I will not be cycle forty-one. I will not break the line. I will not leave her holding the flank alone.
But gods, I want to.
Elle stirs. Her hand flexes against my chest, and her eyes open, finding mine in the dim light with the instant alertness of someone who's been waking up in unfamiliar places for too long.
"You haven't slept," she says.
"No."
She pushes herself up on one elbow and looks at me. Her hair is tangled, her eyes still puffy from the tears she cried after we left the garden. She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,and she gave me a daughter, and the daughter grew up to be the strongest person in this city.
"Talk to me," she says.
"I keep thinking about the dagger." The words come out before I can organize them. "She was four. I let a four-year-old hold a weapon."
Elle's mouth curves. "You said she had good grip strength."
"That's not the point. The point is I was already preparing her for war before she could read. What kind of father does that?"
"The kind who lived in a city that gets attacked by a waking cathedral every few months." Elle sits up fully, tucking her legs under her. "Kaelren. You didn't fail her. You raised her in impossible conditions, and she turned out to be the person who held this city together. That didn't happen by accident."
"It happened because she didn't have a choice."
"It happened because you and I gave her the tools to survive. And yeah, one of those tools was apparently a dagger, and I'm sure I yelled at you about it, but she's alive. She's strong. She's a wonderful leader." Elle puts her hand on my jaw and turns my face toward hers. "She's ours, Kaelren. And she's incredible. Stop thinking about how you failed and start thinking about how we help her now."
She's right. She is annoyingly, consistently right, and the fact that I love her for it does not make it less irritating.
"We have four days," I say.
"Three, probably, if Irielle's readings keep accelerating."
"Then we need a plan that isn't a plan."
"That doesn't make sense."
"It does." I sit up beside her, and the room brightens slightly, the Verdance reading my shift from rest to intent. "Every strategy that has been tried against the Cathedral has failed because the core anticipates and counters our attacks. All because the core thinks like me."
"So we need something you would never do."
"Something no version of me would do. Something that breaks the pattern at a fundamental level."
Elle is quiet for a moment. She reaches for the locket, which hangs around my neck, and turns it in her fingers.
"Sounds like we should reconvene with the council," she says.
The council is already assembled when we arrive at the Heartwood chamber. Thalia is at the head of the table. Rhyven, Torvel, and Irielle are in their usual positions. The atmosphere is different today. Tighter. The council members look at us when we enter, and I can read the change in their posture. They know we know.
Torvel speaks first. His thin hands are folded on top of his ever-present book stack, and his pale blue eyes meet mine with an expression that is equal parts apology and resolve.
"I owe you both an explanation," he says. "Or rather, a context."
"You knew," I say. I keep my voice level. "All of you knew who we were to Thalia."
"We did." Torvel adjusts his spectacles. "The council has maintained this protocol for thirty-one cycles. Since cycletwenty-two, when we first established that early disclosure of Thalia's parentage correlated with worse outcomes."
"Correlated," Elle repeats.
"Documented." He pulls a ledger from his stack and opens it to a marked page. "In cycles where the parentage was revealed within the first forty-eight hours of the bonded pair's arrival, the defense plan suffered a failure rate of eighty-seven percent. In cycles where the disclosure was delayed until the bonded pair had established trust with the council and familiarity with the city, the failure rate dropped to sixty-one percent."
