Inheritance of Silence

Night of Senaris 22

Iliyria sighed, sinking deeper into her couch. She doubted she would be able to trance. The reality of Leviathan headed, slowly, but inexorably, toward them, weighed heavy. The moment she had seen it in Isemay’s projection, she had known. The Leviathan would burn right through the shields, there was no way the wards could sustain themselves for more than one blast, even if every Master Arcanist poured everything they had into the relay. If Leviathan was allowed to reach the city, they were doomed. A solution occurred to her in the silent moment that everyone took after seeing the creature. A solution that would destroy Leviathan, but, inevitably, her along with it. After a moment, Halli appeared, looking at her as though she was a puzzle. “So,” they said, “you have resolved to die.”

Iliyria regarded Hallione with a tired bemusement, rubbing at the base of her skull as though she could knead the headache out of her very bones. "There's nothing to resolve," she said. "It's the only move left on the board."

Hallione drifted closer, the outlines of their form quivering at the edges like a heat mirage. "There are always other moves, Iliyria. Mortals are notoriously inventive when pressed to the wall." The words were curiously gentle, as if spoken to a child who had already taken the knife and started carving.

Iliyria’s lips curled in a half-smile. “Convince me, then. Lay out the alternatives.”

Hallione, who had counseled generations of Masters, had never before hesitated when challenged. Now, they tilted their head, let the silence bloom for a full measure.

“The city could be evacuated,” Hallione said at last.

“Too late,” Iliyria countered, almost before the last syllable hung in the air. “The Leviathan would breach the dome before a tenth of them cleared the riverside.”

Hallione’s avatar drifted closer, bending at the knees as if this was a gesture of comfort. “There is a way to breach the heart without destroying the self, if you would but trust—"

She cut the avatar off with a flick of her hand. "I don't have time for riddles, Hallione. You can see the structure better than I can, either I hit it hard, or we all burn. Maybe both. The end."

Hallione did not blink, could not, strictly speaking, but their form wavered, and for a moment, the Tower's voice sounded uncannily mortal. "You do not fear for yourself, Iliyria. But you have not accounted for the price in others."

Iliyria’s face did not change, but something in her posture tightened, as if the words had cut a cord binding her upright. “That’s not the point,” she said. “She’s stronger than you think.”

Hallione flickered, as if to say more, but then simply observed. “She does not yet understand what she feels for you. What your relationship means. If you choose to leave her now, she may never find peace with it.”

Iliyria pressed the heel of her palm to her eyelids. “She needs to learn to let go.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Hallione asked. “That this is a lesson for her?”

Iliyria let out a dry laugh. “You’re projecting again. I’m not your pupil. I never even asked to be one of your Masters, or should I say pets?”

“And you’re deflecting,” Hallione flashed, the tiniest motes of their substance recoiling. “I have no power to order you, Iliyria. But I do have a suggestion. Be certain, before you go, that you are not leaving behind a wound that can never be mended.”

For the first time since they had begun this dance, Iliyria truly looked at Hallione. The entity's eyes were bottomless, filled with the ageless patience of the Tower itself, but tonight there was also a softness, a nearly human pang of sympathy.

She blinked. “You’re a sentimental old brick, Hallione.”

“I am,” the Tower admitted, as if confessing to a small vice. “But I have seen too many stories end in regret. If you would leave, at least do so with your affairs in order.”

Iliyria pressed her lips together, and looked towards her study. Standing, she walked over to the drawer and pulled out a stack of papers. She had brought her will with her when she moved to the Tower from her townhouse. It had seemed the practical choice, considering the circumstances.

She leafed through the packet, a slender sheaf of legal forms. The top page, creased and retouched in three different colors of ink, was stamped at the top: FORM A-1721: PETITION FOR NAMING RIGHTS (ADULT ADOPTION). The line for “Petitioner (Proposed Parent)” was filled out in her own crisp hand; the space for “Adoptee (Proposed Child)” was empty, waiting. The rest of the pages were annotated in her margin-script, with half the questions answered and the other half underlined, circled, or flagged with a question mark.

She had drafted it the morning after Team 7 returned from the Volfast campaign, the day Hallione had hinted, subtly, for a Tower, that the topic was overdue. She had tried to imagine how to broach it. Over tea, after a victory, in the interval between disasters? There was never a right time, she could never find the courage, and so the form sat, half-complete, in her desk drawer.

Sylren. She thought of the name, a shortened version of the one she received at birth. Sylrendreis. She mouthed the old name, feeling its weight in her chest, both foreign and familiar. There was the memory, sharper than knives, of sitting in her father’s private study, the air so thick with distilled condescension that she’d nearly suffocated on her own rage. Sylrendreis was the name of generations, the name that built palaces and shattered them, the name that walked girls like Iliyria through the courts with a leash of expectation looped around their throats.

