Not with them. With myself. Standing in the Heartwood chamber after the council disperses, or walking the outer ring at dawn when the repair crews haven't started yet, or lying in my bed in the dark, running the words through my head until they wear grooves in my thinking.
There is no good way to tell someone they are your parents.
Especially when they don't remember being your parents, because the timeline where they raised you no longer exists, and you are physically older than they expect their child to be, andthe last time you told a version of Kaelren the truth too early, he broke away from the defense plan, went after the Cathedral alone, and got thirty-seven people killed.
So, I wait. I choose my moment the way I choose everything: with discipline, with care, with the full understanding that timing is the difference between a truth that strengthens and a truth that destroys.
Four days until Bloomfall.
I walk the third ring after the evening meal, the way I do most nights. The corridors are quieter at this hour. The repair crews have finished for the day, and the residential towers are lit with warm amber light through their vine-curtained windows. I can hear people inside. Conversations. Laughter, sometimes. A child crying. The clatter of plates being cleared. Normal sounds. The sounds of twelve thousand people living their lives in a city that might not exist in four days.
I pass the medical quarter, where Irielle is sitting on a bench outside the entrance, her hands pressed flat against the root-path, her marks pulsing as she reads the Verdance's condition. She looks up when I pass and gives me a small nod. Irielle doesn't waste words. If something had changed in the boundary readings, she would have told me.
I reach the armory, where Rhyven's people are running inventory for the third time this week. Through the open doorway, I can see rows of weapons glowing faintly on their racks, and technicians checking the shield generators with the efficient silence of people who know their work matters.
I continue on and pass a group of children playing in a corridor junction. They're using small vines as jump ropes; the living material adjusting its tension as they play, and they're laughing in that full, unselfconscious way that children laugh when they don't know what's coming. One of them spots me and waves. I wave back.
This is what I'm protecting. Not the Heartwood. Not the walls. Not the ward lines or the fallback tunnels, nor the shield generators. These children, playing with jump ropes in a corridor, who are our future.
I keep walking. I think about what I have to do tonight, and my stomach tightens. I have told different versions of this truth to different versions of these people more times than I want to count. Some conversations went well. Some ended with Kaelren staring at me in silence for so long I thought he'd gone catatonic. One ended with Elle leaving the room and not coming back for two days.
I don't know how this version will go. That's the point. That's always the point. Every cycle is different, and the only thing I can control is the timing.
I find them after dinner in the small garden alcove off the residential corridor. Elle is sitting on a bench that the Verdance grew for her sometime in the last day, her legs tucked under her, a plate of half-eaten food balanced on the armrest. Kaelren stands behind her with one hand resting on her shoulder, talking to Peeble about something I can't hear. He's more relaxed than I've seen him since they arrived. His posture is still alert, still watchful, but the rigid tension in his jaw has eased.
I've watched them find each other before. In every cycle, in every configuration. Sometimes they arrive angry, sometimes terrified, sometimes so broken by the journey that they can barely stand. But they always find the same gravity. They always orbit back to each other, and the pull between them is so steady, so constant, that watching it feels like watching something fundamental to the physics of the universe.
They are my parents. They just don't know it yet.
"Thalia!" Elle spots me first. She smiles, open and warm, and the specific shape of that smile hits me in the chest the way it always does. I know that smile. I grew up with that smile. Ilearned to read the world by watching what that smile meant when it was aimed at me.
She has no idea. She is smiling at me the way she'd smile at an ally, a friend, a young woman she respects. Not a daughter.
"Can we talk?" I say.
"Of course." Elle shifts on the bench to make room. Kaelren's hand doesn't leave her shoulder, but his eyes come to me with that focused assessment I know too well. He's reading me. He's noticed something in my tone or my posture that doesn't match my usual register, and he's already running calculations.
I've inherited that from him. The constant analysis. Along with his jaw, his composure under pressure, and his inability to ask for help until the situation is already on fire.
"Privately," I add.
Peeble, who has been perched on a flowering vine near Elle's head, takes the hint with unusual grace. "I shall give you the gift of my absence," they announce. "Use it wisely. My presence is a rare commodity, and I don't distribute it lightly." They hop from the vine to the garden path and trundle away, their shell catching the last of the evening light.
I sit across from them. The garden alcove is small and enclosed, walled by living wood on three sides, the ceiling open to the darkening sky. The Verdance has lined the space with softly glowing moss and climbing jasmine, and the air smells sweet and green. It's a gentle space. I chose it for that reason.
"What is it?" Kaelren asks. Direct. No preamble. That's him.
"How are you settling in?" I ask. Not the question I came to ask, but the one that has to come first. I need to know where they are before I change where they stand.
"The city is remarkable," Elle says. "The way it responds to people. I asked the room for a warmer blanket last night, and the bed grew one. An actual blanket woven from moss. While I was lying on it."
"The Verdance has a flair for hospitality."
"It grew Kaelren a weapons rack this morning. Unprompted. Just sprouted from the wall."
I almost smile. The city reads intent. If Kaelren was awake and restless, the Verdance would have provided accordingly.
"And you?" I look at Kaelren. "What's your assessment of the defenses?"
