The main estate looked different when you were invited.

Not actually different. Same marble floors, same high ceilings, same portraits of dead Ashbournes looking severe and important. But the quality of the attention shifted. When Orion had walked these halls before, the servants had either ignored him or looked through him, the specific social skill of treating someone as furniture without being obvious about it.

Now they looked at him.

Not warmly. Not hostilely either. Just with the attentiveness of people who had updated their files on him and weren’t fully sure what category he belonged in yet either the sane, dangerous or canon fodder.

He walked through it without adjusting his pace.

Luna was in cat form on his shoulder.

He’d asked her to do it mainly for logistics but partly because the image of him arriving at a formal family gathering with a white cat casually riding him like furniture was exactly the kind of thing that would set a particular tone before he opened his mouth.

The gathering was in the east wing, a room called the Heirs Parlor, which apparently had been used for exactly this purpose for several generations. All the Grand Duke’s children in one room. Discussion of family affairs. Establishment of hierarchy among the younger generation.

Very civilized. Very formal.

Very obviously a different thing depending on who was organizing it.

He heard them before he reached the door. Multiple voices, the low hum of a social situation already in progress. He stopped just outside, not obviously, just a natural pause like he was checking his collar, and let the passive skill do what it did.

Four voices. No. Five. One quieter than the others, off to the side. Different quality to the space than an open room, there was furniture in there arranged deliberately, he could tell from the acoustics somehow, the way sound was bouncing back. Seating that created a configuration. A center and a periphery.

Seth had arranged the chairs.

Of course he had.

Orion opened the door.

The room was large and well lit and decorated in the understated way that communicated wealth without shouting about it. There were six people already present. Five of them turned to look when he entered. One didn’t.

Seth was standing near the center of the room, positioned just deliberately enough that the eye was drawn to him first. He’d changed clothes since this morning. The bandaged wrist was visible but not prominently so, angled in a way that made it hard to focus on. He was already performing, already managing the visual, doing the thing he was clearly very practiced at.

"Brother," he said warmly. The warmth was technically present in the vocal performance but the eyes were doing something completely different. "I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come."

"I wouldn’t miss it," Orion said.

The other four he catalogued quickly, cross-referencing with the previous Orion’s memories.

Celia Ashbourne. Second child. Gold ranked summoner. Sixteen. She had their mother’s face and her father’s composure and was currently watching Orion with an expression of calm assessment, the kind that didn’t show anything. She was sitting closest to Seth which told him something about their relationship.

Doran Ashbourne. Third child. Seth was the oldest at nineteen, then Celia, then Doran at fourteen. Broad shoulders for fourteen year old, quiet energy. He was looking at the floor, which meant either he was uninterested or he was just calm. Orion filed him as unknown and potentially more interesting than he looked.

Mira Ashbourne. Fifth child. Eleven. Too young for the selection trial, too young to be here with full context, she was sitting in the corner with the wide-eyed look of someone who’d been brought along and was now wondering if they should have said no. She was the one who hadn’t looked up when he entered. She was looking at Luna.

And the last one wasn’t an Ashbourne.

He was standing near the window, arms crossed, with the particular brand of stillness that came from someone who’d been trained to occupy space without drawing attention to themselves. Dark hair, average height, maybe seventeen, wearing clothes that were good quality but not noble level. The kind of quality that said comfortable but not connected.

No family resemblance to anyone in the room.

Guest.

Or spy.

Orion’s passive skill ticked on the window figure and filed him as the most dangerous person in the room. Not in a direct physical sense. In a I haven’t figured out why you’re here yet sense.

He crossed to the seating arrangement and took a chair that was off to the side, slightly outside the configuration Seth had arranged. Not dramatically. Just enough.

Seth’s eye did something small and involuntary. A micro-adjustment to his plan. He recovered in less than a second but Orion had already registered it.

Good, Orion thought. Adapting to me instead of me adapting to you. Already better.