When she’d first cut her name down, in the aftermath of Isrannore’s fall, it was a deliberate act: a blade held to the neck of her own history. The old name tasted of silver and pride and the kind of cruelty that only the unassailable can wield. Changing it had been a severance, but also a lie: a way to claim she was no longer the daughter of the family that would do anything for power, no longer the friend of the girl who brought the world to ruin, no longer the girl who’d watched a city burn and done nothing but survive.

She took out an empty manila envelope, tucking the will and name change application inside. She would leave it for Alavara to decide, when she was ready, if she wanted it. Iliyria wasn’t sure if she would.

Then she took out a sheaf of blank paper, grabbed a pen, and started writing.

Alavara,

In case you are reading this, I have failed to return. The odds of that outcome increase every minute, so let’s not coddle ourselves. I hope you will read this before you do anything dramatic, but I don’t have much faith in your restraint.

I want to begin by offering you everything I never received, and perhaps some things you never wanted. First is the truth: I am sorry. For a lot of things, but especially for not finding you sooner. For not knowing how to be a mother you’d recognize, or even want - Her pen stopped. Not right. Not even close.

Over the next hour seven drafts were crumpled and thrown into the hearth. Even when she finally put down the pen, she wasn’t fully satisfied. It felt impossible to capture everything on only one sheet of paper, to say what she needed to say, and nothing else. The words still felt thin, as if most of her had bled out into the fire along with the drafts. But it would have to be enough.

She folded the letter and addressed it simply: “Alavara.” She hesitated, then wrote her own name, just “Iliyria,” letting the rest go unsaid. She left the envelope on top of the legal papers. When it was over, Hallione would make sure it found its way to the right hands.

Hallione shimmered into being at the threshold, the boundary between study and living quarters blurring with the force of their intent. “She is coming,” they breathed, and even their voice, built for infinite patience, carried a note of urgency. “You have less than a minute.”

Iliyria’s hand closed over the letter, then snapped into movement. She swept the envelope and the legal forms back into the drawer, pressing it closed with a soft click and a ward of privacy she muttered on pure reflex. She was across the room in three strides, schooling her face into something calm, maybe even a shade less than haunted.

She stepped into her main sitting room. “Get rid of the door,” she whispered.

“I beg your pardon?” Hallione asked, clearly savoring the rare moment when a Master’s request was ambiguous.

“The study door,” she hissed, “seal it, erase it, I don’t care. I can’t have her seeing—” Hallione shimmered with malicious delight, then, with the offhand grace of a god swatting a gnat, the study door unspooled from reality, wood and hinges dissolving into a blank slab of wall. No one would guess it had ever been there, let alone that it hid the tangled sum of Iliyria Sylren’s most private regrets.

A rap sounded at the entry, three measured taps. Iliyria’s heart stuttered, not from fear but from the rawness of what lay so close to the surface.

She took a moment to compose herself, pressing thumb and forefinger to the pressure point beneath her jaw until the muscle spasmed, then crossed the room to the door. She opened the door to find Alavara standing awkwardly on the threshold, a tray balanced in her hands and a look on her face that might have been anger or resolve, depending on which way the light caught her. There were two cups on the tray, and a battered teapot, its handle rattling as Alavara shifted her grip.

"To the end of the world," Alavara said, by way of greeting, lifting the tray like a mock-toast. "Would you rather have chamomile or whatever this is?" She squinted at the teapot, as if hoping a label might clarify the contents, and then shrugged, letting the question hang.

Iliyria stepped aside, letting her enter. The room seemed to shrink in the presence of both of them; Hallione, ever polite, had retreated into the walls, but the static charge of their attention lingered, a faint tingle along the baseboards.

Alavara set the tray down with more force than necessary, and poured tea for them both. Iliyria noticed her hands were shaking, so slightly she doubted Alavara herself could tell it. The younger elf set the tray precisely at the table’s center, her movements measured to the point of parody, and sat without invitation. For a moment, neither spoke. The only sound was the delicate clink of ceramic against ceramic, and somewhere far off, the pulse of a city waiting for catastrophe.

Alavara looked up, and for the first time, there was no mask. “Are you alright?” she asked. The words were so plain, so unguarded, that they nearly undid all of Iliyria’s composure.

