, looking far too pleased for someone who had spent the last class period watching students suffer academically. Kaine stood off to the side, speaking quietly with one of the other students, though his attention shifted toward Liam the moment he moved.

Liam reached into his document case and pulled out a thicker stack of papers.

He held it out to Seraphina. "This is the original. I would like it back tomorrow."

Seraphina’s eyes brightened.

She accepted the stack with delicate fingers, the kind of care that somehow made the act feel more invasive than if she had snatched it. Her gaze dropped to the first page, and the corner of her mouth curved.

"You have my word," she said.

Liam gave no answer.

He turned and walked out of the classroom.

As the door closed behind him, Kaine’s eyes remained on it for a moment. Then he looked toward Seraphina.

She was already reading.

Only a few paragraphs in, her smile had become visible enough that even the half-light of the classroom could not soften it. There was delight there, sharp and unmistakable. Not the delight of simple praise. Something closer to discovery.

"Well," Seraphina murmured, eyes moving across the page. "Dark mages truly are the ultimate cheat code."

Kaine’s expression remained cold. "What did he do?"

Seraphina did not answer immediately. She read another line, then another, and her smile deepened with every word. "Oh, Veylan," she said, looking up at him at last. "You are going to love reading this."

Kaine’s eyes narrowed.

Seraphina lifted the report slightly, as though presenting a particularly rare bottle of wine. "He trimmed the public version beautifully. But this?" Her gaze returned to the page, bright with amusement and professional hunger. "This is the interesting one."

Out in the hallway, Liam was already walking away from Tactical Espionage.

The corridor was busy with students leaving final classes, but he moved through the flow without slowing. His mind was not on Seraphina’s reaction, nor Kaine’s suspicion. He did not particularly care if they figured out that his observation had been done in a way other students could not replicate. The highest assumption they could reasonably make was that he had used one of his shadow creatures, most likely the spiked-fur wolf they had already seen evidence of during Nalim. That assumption would be right in the broadest sense and wrong in every detail that mattered.

They could think Smoke had done most of the work.

They could think shadow-based observation had given him an advantage.

They could suspect he had withheld the method.

All of that was acceptable.

What mattered was that they did not know what Nyxie had truly done, and they certainly did not know about Shadow Memory. The difference between a shadow creature following someone and a Nyxarion transferring stored memories into his mind was too large to hand over carelessly.

’Let them assume what they want,’ Liam thought.

He adjusted his document case beneath his arm and turned toward the corridor leading out of the western wing. Beyond the tall windows, the cold evening had already begun settling across the academy grounds, dimming the sky and sharpening the air outside. Liam’s irritation returned at the sight of it, but he pushed it aside for the moment.

He needed to get to the Magic Department.

Lucian Kellor’s final class was Earth Magic, according to Edith, which meant Liam had a narrow window to find him before the day scattered everyone into dinner, dormitories, training, or whatever private corners Lucian preferred. He wanted the matter handled quickly. The report had been submitted. Tactical Espionage was done for the day. Seraphina and Kaine had their little mystery to amuse themselves with.

Now Liam had his own inconvenience to deal with.

And the sooner Lucian spoke, the sooner Liam could return to his room and get away from the cold nonsense waiting outside.

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