Luna dropped from his shoulder to his lap and curled there, tail wrapping around her own body, watching the room with half-lidded eyes that didn’t fool anyone paying attention.

"I thought it was time for the family’s younger generation to gather properly," Seth said, settling into the center position. "With the selection trial approaching, we should be united."

"United," Celia repeated, in a tone that agreed on the surface and questioned underneath.

"We represent the next generation of the Ashbourne family," Seth continued. "Our performance at the trial reflects on all of us." His gaze moved around the room and settled briefly on Orion. "All of us."

Orion said nothing.

"There’s also the matter of the Thornfield delegation," Seth added, and gestured toward the figure at the window.

The figure turned from the window.

Up close he was older than seventeen. Maybe eighteen. Maybe nineteen. Hard to read. His face was the kind of face that had been practiced into being readable at exactly the level of information it wanted to share.

"Calder Voss," the figure said. No family title. Just the name. "Representing the Voss house. My family has been contracted with the Ashbournes for two generations."

"Contracted," not allied. Not affiliated. Contracted. There was a specificity to the word choice.

"Calder will be observing the selection trial as part of an ongoing arrangement," Seth said smoothly.

Orion looked at Calder Voss.

Calder Voss looked back at him.

"And your summon?" Orion asked.

Something shifted in Voss’s expression. Not much. "Diamond ranked."

The room did the thing rooms did when someone said something that recalibrated everyone’s position simultaneously. Mira looked up properly for the first time. Doran’s eyes came off the floor. Celia’s composure changed.

Diamond ranked.

One rank below the Elite unofficial tier. The highest of the official ranks. Not common. Not in someone that age.

And Seth had placed him by the window like furniture.

Interesting, Orion thought. Either Seth has something on him or Seth needs something from him and hasn’t gotten it yet.

"You’re here to observe," Orion said.

"Correct," Voss said.

"Observing what specifically."

A pause. "Potential."

"Whose."

Another pause. Longer. "That depends on what I see."

Seth stepped back into the conversation with the practiced ease of someone who’d been letting a thread run and was now picking it back up. "Which is exactly why this gathering matters. We have three weeks. We should be preparing together, not separately."

"Together," Orion said.

"Yes."

"Like a team."

"Exactly."

Orion nodded slowly. Like he was considering it. He was considering it, just not the version Seth wanted him to consider.

"What kind of joint preparation did you have in mind," he said.

Seth smiled. "A training session. Today. All of us. A chance to assess where everyone stands before the trial."

There it was.

Not even particularly elegant. Seth wanted to see where Orion’s actual capabilities were, beyond what the incident with Luna had demonstrated. A training session with the whole family watching gave him information and an audience simultaneously.

And there would be something else built into it. Some specific condition. Some arranged element that wasn’t going to be announced ahead of time.

Orion looked at Luna.

She looked back at him with the expression of a creature that had already scented the setup and was waiting for his signal.

He looked at Doran, who was looking at the floor again but whose shoulders were slightly tight. He looked at Mira who was watching Luna with the specific hunger of a child who had a preference and no power over it yet. He looked at Calder Voss who was back to looking out the window and probably seeing more in the reflection than the view.

He looked at Seth.

"Alright," Orion said. "Let’s train."

The Ashbourne training grounds were the large ones. The proper ones, not the modest stretch beside his manor. This was the main facility, a wide open stone yard with proper equipment, measuring marks carved into the ground, a reinforced perimeter wall for when summons got enthusiastic.

It smelled like years of use. Good stone and old mana residue and the particular quality of a space that had seen real effort for a long time.

Seth had arranged it. Of course he had. There were targets set up on one end. A sparring marked circle in the center. And standing at the edge when they arrived, doing a very convincing impression of having simply wandered by, were two more figures.

Two young men. Noble dress. Ashbourne secondary branch, from the memories. Not main family but connected enough to be present for something like this.

Not wandering by.

Planted.