She had not rehearsed this, not exactly, but she knew the choreography: deny, reassure, deflect. Instead, Iliyria found herself unable to muster even the simplest lie. Her mind reeled through the remaining contingencies; how to get Alavara out, how to keep her anchored to something sturdy after the world went to shards. She saw a dozen possible futures, all of them ending with Alavara reading the letter in the study, alone, needing answers Iliyria would no longer be able to give. She was almost comforted by the knowledge that her plan was, in every way that mattered, complete. Hallione would see to the aftermath; Alavara would be furious, but she would survive. Iliyria had built her own reliquary of mistakes, and if this was the final one, so be it.

“I know the answer is no,” Alavara said, suddenly. “But I don’t really know what to say at this exact moment. I’ve never come across a situation like this and I don’t know how to—” She stopped, picking at an invisible flaw on the cup’s edge. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not the right question.”

A thousand answers pressed against Iliyria’s teeth, all of them brittle and unsuited to the moment. In the end, she chose the one that felt the least like a lie. “I’m actually more worried about Sanibalis than myself right now.” The Head Councilor had faced the image of the creature that stole his entire world, and fled; the old confidence had collapsed, and in its place was a scaffolding of guilt and fragile resolve. Alavara replied simply, “yeah.”

Iliyria pushed forward, “But it does bring back some…unpleasant memories. I’m beginning to remember why I haven’t gone to the Iron Peaks, why I chose to stay here in the Capitol. I don’t wish for anyone to have to see the things that I’ve seen.” She closed her eyes, and memories of blood, screaming and fire poured in. “The prospect of facing that again is suddenly becoming real to me.”

When she opened her eyes, Alavara responded drily, “Well, it’s a really good thing that you’ve got this team of idiots that are going to put an end to it.” When Iliyria’s expression froze, Alavara said, with more force, “come on if anybody is going to bumblefuck their way through this, it’ll be us.”

Iliyria allowed herself a small smile, “well, your team has certainly proved itself against terrible odds before.” She studied Alavara’s expression, and found, oddly, that she was looking into a mirror to a past version of herself, a version of herself that had known death was always around the corner, but also had a stubborn hope that she could make a difference, that she could enact her will upon the world.

The silence between them was long and neither comforting nor awkward, just precise, as if they were both measuring the weight of what might come next. Alavara's eyes, those hazel wells that scanned every surface for pattern and flaw, flicked once to the sealed-off study, lingered, then slid away. She could sense Alavara’s thoughts cycling through their own closed orbit; cautious, analytic, and, right now, attempting to be unobtrusive. That was a trick Iliyria recognized: the urge to let silence fill the room, to leave the other person alone with their own thoughts rather than intrude. She could see, in the tension of Alavara’s jaw, the beginnings of a question, rehearsed and nearly spoken, then left behind.

Iliyria felt the relief as a physical sensation: a loosening at the base of her spine, a slackening of the skin at her temples. It should have frightened her, how badly she wanted to be let off the hook, even for a moment. She had lived her entire life beneath the unyielding gaze of a world that expected her to never flinch, to always provide, to answer every unspoken need.

She wondered, with a flash of uncharacteristic selfishness, whether Alavara would regret not asking more, whether there would come a time, in the empty days after, when she wished she’d pried open every hesitation and interrogated each silence. The thought should have brought a pang, but instead, it comforted Iliyria to imagine Alavara as the one left wanting, for once.

But Alavara did not reach across the table, nor did she ask the questions that curled like smoke behind her eyes. She only lifted her cup, sipped, and let the silence be. Iliyria felt the urge to fill it, to confess, to instruct, to hand down some last benediction, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came that would not have sounded like a lie or a legacy. She was tired, and selfish, and allowed the silence to stand.

Instead, they sat together, drank their tea, and afterwards, Alavara excused herself with a muttered “I need to check my spell component stock,” leaving Iliyria alone with the steady tick of the wall clock and the faint scent of chamomile. It was late, but the city outside never slept, not now, not with the looming sense of siege. Iliyria waited until she heard Alavara’s footsteps fade down the corridor, then let herself collapse, fingers pressed white against her temples. She sat there for a few moments, then stood.

She was not sure what to do with herself. The city needed her, but in the way that a collapsing house needed its last load-bearing beam. She would go, and it would all come down, tidy and inevitable. There was comfort in inevitability, Iliyria supposed, but she was not built for comfort.

She found herself standing in the bedroom, hand upon the edge of the old chest of drawers. This was not even her own, strictly speaking; the Tower had furnished her rooms with the accumulated detritus of three centuries of prior residents, and she had never bothered to replace any of it. She crossed to it, opened the lowest drawer, and pushed aside the crumpled layers of fabric she had used as padding for the box that lay beneath.

