The estate felt different after the party. The people who remained could feel that the night had not truly ended yet, even as the gathering itself faded away.
Most of the guests had already departed by the time midnight settled fully over the estate. Some returned to Nocturne while others disappeared into their own estates, enclaves, and territories.
Carriages left one after another beyond the front gates. The distant sound of engines, hooves of magical beasts, and shifting robes as witches flew through the air carried briefly through the night before fading into silence again.
People were already returning to their own corners of the world, leaving the gathering behind like it had only been something brief. Even so, traces of it still lingered throughout the estate. Servants moved quietly through the lower halls clearing glasses, replacing linens, extinguishing lights one room at a time. Faint laughter still surfaced occasionally somewhere beneath the upper floors, quieter now, dulled by distance and exhaustion.
Theodore, Charlotte, Aurora, and Emilia remained within the guest wing prepared for them earlier in the evening. The rooms had already been arranged beforehand. Not as hospitality, but assumption. Lucien had likely expected Charlotte to stay the moment she accepted the invitation.
And she did.
She could have returned to the Lunarium whenever she wanted. A gate would have brought all four of them back instantly that she had made beforehand at the D'Arcels courtyard.
She simply chose not to.
When Lucien asked her earlier in passing whether she intended to remain overnight, Charlotte simply glanced toward Theodore across the lounge.
Theodore was already being forced by Aurora and Emilia to drink blood wine instead of the blood juice specially prepared for him, both girls giggling while Theodore looked seconds away from regretting every decision that brought him there.
Charlotte smiled faintly at the sight before looking back at Lucien.
"I think your son should stay with his family a little longer before the ceremony begins."
Lucien gave a quiet nod at her answer, the conversation moving on as naturally as if they had done this countless times before.
Theodore noticed it immediately. Not the words themselves, but how casually his father spoke with Charlotte. There was no careful distance in it, no measured restraint like Lucien carried around everyone else. Even knowing the two had known each other for years, Theodore still found it strange seeing his father act almost relaxed around someone.
Charlotte treated him less like the head of the D'Arcels and more like someone she had simply known for too long to care about titles anymore.
The atmosphere inside the guest wing had loosened since the gathering ended, becoming slower and less guarded, though still far from relaxed.
Seraphine sat across from Theodore near one of the open lounge areas connected to the rooms. The earlier formality between them had softened slightly after the proposal was settled, no longer sitting directly between every sentence the way it had before.
They spoke quietly while the others occupied themselves nearby. Sometimes the conversation stalled for a few seconds before continuing again naturally afterward. Neither of them seemed particularly good at this yet. Still, they tried. Theodore learned quickly that Seraphine was better at listening than speaking. She answered directly when asked something, but rarely extended conversations herself unless she had already thought through what she wanted to say beforehand.
"You always talk this slow?" Theodore asked, leaning back slightly.
Seraphine blinked at him.
"…Do I?"
"Yeah. Like you're thinking five steps ahead of every word."
She looked at him for a second longer than necessary, then shrugged faintly.
"I'm not."
"That feels like a lie."
"It isn't."
A short pause.
"…You just talk fast," she added.
Theodore huffed a small breath through his nose.
"Fair."
Aurora immediately covered her mouth to stop herself from laughing too loudly nearby while Emilia lowered her head slightly, shoulders shaking once in amusement.
Theodore stared at Seraphine for a second longer before exhaling through his nose.
"…Okay. That was unfair."
"I've been told that before."
The answer came so calmly that it only made Aurora laugh harder from the couch.
Eleanor remained seated farther back near Charlotte, watching the two from a comfortable distance. Neither woman interrupted. They simply observed the conversation unfolding on its own.
At some point, Charlotte glanced toward Eleanor without fully looking away from her wine glass.
At some point, Charlotte's attention drifted toward Eleanor while she still held her wine glass, speaking as if continuing a thought already understood between them. Eleanor had been worried Seraphine might refuse Theodore once she saw him up close, but Charlotte didn't think so. From what she had seen, Seraphine had actually looked more at ease after the agreement was made.
