Liora stood at the portal entrance when it opened, having not yet gone to send word to Valdris.
She was positioned twelve feet away, holding the communication crystal in her hand, with Heinz four feet to her left and Sophia perched on Heinz’s hip. The three of them watched the amber-purple light pulse.
When the portal finally opened, Rick stepped through first, followed by Zephyra and then Zein. In that mont, Liora’s expression shifted through three distinct stages in roughly two seconds.
The first stage was relief, which she processed quickly.
The second stage involved a professional assessnt from a high priestess examining a man who had been trapped inside a grief construct’s two-hundred-year dinsional space, cataloging the effects. This stage took slightly longer.
The third stage ca when she saw Zein, causing her to beco very still, as she did when determining whether the situation warranted her sacred authority in the form of combat tools or sothing more intricate.
Heinz remarked, "Oh, good, you’re back," in a tone that revealed he had been trying not to show his worry and was now relieved enough to let it show briefly.
Zephyra was across the courtyard in three steps, and Sophia transferred from Heinz’s arms to hers without fuss, Sophia’s hands imdiately finding her mother’s collar in the standard grip.
Zephyra held her with the focused completeness she had shown in the outer grounds after the operatives, less than four seconds of allowing herself to simply hold her daughter before she looked up and was professional again.
Heinz stood and looked at Zein with a neutral expression, indicating he was deciding how to approach the situation.
"You are Zephyra’s father," Heinz said.
"Yes," Zein said.
"You arranged our marriage."
"Yes."
"And you used our daughter’s potential as a component of a plan."
"Yes," Zein said firmly, without softening his tone, and Rick took note of this.
"Can you please respond with sothing other than just ’yes’?" Rick felt tired hearing it.
"Yes."
"He’s ragebaiting now..."
Heinz was quiet for a mont.
And then he said. "I would like to speak with you at so point, and not today... but at so point."
His voice was the sa open, uncomplicated one he used for everything. "I have so questions that I think only you can answer, and I think Zephyra deserves to have soone ask them on her behalf who doesn’t need anything from the answers."
Zein looked at Heinz with the particular expression he had used in the courtyard when Sovereign Convergence had broken through his suppression field by way of a nonmagical anchor, the expression of soone encountering a variable they had failed to model.
"I will answer them," Zein said.
Liora asked Rick, "What happened in there?"
"We talked," Rick said. "And, surprisingly, the entity talked."
"There’s a modification to the Severance Rite that needs to be discussed with Thessara tonight." He looked at Liora. "Zein is going to explain it."
"We need you and Thessara and your full professional capacity for the conversation."
Liora looked at Zein for a mont. Then she looked at Rick with the expression of soone deciding whether to question the summary or trust the source.
She trusted the source.
"Alright... I will find Thessara," she said. "Give ten minutes."
She walked toward the main hall, the communication crystal still in her hand, her robes perfectly arranged despite everything that had happened in the last several hours.
Rick stood in the courtyard with Zein and Zephyra and Heinz and Sophia, and the portal behind them pulsed once more and then went still, the amber-purple light fading to a dull residual glow that did not disappear entirely but stopped actively demanding attention.
Zephyra looked at her father.
"You told the entity wants to be understood," she said. "That it is afraid because Rick might understand it well enough to be worth talking to."
"Yes."
"You were talking about yourself," she said. "As much as the entity."
Zein said nothing.
"You have been building this for two hundred years, and you have never once had soone look at it and understand why, without it being in the context of opposing you." She looked at her folio, at the notes she had been taking for thirty-six hours in the archive room, and the years of study that preceded them.
"You gave the theoretical frawork, and you built the conditions for to beco the person who could look at what you built and understand it."
"Yes," he said, quietly.
"That was also selfish," she said.
"Yes."
"And you knew that too."
"Yes."
Rick clenched his teeth in exasperation. ’What the fuck... can’t he say anything other than yes?’
"Yes," Sebastian said.
’Fuck you.’
She was quiet for a long mont, holding Sophia, who had fallen asleep against her shoulder with the complete trust of a nine-month-old who has found the right location and decided the situation is handled.
"I do understand it," Zephyra said. "The grief architecture and what it is built from."
"And... what it is trying to do." She looked at him. "I am not ready to tell you that understanding is the sa as forgiving."
"It is not, and I do not know yet what I am going to do with understanding that is separate from forgiving."
"I know," Zein said.
"But Sophia is not part of any plan," she said. "That is not negotiable."
"I said—"
"I know what you said! I’m saying it again so that we are both clear on what it ans..." Zephyra takes a deep breath. "It ans that if I learn at any point that Sophia has been approached, involved, considered, or affected by any plan of yours without my explicit and fully inford consent, there is nothing you have built that I will not take apart."
She said it in the sa flat, precise register she used for everything, which ant she ant it entirely. "Not because I’m angry or anything... but I’m capable of it, and I will do it."
Zein looked at her, and for the second ti in the courtyard, sothing moved in his face that had not been controlled.
"I know," he said.
It carried more weight than the sa two words had carried before. "I get it..."
Heinz put his hand briefly on Zephyra’s shoulder, just lightly, just there, and then took it away. She did not look at him, but her posture shifted two degrees in his direction.
Rick looked at the faint glow where the portal had been and then at the ward dampener eyepatch Zephyra had built in twelve minutes in Fredrich’s study, which he was still wearing, and pulled out Natasha’s crystal from his coat pocket. He looked at it.
Twenty-two percent.
He put it back.
"Thessara had better be free tonight," he said.
"She will be," Sebastian said, invisible, sowhere to his left. "I have been monitoring the temple’s internal schedule."
"Thessara does not have competing obligations this evening." A brief pause. "She does have opinions about receiving unexpected guests in her private study, but I assess that Liora will handle that adequately."
Rick looked at the space where Sebastian’s voice had co from. "You know the temple’s internal schedule."
"I have been doing research," Sebastian said, with the tone of soone who finds this an entirely reasonable response to that observation.
Zephyra said, without looking up from Sophia’s sleeping face, "Your familiar monitors institutional schedules in real ti."
"He does many things," Rick said. "Being an A-hole is one of them."
"I find that useful to know," she said.
The last of the portal’s glow faded from the courtyard stone.
...
The afternoon light was warm and golden as it filtered through the inner garden walls, and the Golden Temple lood around them, its three hundred years of layered sacred architecture resonating with a history that had never been empty long enough to forget its purpose.
Tomorrow morning, Thessara and Liora will conduct a modified Severance Rite.
Tonight, a conversation awaited—one that was bound to be complicated, necessary, and likely lengthy.
Rick inhaled the evening air, contemplating twenty-two percent, the entity’s column, and the burden of two hundred years of grief for sothing that had once been good but had ultimately failed. He rembered what Liora had said on the road from Valdris.
"Grief is what gives it actual strength. This ans that only resolution, not destruction, can end it. And resolution requires a conversation."
He had had that conversation.
He still did not know if it had been sufficient. But it had been genuine, and sotis that was the essential starting point.
Liora appeared at the entrance to the main hall. "Thessara will see us now," she announced.
"All of us." She regarded Zein with the keen assessnt of soone who had spent decades interpreting people across a negotiating table. "She has questions."
"She will have more by the end of it," Zein replied.
"I expect so," Liora said, holding the door open. "Co in."
They entered.
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