It was a cheap thing, battered pine with dented brass corners, but the lock still worked. She hesitated, then pressed her thumb to the catch until it snapped open. Inside, beneath a layer of tissue gone yellow with age, lay the plush rabbit she’d carried all through the Hundred Year War. Its fur was matted in places, the pink of its nose faded to a ghostly off-white, one ear sewn back on with thread that did not quite match. She had worn the rabbit as a ward, tucking it into her uniform breast pocket before every battle, every negotiation, every bone-broken flight. It had been a charm, a promise, to herself, and to Alavara: that one day, when the world was stitched back together, she would find Alavara, toy in hand, and make a family whole again.

She’d broken that promise in so many ways it was a wonder the toy hadn’t simply faded from existence. But here it was, solid and ridiculous and heartbreakingly small, exactly where she had left it.

She lifted the rabbit, feeling the sad collapse of its body in her hands, and pressed it to her face. The fabric still held the scent of old smoke and the faint, acrid tang of leyline ash. She wondered what Alavara would think, finding this thing among her effects; would she laugh? Would she be angry, or simply shrug and tuck it away, just one more relic in the endless archive of things that Iliyria Sylren had failed to explain.

She kept the rabbit in her lap for a long time, not holding it so much as letting it rest, warm and weighted, against her thigh. The presence of the toy seemed to conjure a dozen old ghosts, voices from other lives crowding the perimeter of the quiet room. Most insistent among them was Carine, the woman who had sewn the rabbit, who had placed the wobbly, lopsided creature in Alavara’s crib.

She wondered, not for the first time, if she should have told Alavara about Carine, about the sharp, resolute woman who had held her, loved her, and had been willing to risk everything for her; about Ollianna, who claimed Alavara as her own child, despite the danger, and had taught her how to walk and talk with the patience of a saint; about Corlianus who had bounced her on his knee and snuck her parts of his rations; and Arcten, who had treated Alavara like his own sister, vowing to keep her safe with the confidence only a child could muster. There had been so many lessons; love, loyalty, the catastrophic cost of hope, and it seemed wrong, now, to let Alavara think she was the only person ever to matter. Or worse: that she had been loved poorly, or only as a replacement for someone lost. Would it have helped, at any point, for Alavara to know she had been loved by more than one person in the beginning? Or would it deepen the wound, the knowledge of so many lost, all of them vanished without memorial?

There was still time. She could go, right now if she wanted, to Alavara’s room and tell her all of it. Barring that she could write it all out in a letter, tuck it in with her will. But she was unsure. Wouldn’t it be unkind, cruel even, to expect Alavara to mourn people she would not even remember? She was also certain that Alavara would simply take the names and place them on her back with the rest of the unearned guilt she had gathered there. Maybe, if there had been more time, she would have told her. Now, it just felt too late. She gave the stuffed rabbit one final squeeze, wrapped it in the paper and tucked it back in the box.

She padded back to the sitting room, gestured at the wall where the door to her study had disappeared, and the door faded back into existence. She walked in and took the will and the letter back out, holding them in her hands. A week, maybe more, maybe less, and this would be all that was left of her. She hoped it would be enough, but she knew that it wouldn’t.

The Shape of the Last Promise

Night, Senaris 24

The Tower’s private suites were never truly quiet. Leylines pulsed behind every stone, infusing the air with a low, arrhythmic hum that worked on the nerves in ways only a wizard could learn to ignore. Lavan Edor stood at the center of his quarters, still dressed in his battered red dressing robe, his staff propped against a couch where it would be in easy reach even if he fell asleep. The rest of the chamber had the studied messiness of a man determined to convince himself he lived a life of discipline: tomes in orderly stacks, a heavy oak desk covered in notes and seals and oddments, two low couches crowded with throw pillows, and on the back wall, a massive, four-poster bed draped in curtains the color of bruised apples. The ceiling arched high above, alive with faint, shifting sigils that bent the light in uneasy patterns. Every time Lavan looked up, he saw something different.

At this hour, the only illumination came from a constellation of rune-globes floating just below the ceiling, their glow soft but relentless. Isemay Misendris had parked herself on the far end of the nearer couch, arms crossed and lips pressed so tight that her knuckles had started to pale from where she gripped her own elbows. Ophelia Saloth, Fia, to the handful who still dared to use the name, had claimed the battered corner of the desk, one booted foot dangling just above the floor, the other knee pulled up almost to her chest. Her eyes darted between the two other occupants of the room, looking for a crack in the stalemate.

“You’re making a mistake,” Isemay said at last. Her voice was low and flat, a controlled burn. “You don’t have to go.”

Lavan snorted, half amusement, half nerves. “I do, actually.”