Across from them, Seraphine had quietly begun explaining something about Nocturne to Theodore after he admitted he had never actually visited the inner districts before. Most of his life had been spent around D'Arcel territory, Lunarium, or wherever Charlotte happened to drag him during training. Nocturne existed more as a concept to him than a city.
Seraphine described it differently than he expected. Not grand the way nobles usually framed it. Just old. Built over and over again until the city felt too tightly packed with its own history, like it had no choice but to keep stacking itself on top of what was already there.
"A lot of vampires still prefer the older districts," she explained. "The newer sections feel too… new and away from their comfort zone."
"…That sounds backwards."
"It probably is."
Aurora leaned against the armrest nearby, still grinning.
"You two already sound married."
Theodore immediately looked horrified.
Seraphine looked down at her lap and quietly took another sip from her glass.
Emilia finally laughed openly at that one.
Meanwhile, far from the estate, Nocturne itself had not relaxed nearly as easily.
The Senate convened before dawn. Earlier than scheduled. Earlier than most of them preferred. The succession ceremony had already begun affecting political movement across vampire society before it was even officially announced, and that alone made delay impossible.
Inside the chamber, discussions moved carefully among old figures seated beneath dim silver lights and towering black pillars marked with family insignias older than many nations still existing beside the Barebloods.
Reports from the gathering had already circulated among them. The Beaumont, who are a dying family of vampires, initiating a proposal towards a heir of the D'Arcels, Lucien's attention toward Theodore who is a disciple of the Heretical Witch, the reactions of the other vampire houses, creating more familial ties, and the many shifting witches and supernaturals support beginning to form around the succession of the heirs.
None of it remained private for long.
"Theodore D'Arcel."
One senator finally spoke the name aloud.
Another answered almost immediately afterward.
"A Bareblood descendant."
"And Lucien still acknowledged him publicly. I thought those pureblooded vampires hated those with that kind of 'tainted' blood."
The room did not respond immediately. Several senators exchanged brief looks, while others simply continued reviewing the reports in front of them. The concern was never whether the succession ceremony would happen.
It always happens.
Some believed the next successor would simply continue the lineage exactly as intended. Another vessel carrying accumulated memory forward. Another leader shaped by centuries of inherited will. Others were less certain. Lucien himself had already become an abnormality within the lineage. Too restrained. Too willing to negotiate. Too willing to coexist.
One senator finally spoke again.
"The Scarlet Floret began the same way."
That shifted the atmosphere immediately.
Even centuries later, the name still carried discomfort with it.
The second calamity.
The Scarlet Floret. A vampire who had created an army, both witches and supernatural alike, during the Great Silver Hunt, spilling chaos into both the Witching Hour and the Bareblood world. A figure remembered differently depending on which side survived long enough to record him. Lucien had not hidden among hunters as prey, but as a hunter himself. He entered the war under a false identity, tracked the Scarlet Floret through the human fronts, and killed him in the midst of the conflict. He consumed him as was expected of a D'Arcel, making him the new head for centuries. From that act, the war ended into the first fragile agreements between witches, Barebloods, and supernaturals. Albeit, the Barebloods had already forgotten most of it.
Some senators still believed the Great Silver Hunt had been necessary despite its brutality.
Not righteous.
Not honorable.
Necessary.
Because before the agreements between races, there had only been fear, feeding, retaliation, and collapse.
The Scarlet Floret had nearly destroyed all possibility of peace before Lucien consumed him himself.
And now Lucien was dying. Which meant something else would soon inherit everything he carried inside him. That alone was enough to unsettle the Senate more than any political dispute ever could.
Back at the estate, the night continued quietly.
Aurora eventually shoved Theodore lightly after another awkward exchange between him and Seraphine while Emilia nearly collapsed into the couch laughing beside her. Theodore looked exhausted already. Seraphine looked embarrassed for him. And somewhere nearby, Charlotte quietly watched the entire thing over the rim of her wine glass while Eleanor sat beside her in silence.
For a brief moment, it almost looked normal.
Almost.
Like the calm before the storm.