Dhampirica

XVII

THE NEXT MORNING, Yvanna accompanied Lord Dante to his routine fencing class. She was thankfully excused from having to take up the position of being his opponent again, what with his usual sparring partner having returned from his two-week absence. She waited to the side, along with the other minders, until he was done. After the session had ended, they were walking back to the car when he told her something surprising.

"I think I might quit fencing and take up self-defence classes instead."

From the corner of her eye, Yvanna glanced at Lord Dante, checking to see if he was being serious. He was. "Is it because of what happened at your party? If it is, I assure you that that night was a mistake I won't repeat. You don't have to quit fencing. I'll do better at protecting y—"

He shook his head. "No, no, it's not your fault. Look — I like fencing, I do. But it's just something that I do for fun. It's my final year at Invictus and I think I should spend my time better, considering I probably won't have much time after I graduate. I'm sure I'll be stuck behind a desk 24/7. It'll be hard to take up new hobbies after that, I think."

"Do you really think you'll be stuck behind a desk?" she asked him. "Won't you be at your father's side on the Executive Council?"

"Well... I imagine there'll be some other stuff for me to do, like meetings and such. But there's no need for me to be at the EC table while my father's sitting there. They only really bring family in to vote on important matters. Until he passes the mantle down to me, I'll mostly be doing paperwork."

As if on cue, a notification sounded from both their watches. Yvanna looked down and saw that Lord Dante's schedule had changed. "You've been called in for an emergency meeting at the Executive Council," she said to him.

"And it's at 1:00," he sighed. "There goes our afternoon. I'll have Soren book us a flight to Washington, though I'm sure he already has it organized."

Indeed, Soren did have it already handled. He drove them straight from Sinclair's Fencing to O'Hare International Airport, where they promptly took a private jet to Washington D.C. Owing to the little time they had, Lord Dante could not return home for a change of attire. Fortunately, Soren was never unprepared and already had a crisp grey suit waiting on the jet. Lord Dante changed his clothes during the flight whilst Yvanna tried not to squirm in her seat. She had never been on a plane before, and being several thousand miles off the ground was not the most pleasant experience for her. To her relief, however, the flight was less than two hours long.

When they arrived at Washington D.C., a driver that Soren had organized was waiting for them, who then took them straight to the Capitol Building. The building, Yvanna had once learned in school, had been repurposed from a bicameral congressional chamber — where politicians argued merely for the sake of arguing and postured to no real purpose nor end — to a unified Executive Council chamber. Since humans had long since been stripped of their authority and most politicians died following the war, the previous system of government required some restructuring. No presidency or sovereign existed in the United Districts, and thus the Executive Council assumed the roles of both the executive and legislative branches of government. Although common vampires could form part — and perhaps most — of the legislature, the laws they made were largely immaterial and only noble families could vote on significant matters of state.

As they exited the car and approached the building, Yvanna noticed Lord Dante's fingers flexing inward and outward in a repetitive motion, though his face was a careful guise of impassivity. "Nervous?" she asked him.

He followed her gaze to his hands, and immediately ceased the motion. "I suppose I need to get better at hiding it," he said wryly. "I've only been here once before, and that was for a school excursion. If I'm being called here for a meeting, then it means that my father wants me to see something."