She glared at him, but the anger behind her gaze was unfocused, searching for a safe target. “Why?” she demanded. “They have wizards. They have healers. They have a literal demigod, even a dragonborn, on their side. You’re not a soldier, Lavan. You’re not even a Runner.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” he replied, but it landed without sting. He walked to the edge of the desk, put both hands on the cool, gouged wood, and leaned in. “If I don’t go, who will?”

“Someone else,” Ophelia piped up, but the words were halfhearted, as if she already saw where the argument would end. She picked up a glass vial from the desk, turned it end over end, then set it back down with a soft clink. “Or,” she added, “someone with actual experience fighting demons.”

“Good to know you both have the utmost confidence in my abilities,” Lavan said with a wry smile. He looked at Isemay, then at Fia, and let a silence stretch long enough for them both to find it unbearable.

Isemay broke first, voice unsteady now. “I just got you back,” she said, eyes flicking to Fia. “Both of you. I’m not ready to lose either one of you again.”

Fia looked away, her mouth a thin, unreadable line.

Lavan considered how to respond. The right words felt so close, but also impossibly remote, like a spell you could almost recite from memory but couldn’t bring yourself to say. He drew a breath, let it out, then stood tall. “We don’t have a choice. If this works, if Team Seven really can get inside that thing, then we’re all they have on the inside. I’m one of the only Masters who can pull off a group teleportation. And if it doesn’t work—” He shrugged. “I’d rather be doing something than waiting here for the end.”

Isemay’s jaw clenched. “You’re not responsible for saving the world, Lavan.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I am responsible for trying.”

No one spoke. The only sound was the faint, electric sizzle of the rune-globes, and the distant, predawn howling of the city’s wind.

Ophelia drew her leg off the desk, stood, and closed the distance to Isemay in three long strides. She laid a hand, awkward and tentative, on Isemay’s shoulder. “You know he’s not going to listen, right?”

Isemay gave a shaky laugh, tears brimming but not yet falling. “He never did.”

They both looked at Lavan, and something small but solid passed between the three of them: an old, battered trust, still alive after everything.

Lavan reached out, not quite sure if the gesture would be accepted, but Isemay took his hand, squeezed it tight.

There was a knock, a sound so sharp it nearly broke the spell of the room. The door swung open before anyone could answer, and Hallione, in their customary form of lavender-skinned simulacrum, drifted into the room. They floated rather than walked, their feet never quite touching the rug, their hair trailing like smoke.

“Apologies for the intrusion,” they said, their voice a perfect blend of amused and ancient. “But Lavan, Iliyria would like to speak with you. Immediately.”

The tension in the room bled out, replaced by a new current, colder and more urgent.

“I’ll go,” Lavan said, disentangling his fingers from Isemay’s. He bent to pick up his staff and straightened the hem of his robe, as if that would make any difference.

He paused in the doorway, looked back at the other two. Isemay had composed herself, but her eyes glistened in the harsh light. Fia stood beside her, still, for once, not bothering to hide her worry.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

Then he followed Hallione down the corridor, and the door swung shut behind him, muting the sounds of the Tower, and of the two women left behind, to the kind of silence that waits for the worst.

**

The marble corridor outside the Master Arcanist’s quarters was colder, the runes in the floor glowing with a sharp white light instead of the warm golds that lined the living spaces. Hallione’s form drifted ahead, their voice a series of polite murmurs as she led Lavan toward a sitting room, close to the Tower Heart, that only the Master’s could access. The closer they drew to the epicenter, the heavier the sensation became, as if each footstep threatened to plunge him into the pulsing energy thrumming below.

They stopped before a door unlike any other in the Tower. Here, the inlay was a triple spiral of obsidian, circled by tiny, equilateral triangles arranged to draw the eye into the black center. Hallione gestured, the door swung inward, and Lavan entered alone. For a moment, he braced himself, almost certain that Iliyria’s summons was to discuss the necromancy, Io, who Lavan had learned was never subtle, never diplomatic, had made more than one offhand comment during their briefing, and the rest of Team 7 had not attempted to cover for him. Alavara had the decency to look a little guilty, at least, but Iliyria had fixed him with a stare that told him she knew.

The chamber within was round, lined with books and scrolls, but dominated by a raised dais at its center, a perfect circle etched with runes in the shape of connected triangles, each point facing inward. The only furniture was a pair of cushioned benches set across from each other. On the far bench sat Iliyria Sylren, her silver hair unbound and wild over her shoulders. Her staff rested across her knees, both hands draped over it as though she might launch to her feet at any moment.

Lavan hovered in the threshold, unwilling to sit. Iliyria eyed him with a dark, unreadable patience, and after a moment, patted the opposite bench.

