attire, Draco suspected that the rector of the Academy himself had finally arrived.
Darius felt like screaming at the top of his lungs. He had been having nothing but problems since morning. As soon as he left his apprentice in Solvein, he ran into a messenger sent by Rex. It turned out that there had been a mistake in the archives and all the reports had to be verified. And that was just the beginning. Upon arriving at his destination, he discovered that not only had there been irregularities, but there were also visible gaps. He had no idea that refraining from swearing could be so difficult.
Verifying the archives and documents that ended up in the Azure Guard's office was tedious and extremely monotonous. Fortunately, he did not have to do it alone, as Rex and three not-so-happy clerks also got to work. Just when it seemed that the drudgery was coming to an end, another messenger appeared at the door. The urgent summons to a meeting at intelligence headquarters was not welcome, but he could not ignore it.
The journey from the archives to the Luminous Palace gave Darius some respite, but only then did he realise how late it was. He began to wonder how Draco had done on his exam. He had no doubt that the dragon had passed, but he wondered if his student was not too concerned about the upcoming tests and the results of the previous ones. Sometimes it seemed that the reptile saw the biggest problems in the simplest things. Darius sighed deeply and tried to take his mind off it. He failed.
With a new headache, he entered the headquarters and stumbled upon an argument between soldiers. The situation was unclear, to say the least. Intelligence officers were tossing around conflicting reports from various agents, trying to figure out which one was telling the truth. The matter was quite serious, as it mainly concerned politics at the Tsar's court. The discrepancies stemmed from the sources themselves. Agents working in Rekserberg reported that the vampire ruler was pressuring the Tsar to agree
