Your family didn’t destroy thousands of civilian lives in your own territory to politically bury a brother.

Family didn’t use the crystallized essence of a brother’s woman as a negotiating instrument. Family didn’t look at a niece as a tool from across a ceremonial hall with the filthy look of someone who believed they had already won because they had bought enough pressure and threatened enough targets.

She stopped herself from the rage before the thought moved to her father.

Interrupted one problem but by something that will take you somewhere you cannot go right now. If she let her mind go where it wanted to go, she wouldn’t be able to keep the face she had to keep in this hall.

Her father was crystallized somewhere outside, in a place nobody had told her precisely, having tried to obtain the third nucleus to open the door that might have given back at least the other part of her mother that was missing.

He had been that way for over a year... The not-knowing where was the part that was hardest to manage, because she couldn’t go looking for him if she didn’t know where to look.

That was also something to resolve.

But first the crystal.

’Focus.’

The recognition phase was approaching. Julius and Arturo had managed the debate well, better than Luna had expected given the pressure Orion had been applying.

But Orion hadn’t used everything he had yet, not on Luna’s specific situation, since his priority was the genetic key. He was likely waiting for his moment to even attack if needed... Calculating, perhaps, the point when he had gotten enough talking, and when the room would be warm enough for the threat of aggression to cost more to use it as an advantage.

Selphira’s signal hadn’t come.

Ren’s mana signature hadn’t changed in any perceptible way.

Which meant that neither Selphira nor Victor were recovered, and Ren was still in the state they had left him in.

Which meant that if anything was going to happen here, it was going to happen without any of the three of them.

’Fine... So you do it alone, like you always knew you were going to.’

Luna had become this version of herself somewhere between the ages of seven and nine, right? Before that she had been someone else, more like her mother, more like the kind of person who trusted that the world would give her what she needed if she asked for it the right way. But at seven the world had shown her that wasn’t how it worked...

Then at nine she had decided that if the world wasn’t going to give her anything, she was going to take it herself, right?

So this was not the moment for surrender or for regret.

Ren had been a happy parenthesis. (The delusion of being some princess in distress from some romance book.

A precious parenthesis, more precious than she had expected when it started, but a parenthesis nonetheless.

Parentheses ended...)

’Don’t worry,’ she told him somewhere he couldn’t hear her. ’You already did your part. Protecting everyone from that terrible corruption. Giving us more power than we ever would have found on our own... You already did too much.’

The image of him coming apart in the embrace returned without asking permission. The weight of that body giving way because there was nothing left in it to stay standing. The face of someone who had been carrying too much for too long and had finally found a place where they could put it down for a moment.

Luna set her back teeth together, quietly.

’I’ll handle it from here.’

The master of ceremonies the first recognition.

Ren’s name.

The door didn’t open.

So he announced the start of the representation-in-absence procedure.

Julius argued another minute.

The last one.

Luna counted the seconds of the minute without wanting to count them, feeling faintly ridiculous for counting them, unable to stop. Orion was already talking in his close circle, already building the argument he had prepared for exactly this moment, and the proposal to leave the recognitions in suspension was exactly as reasonable on the surface as it was exactly as impossible to accept underneath.

Julius responded.

Arturo responded.

Larissa couldn’t intervene directly but her posture communicated things that reached where they needed to reach.

Thirty seconds.

’He’s not coming.’

Luna accepted it. She began calculating what she could do from her position, what move in the ceremony’s logic would let her intervene without breaking protocol in a way Orion could use against her. The board was narrow but there were squares left on it.

Forty seconds.

Liora had stopped looking toward the far end of the hall.

Fifty.

’It’s fine. It’s fine. Whatever has to happen is going to happen either way.’

The master of ceremonies opened his mouth.

The door opened.

♢♢♢♢

A small burst of light appeared in the center of the hall.

The door opened at the same moment, letting in extra light from the corridor, adding to the distraction.

Ren Patinder appeared in the center of the hall.

Luna didn’t process what she was seeing for exactly three seconds.

Then:

’HE’S AWAKE!’

’HE’S AWAKE HE’S AWAKE HE’S STANDING AND WALKING AND HE’S...!’

Externally, Luna Starweaver did not change her expression.

Internally, something that had been held tightly since they walked into this hall released all at once with the specific violence of an emotion that has been under pressure too long and finds an exit before anyone can stop it.

’DON’T CRY. DO NOT CRY IN A CEREMONY HALL WITH ORION WATCHING!’

’BUT HE’S THERE. HE MADE IT. HE ACTUALLY MADE IT!’

His head was down. He was moving strangely. This wasn’t the Ren she knew from the ballroom, easy and present and himself.

But it was Ren.

’MOM, THE MOST ABSURDLY STUBBORN BOY IN THE WORLD JUST APPEARED AT THE LAST POSSIBLE SECOND LIKE THIS IS ONE OF THE BOOKS LIORA PRETENDS SHE DOESN’T READ!’