“Come in,” she said. “Sit. I won’t bite.”

He obeyed, lowering himself onto the cushion. The leyline circle thrummed beneath his feet, amplifying every nerve ending. Iliyria watched him for a long time without speaking.

Finally, she said, “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

He let out a shaky laugh. “That’s generous. Try a month.”

She nodded. “It shows.”

He waited. When the silence stretched, he felt his nerves unravel and blurted, “If you’ve brought me here to punish me, just do it. I don’t have much energy left for suspense.”

Iliyria’s eyebrows drew together, the corners of her mouth dipping. “Punish you?” she repeated, as though he’d just accused her of an absurdity.

He stared back, his own exhaustion no match for the old, stubborn anger inside him. “You’re staring at me like you want to kill me. Like you know exactly what happened, and you’re just waiting for me to confess.”

She didn’t deny it. She leaned forward, her voice dropping low. “You know, the first time I met you, I thought you’d burn the Tower down just to see what would grow from the ashes.”

He barked a laugh, then clamped his teeth together to stop it. “I’m not the only one here with a flair for the dramatic.”

Iliyria allowed herself a small smile, then wiped it away with the back of her hand. “You think I don’t know what you did, Lavan?”

He stared at the floor. “I think you know everything.”

She exhaled, slow and steady. “I went over every scrap of evidence, every arcane signature, every resonance in the leyline. I found four things that pointed directly to you. Four.” She held up a finger for each, counting them out. “First, Kerrowyn herself slipped that the culprit was a child with vast magic. Second, the date of your parents’ deaths lined up perfectly with the necromancy event. Third, you carry a necromantic aura that never quite faded, not even after all these years. And fourth—” Here, she reached forward, gently taking his right hand in hers and turning it palm-up. “—you still have the scar.”

He jerked his hand back, but not before she traced a line over the pale, puckered tissue that bisected his palm. It was barely visible, but to a wizard, it might as well have been a flare.

“A blood rite,” she said. “Ancient, and very illegal.”

He swallowed, unable to muster a defense.

She sat back, letting the air between them cool. “Do you want to know why I never said anything?”

He managed to nod.

“Because I needed the Tower to have a future. I needed it to survive.” Her eyes fixed on him, suddenly fierce. “You did a terrible thing, but you also paid for it a thousand times over. If I’d exposed you, the Tower would have lost more than just a promising student. The world needed you more than it needed justice.” She smiled, then, but it was more sad than kind. “I’d like to say I did it for you, but I didn’t. I did it for the city, for the other Masters. For all of us.”

Lavan’s chest loosened, just, a fraction. “Thank you,” he said, so softly he wasn’t sure she heard.

“I don’t want your thanks,” Iliyria replied. “I want you to understand why I asked you here.”

He looked up, surprised. “You mean there’s more?”

She grinned, an old conspirator’s glint. “Always.” Then her face went grave. “I may not have been completely transparent during our briefings. When the Elven Circle of Mages sent a team in to find Leviathan’s weakness, there was a survivor, at least he survived long enough to tell us what he saw.”

Lavan felt the room tilt. “You know about what’s inside Leviathan? Why didn’t you mention this to everyone?”

“Because it won’t help anything, you’ll understand when I finish explaining.” She picked at the hem of her robe, as if remembering the stains there.

“From the survivor, we learned something. The Leviathan isn’t just a construct. It’s alive, in a way that makes nothing on this plane comparable. There’s a core, a heart, at the center of it. And it’s the only way to kill the thing; you were all right about that. But it’s surrounded by an impossible barrier, and the only way through is to channel every last drop of power the city can muster into one strike. If we hit it, it’ll destroy the Leviathan. But it’ll also level everything within a mile. Including the strike team.”

Lavan stared, unblinking.

“I’m going to do it,” Iliyria said. “I have to. It’s the only way to save the city. But I want the team to have a chance to survive. Which is why I insisted a Master Arcanist who can teleport accompany us.”

He blinked. “You want me to teleport the team out? Under those conditions?”

She nodded. “You’re the only one who could manage it. I’ve seen the calculations. No one else comes close.” She hesitated, then added, “Not even me.”

He reeled, mind racing through possibilities, every one as bleak as the last. “That’s… I don’t even know if it’s possible.”

She leaned forward, eyes bright and sharp. “You’re the only one who can make it possible.”

He looked at his hands, then up at her. “You want me to help you kill yourself.”

Her mouth quirked again, this time in something like pride. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

He shook his head, then laughed, a short, almost hysterical bark. “You’re mad.”

“Probably,” she said, “but I’ve made my peace with it.”

