Trafalgar reached his room with Aurevane sitting at the front of his mind.
The corridor behind him had already begun to quiet. Lamps burned along the walls, warm and even, while the Academy eased into that late-evening rhythm where footsteps thinned, doors closed, and voices dropped to something private. It should have helped, and it did not. Alfons was watching him because someone had ordered it, and that was the part that would not leave him alone.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The first thing he caught was the window. Open. Not wide, only enough for the curtain to breathe with the night air.
Trafalgar stopped with one foot past the threshold. His hand came up before the thought behind it had finished, and Maledicta formed in his grip, black and familiar, its weight answering him like a second pulse. The edge found the far side of the room, where a small dark form clung to the open frame.
A bat.
