Lord Veyrick Drakeveil, patriarch of House Drakeveil, met us at five in the estate's senior council chamber.
He was the man Lucien would be in twenty years, if Lucien lived twenty years. Same gold-amber eyes. Same straight posture. The same Drakeveil discipline — the smile at its public setting, the face underneath visible only to those who had learned to read it. The smile in him was — older. Practiced longer. The discipline had had thirty more years to refine.
He greeted me in the formal patriarch-to-heir mode.
"Young Master Valdrake."
"Lord Drakeveil."
"My son has spoken of you in his correspondence across the past four months in a way I have not heard him speak of any other person at the academy in his three years of attendance there. I had been wondering when I would meet the subject of those letters. The wondering has been — productive. I am pleased to receive you in my house."