He thought of Isemay, of Ophelia, of the others, of the whole city, oblivious and terrified in equal measure. “Is there really no other way?”

Iliyria’s eyes went dark. “I’ve spent every waking moment trying to find one. There isn’t.”

He sat in silence, staring at the circle at his feet. The triangles blurred, fused together, spun apart. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll do it.”

Iliyria let out a breath she had been holding since before he entered the room. Her hands, loose on her staff, trembled just once.

The air in the room seemed thinner, and her shoulders sagged, but behind her eyes something like relief flickered, for a moment, at least, she could indulge the hope that the plan might actually work.

He saw it, that flicker, and pressed on. “But you can’t do this alone. The others, Alavara, the rest of the team, they need to know. All of it.”

She tensed. “If I tell them, it’ll only distract them. Complicate things.”

“That’s their right,” Lavan said. “You owe them that much, at least.”

She smiled, bleakly. “You’re not wrong.” Her eyes flicked to the doorway, as if Alavara or Hallione might appear at any moment. 

Iliyria’s face settled into a mask of tired conviction. "If I gave you the chance, you'd try to save me," she said. "Any of you would. And I can't let that happen."

Lavan looked at her, something raw and pleading in his expression. "You don't get to make that decision for everyone else."

She shook her head. "No, I do. That's the job. That's what it means to lead. I owe this city more than I owe my own survival, and more than I owe my friends a chance to weep over my corpse."

He wanted to argue, but it was pointless. They both knew it. She was already gone, the way people are sometimes gone before they finish leaving.

"You'll tell them," she said. "After. When it's too late for anyone to interfere or to get themselves killed trying to change my mind." Her eyes met his, flat and unblinking and sharp in the way that left no room for negotiation. "You already know how this ends. I need you to witness it, not fix it."

Lavan pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, like he might push back the surge of anger and grief. He could see, with agonizing clarity, how it would unspool: the city tightening around itself in fear, the plan unfurling in ripples of desperate hope, the team marching toward the maw of Leviathan with Iliyria at its point. And then, when the strike landed and the world tilted, he would be the one to drag them out, to leave her behind, and to hold the memory of her last, impossible choice.

He let out a breath, ragged, then squared his shoulders. "I'll do it," he said again, this time with the cool resolve of a man making his own confession. "I'll get them out," he said. "No matter what it takes. Even if you have to—" He didn't finish the sentence, but Iliyria's eyes told him she understood.

Relief, raw and unfiltered, flashed across Iliyria’s face. “Thank you,” she said.

He nodded, once, feeling more tired than he had ever been.

“Go rest,” she told him, voice gentler now. “You’ll need your strength.”

He stood, swaying for a moment, then found his feet. At the door, he paused, looking back at her. “You know, you’re the only person who ever scared me.”

She grinned, fierce and proud. “Good.”

He left the room, the door closing with a sound that rang in his bones, and made his way back through the cold, living corridors of the Tower. The runes in the floor gleamed beneath his steps, as if the whole building had been waiting for this all along.

**

He let himself into the suite as quietly as possible, but the click of the latch sounded like a pistol shot in the hush. Lavan found Ophelia exactly where she’d been earlier, perched cross-legged on the edge of the battered table, arranging empty vials in a precarious spiral. Each little glass tube reflected the blue of the rune-lights overhead, so the whole pile shimmered like a heap of ice. Isemay, meanwhile, had buried herself in a fortress of blankets on the low couch, only the paleness of her hair and the glint of her eyes betraying the fact that she was awake and tracking every move.

Neither of them said a word as Lavan set his staff in its usual corner. He slipped off his boots, toeing them side by side on the rug as if this might convince the world that tomorrow would be an ordinary day.

Ophelia finished her spiral, then set the last vial dead center, crowning it like a queen. Isemay stirred, the blankets bunching and unbunching as she wormed her way upright. “How did it go? What did Iliyria want to talk about?”

Lavan hesitated a half-beat, long enough for both women to notice. “Nothing much,” he said, voice too casual, “just the usual: logistics, last-minute plans, a little bit of theory crafting. She wanted to make sure we’re coordinated, that we all know what’s at stake.” He picked at the sleeve of his robe, not meeting their eyes. “It’s all stuff we already talked through.”

Ophelia barked a laugh, sharp enough to cut the tension. “Gods, you still scrunch your eyebrows when you lie. Twenty years, and you haven’t gotten better at it.”

He looked up, caught, and managed a crooked smile. “I’ll work on it, next time I have two decades to spare.”

