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“Oh, bullshit, my ass that nothing has changed! What’s changed?” Demos demanded.

“Daemon…”

“What? What did he say to you?” Demos went very still. “You can tell me, Ryder.”

“I know. I just…”

“What did Daemon say?”

Does your blood run pure, Grayson?

“Maybe what I already knew,” Ryder whispered. “Do you think it’s the wrong move? To--to team up with Grayson? To keep it from Lawson?”

Ryder practically held his breath. Demos’ judgment was always good, but he did not want to tell Lawson about Grayson no matter what. Yet he didn’t trust his judgment about the young man. He was attracted to him. Grayson was just his type but amplified a thousand fold.

“No, it’s not wrong at all! It’s right! I like that you are stepping out from his shadow,” Demos said with an emphatic thump of his hand on the table. “He thinks he speaks for all of the Weryn, but he doesn’t. I think Daemon’s return has left us all uncertain of what the right path forward is. Lawson has aimed us in a direction. But is it the right one? Is it the one we should be taking? You already know what I believe. But what do you think?”

“He may not be right about many things. He may not be the right leader either. But… he’s not altogether wrong either. We have tradition in how we choose our fledglings for a reason. We know what happens when Immortals are in charge of this.” Ryder’s expression grew grave. “The War showed their true colors. Fledglings were not made to add to the group harmony, but simply as cannon fodder.”

“I am not saying that I am keen on Eyros, Kaly and Seeyr choosing the pool of candidates either for us to pick from.” Demos held up his hands. “But now that the humans know about us there needs to be rules. The school seems fair.”

“Humans want rules for us, but for themselves? Every rule they make, they break if it suits them.” Ryder crossed his arms over his chest. “We need to choose the best to be among us. We can’t allow their fear--or our fear--to cause us to make mistakes again.”

Demos nodded. “That’s true. But how do we know that Eyros and the others haven’t chosen the best with this year’s class?”

“Gregory was a member of the Sect of Dawn,” Ryder reminded him dryly. “He can hardly be the best.”

“But Gregory led us to Grayson.” Demos pointed out.

“That was luck. Bad luck for Grayson perhaps,” Ryder said, flashing back though on the unwilling sketch of Grayson’s hard past. He was glad that Grayson wasn’t decaying in a dead end job with no friends and no prospects.

“Was it though? Was it luck at all? You said yourself that Seeyr played a role in picking who was chosen,” Demos pointed out.

Seeyr was another Immortal like Balthazar and Caemorn, but she had not died and been reborn. She had been imprisoned in her own tower, the Spire, in the Ever Dark since the time of the War. Her eyes had been plucked out and not allowed to regrow due to near starvation levels of feeding. But that had not stopped her from seeing--and making happen--the one future where Daemon returned to rule both Vampires and humans.

“She picked Gregory--”

“But maybe because it was the only way to lead the Sect to reveal itself and bring a most unusual human into the game. Grayson seems to have no love for Vampires,” Demos said. “He would never have come here absent Gregory.”

“But that feels like luck! Like a coincidence!” Ryder paced.

“She plays the long game. Things that seem unimportant end up deciding everything. Yet here we are. In the future she foresaw and wanted,” Demos reminded him this time.

Ryder scrubbed his fingers through his beard. Grayson was unusual. Was worthy. Was interesting. Getting him here willingly when he otherwise would never have come on his own was brilliant, if true.

“He’d never have accepted coming here if we had trapped him,” Ryder remarked softly as he realized that this might have been the only way Grayson would have ever accepted being in the Ever Dark.

“Grayson? Oh, hell, no. That boy would have broken himself completely on the bars of any cage,” Demos agreed.

“I was thinking that perhaps we could reach out to your friend Dani for him,” Ryder said as he continued to pace.

Demos’ eyebrows lifted. “Why would you want to talk to Dani about Grayson?”

Unlike most Weryn, Demos befriended Vampires of all Bloodlines and Dani was an Ashyr Vampire. They had gifts similar to Grayson’s in that they were telekinetic.

“I was thinking if we are going after the Sect that Grayson should hone his gift. What better person to help him than an Ashyr Vampire?” Ryder suggested.

Demos pursed his lips. “I see where you are going there.”