Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 290. Grief at Rest, and Everything That Had to Happen First
She looked at him with the look she gave when someone said something true, and she was trying to figure out how to take it all in. "And I still figured out how to deal with it as soon as I got the right information."
"Well, uh, yeah," Rick said. "That’s exactly what I meant."
She held the look for half a second longer than usual. After that, she went back to her notes.
The system notification came through quietly.
[Affection Registered: Zephyra Solvane --- 2/10]
[Source: being seen doing the right thing in the right moment by someone who was paying attention without needing to.]
"Two," said Sebastian’s voice from somewhere else. "We’re starting to get somewhere now, you gooner."
"Fucking finally..." Rick said, "I’ve been waiting for so long, and I guess that happens when you try to reach someone’s wife’s heart..."
"Nahhhh... it’s for saving the universe, so maybe it’s kind of justified." Sebastian fixed his monocles. "And besides, Zephyra really isn’t in love with him."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it..."
...
Heinz found Zein in the outer garden two hours after the ceremony was over. He was with Sophia. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮
He sat down on the garden bench across from him, put Sophia in his lap with the skill of someone who had done this many times before, and looked at Zein with the same open and simple attention he gave to everything else.
The conversation was not shown. Rick passed through the garden on his way back from the preparation chamber, saw Zein and Sophia, and continued walking because he felt it was not his place to engage in their conversation.
What he saw when he came back through the garden an hour later was Zein still on the bench, alone, looking at his hands with the specific stillness of someone who has been given accurate, unhurried questions about things they had decided not to look at directly.
Not in crisis. Just very still.
Shortly after, Zephyra entered the garden and noticed her father sitting on the bench.
She did not pause. She held his gaze for the length of two steps, then looked away and continued walking.
...
It’s already evening. And the Golden Temple grounds are settling into their evening rhythm.
Zein came to Rick in the outer garden while Rick was checking Natasha’s crystal. The reading was sixty-seven percent, the first time it had been above fifty since before the node battle in Valdris.
Rick looked at it for a moment with the particular relief of a number moving in the right direction.
Zein said, "I will not come to Valdris."
"Well, okay," Rick said. "No one is forcing you to go anyway."
"The Council situation is Fredrich’s to navigate, and... my presence would for sure make it worse."
"Yeah... not gonna lie, it probably would."
They were quiet for a while. The garden was quiet enough that you could hear the low, steady, and consistent sound of the ward’s architecture.
Zein said, "I’d like to know how it ends."
Rick said, "I’ll tell Fredrich you asked."
Zein stared at him. "That’s a strange thing... to offer."
"Well, keep it as my gratitude because you helped me fix my socket, and Fredrich broke a thirty-one-year-old oath."
"I’m not going to pretend that neither of those things happened." Rick put the crystal back in his coat. "The cost of what was built doesn’t cancel out what it took to undo it, and, of course... both things are true."
"That does not make what was built with them acceptable."
"Hell no, it doesn’t."
Another pause, this one longer and with more in it.
"You talked to the entity," Zein said. "I worked with it for thirty-one years."
"The entity and I talked a lot, and I understood its theoretical structure and what it needed." He stopped. "I never asked it what it was scared of..."
"I asked what it needed, and those are two different things."
Rick said, "No, they’re not."
"You asked the right question."
"I just listened to it."
"That is the same thing," Zein said, his voice carrying the weight of someone who had learned the distinction too late, despite being over two hundred years old and naming it clearly as if it cost him something.
"Well then... thank you, Rick Rolland."
"Likewise, I feel that I should be the one thanking you."
"Nah... we’re in the same condition." He walked out of the garden while waving at him. "See you around, kid."
Rick watched him leave and thought about the entity’s domain, the record wall, and the two hundred years of grief that had been love the whole time and had never been able to stop moving long enough to rest.
Sebastian said, "He’s not going anywhere in particular."
Rick said, "I know."
He looked in the direction that Zein had walked and said, "He doesn’t have anywhere to go now."
"The domain is gone, the oath-bond is broken, and the plan doesn’t look the same anymore."
"He still thinks the change in government needs to be planned for. He just doesn’t know how to do it, and he’s going to figure it out."
"That’s a very kind way to look at things."
Rick said, "He’s neither our problem nor our enemy."
"He was trying to do something real with two hundred years of grief, but he did it wrong. That’s a lot to deal with, but it doesn’t mean he’s beyond help."
Sebastian said, "That’s a complicated view for someone who almost lost his eye socket twice this week."
"Yeah, well. It’s been a complicated week. And now... I could just prefer to fight more corruption than handle this kind of confusing thing."
"Small brain."
"Fuck you."
...
Night came with the soft touch of a place that had been careful with evenings for three hundred years.
Heinz was resting in the family-designated room. Sophia was on his chest, which was how she liked to sleep when she found a surface that was stable and comfortable.
A senior priestess who came by to check on Sophia’s carry arrangement saw them and quietly left without making any changes, because some things didn’t need to be changed.
Liora saw Rick in the outer garden sitting on the bench that used to belong to Heinz and Zein. She sat next to him. She didn’t ask how he was because she could feel the shape of it through the spiritual link and knew the answer.
After a while, she asked, "The entity... How is it now?"
Rick thought about what to say.
"Be quiet," he said. "Like something that had been walking for two hundred years and then sat down."
"Is it going to be okay?"
"I think so. Eventually." He could feel the warmth in the socket, steady and settled, and the grief construct was there like a long-term guest, not pushing, just there. "It just needs time to not be important anymore."
"Most grief does," Liora said.