Isemay unfolded herself from the blanket mountain, her knees drawn up to her chest. The pale blue of her eyes held more than worry; there was a calculation there, an old habit from her years as a diplomat: weighing words for leverage, searching for the motive hidden inside the moment.

“Don’t lie to us,” Isemay said, her voice even, not accusing. “You know how that ends.”

Lavan flinched. “I’m not—” He cut himself off, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s not my story to tell. She wanted to keep it private.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, “I’m scared of what she’d do to me if she found out I spilled her secrets.”

Isemay considered for a long while, then shook her head. “I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to be truly scared of Iliyria Sylren.” She said it with the dreamy confidence of someone who’d grown up in rooms where the scariest thing was an awkward dinner party, not a woman who could bend the world’s bones to her will.

Lavan and Ophelia shared a look; a silent, rapid-fire exchange that managed to summarize  decades worth of intimidation, threat, and raw awe without a single syllable. Lavan almost smiled, but it was Ophelia who broke the moment: “That’s because you never did anything wrong in your whole life.” She didn’t say it unkindly. But the edge was there.

“Maybe I just hid it better than you,” Isemay said.

Ophelia rolled her eyes but stayed silent. The vials caught the light as she spun one with her fingertip, the glass tinkling against the table.

“Only a few hours until you are supposed to leave…” Isemay bit her lip. “Let’s not spend it quibbling.” She reached to the table, picked up a tiny corked bottle of deep blue glass, and slid it across the surface. It stopped just at Lavan’s fingertips. “I know you won’t sleep, but… this might help.” Her voice was rough, almost brittle. “It’s mostly lavender and a little poppy. Safe for wizards. Halli checked it herself.”

He rolled the bottle between his fingers, savoring the warmth from her hand still in the glass. “Thank you,” he said.

She nodded, and the conversation drifted into silence.

Lavan sat, letting the rune-lights soak into his bones. He felt the fatigue all the way down, an ache that started behind his eyes and rippled out to his toes. For a while, he just watched Ophelia build and unbuild her spiral, watched Isemay fuss with a loose thread on her sleeve. It would have been easy, almost, to pretend this was just another night.

Then he reached for the blanket beside Isemay and caught the edge of something stiff and papery. He drew it out: a scrap of parchment, a quick sketch in clumsy black ink. It showed the three of them standing on the Tower lawn, hands linked, each conjuring a different elemental from a shared glyph scrawled under their feet. Ophelia’s hair was rendered as a wild tangle of lines; Isemay’s was two careful braids, and his own was just a mass of scribbled loops. The elementals looked more like blobs than beings, but the faces, little dots for eyes, big grins, were unmistakably happy.

He held it up. “Who drew this?”

Ophelia pointed at Isemay with her chin. “She started it. I just made you look like you were about to sneeze brimstone. Which, for the record, you totally did that first week.”

Lavan smiled, remembering the embarrassment, then the pride, when he’d finally managed to show them both what he could really do.

“It was worth it,” he said. “For the look on your faces.”

He tucked the paper into the breast pocket of his robe, patting it into place as if it were armor.

Isemay reached for the ceramic jug near her feet, uncorked it, and poured three measures into the mismatched cups on the coffee table. The scent was spicy and familiar, a wine from the old streets around the Tower, the sort that burned a little but left you wanting more. She raised her cup in silent toast.

“To making it through tomorrow,” said Ophelia.

“Making it through,” Isemay echoed.

They clinked, and the sound was a soft, hopeful promise.

As they drank, the tension in the room unwound a fraction. They sat side by side on the couch, Isemay’s head on his shoulder, Ophelia’s laughter rising and falling in gentle waves. Lavan let himself enjoy it, just for a moment, the weight of their presence, the shared comfort, the memory of better days.

When Isemay finally set her cup down, she laced her fingers through his. “Just… promise you’ll come back,” she said.

He squeezed her hand, steady as he could manage. “I swear it.”

She blinked, and he thought he saw a tear, but she wiped it away before he could be sure.

Ophelia looked at the two of them, then leaned in, her expression uncharacteristically soft. “If you die, I’m bringing you back as a ghost and making you haunt the Tower. For eternity.”

He grinned, for real this time. “Deal.”

They lingered, drinking and talking, until the jug was empty and the rune-lights overhead faded to a gentler hue.

At some point, Lavan felt himself nodding off, the poppy in the draught working its magic. Isemay tucked him under the blanket, Ophelia draping an arm over the two of them as she claimed a cushion for herself.

He let himself drift, the warmth of the wine and their closeness crowding out the fear for a little while.

He did not sleep easy, but he did sleep, the sketch pressed close to his chest, the promise of tomorrow threading through his dreams like the faint, persistent hum of the Tower’s leylines.