Log Title: My Daughter Soraya and the Court of Echoing Verdicts

From the Private Papers of Vlad Dracula — The Matter of Her Autonomy

The Court convened today over something trivial.

They always do.

A minor deviation in Soraya’s movements. An unsanctioned route taken through the lower arterial districts. A rumor of proximity—to silver, to dissent, to people who believe themselves unseen. Nothing actionable. Nothing provable. Enough to irritate the meticulous.

Zakiel spoke first, of course. He framed it as concern. He always does. Concern for precedent. Concern for narrative drift. Concern for what it looks like when my daughter walks without escort through places where ideas still ferment.

Others followed. Carefully. Respectfully. The Crescendo masked their interest as reformist curiosity. A lesser adjudicator—new, eager, catastrophically sincere—suggested that Soraya’s continued freedom represented a “structural inconsistency” within the Ascendancy’s internal logic.

I allowed them to speak.

Soraya stood at the edge of the chamber, silent. She did not look at me. She watched them instead—learning. That unsettled me more than their words.

When they finished, I asked a single question.

“Which of you believes she belongs to you?”

Silence has a sound when it spreads fast enough. It is almost musical.

Zakiel began to recalibrate. Too late. The young adjudicator—his name was Marek of the Ninth Ledger—answered honestly. He cited doctrine. He cited optimization. He cited the Court’s right to intervene when an asset exhibits uncontrolled variance.

I thanked him for his clarity.

Then I explained—calmly, precisely—that Soraya is not an asset. Not an exception. Not a problem to be solved. She is a condition I allow to persist because it proves the system is still capable of producing interiority without collapsing.

I told them that any attempt to restrict her movement, surveil her without consent, or contextualize her existence as symbolic would be interpreted as an act of philosophical cowardice.

I told them that if they required a hierarchy, they should understand this one clearly:

She answers to no one.

Not even to me.

Soraya spoke then.

“I don’t need anything from you.”

Emotion compromised the delivery. She will resent that later. She always does.

I accepted it without comment.

Marek of the Ninth Ledger tried to recover. He spoke of risk. Of optics. Of inevitability.

I ended the session by placing my hand on his shoulder.

I did not raise my voice.
I did not transform.
I did not make a spectacle.

I simply removed him from the Court.

Completely.

His death was quiet. Inelegant. Unmemorable. A simple snap. Which is the worst outcome for someone who believed history would need him.

I instructed the others to record his absence as clerical error.

Afterward, Soraya did not leave immediately. She stood very still. Her hands were trembling—not from fear, but from the realization that I had acted without asking her permission.

That is the part she cannot forgive easily.

Later—much later—when the Opera had resumed its breathing and the city returned to its habitual noise, she came to me.

She did not speak.

She hugged me.

Briefly. Hard enough to bruise.

Then she stepped back, already rebuilding the distance she needs to survive me.

I let her.

I always do.

The Court will adjust. They always do.

What interests me is this:

She now knows that when they come for her, I will not argue theology.

I will edit reality.

And she hates that she finds comfort in it.