But my hand stays on her arm. I can't quite let go yet.
"You look good," I say, and I mean it.
"You look terrible," she says, with the particular warmth that only Elle can put into an insult.
"I've been busy."
Behind me, the chamber is filling. Vashael materializes from the white light, her translucent skin shimmering with residual portal energy. Nimor is beside her, solidifying from shadow. Eltrien stumbles through last, blinking, his marks still flaring from the transit.
"Where are we?" Vashael asks.
"The Verdance," says a voice I would know in any realm, in any lifetime, in the dark at the bottom of the world.
Kaelren steps forward. He looks different, too. Something steadier has replaced the drawn, desperate intensity that was consuming him when he left. He stands with his hand on the shoulder of the young woman who is still kneeling at the root knot.
"You found Elle," I say.
"I found her."
"About time."
Eltrien is already examining the root nexus, his hands hovering over the glowing knot, his marks pulsing as he reads the residual energy. "This is extraordinary. The power required to pull us across the Rootline from Wynmire to wherever this is..." He trails off, staring at the young woman on the ground. "Who did this?"
"I did," the young woman says. She lifts her head, and I see her face clearly for the first time. Dark hair, green eyes, a jaw I recognize because I've served beside it for years. She looks exhausted. She also looks like she could do it again if she had to.
"This is Thalia," Kaelren says. "She governs the Verdance."
There's something in the way he says her name. Something careful. Something loaded.
"Who is she really?" I ask, because I know Kaelren, and I know when he's holding something back.
He glances at Elle. She gives him a small nod.
"She's our daughter," he says.
The chamber goes silent. Vashael's hand finds Nimor's. Eltrien's hands stop moving over the root nexus. I look at Thalia, and see so much of the two individuals who are her parents. My chest tightens.
"Your daughter," I repeat.
"From Iteration Nine. She was raised here. She's been leading this city through fifty-three cycles of siege by a creature called the Cathedral." Kaelren's hand tightens on Thalia's shoulder. "We'll explain the details later. Right now, we need you."
Vashael crosses the chamber and puts both hands on Thalia's face, studying her with the careful intensity of someone cataloging a new species. "You have his bone structure," she says. "And Elle's freckles. Faint, but they're there." She releases Thalia's face and steps back, and her expression is gentle in a way that most people never get to see from Vashael. "Welcometo the family. It's chaotic and loud, and Peeble is the worst. You'll fit right in."
"HEY! I heard that. Vashael, don't make me replace your face moisturizer again with my special ingredients," Peeble shrieks from somewhere near Elle.
Thalia blinks. For half a second, the composure cracks and something young and startled shows through. Then the mask is back, and she nods.
Nimor materializes fully from the shadows and offers Thalia his hand. She takes it. He grips once, firm and brief, the way he greets anyone he's decided to trust. "Your tunnels are well built," he says. "I noticed on the way in."
I look at the young woman who is apparently the child of the two people I have followed into every kind of danger that exists, and I do what I always do when the world rearranges itself around me.
I adapt.
"What's the situation?" I ask.
The briefing takes fifteen minutes. Thalia recovers enough to stand, and between her and Kaelren and Elle, they lay out the Verdance, the Cathedral, the Bloomfall Moon, the plan, and the gap in the plan. They show us a map of the city's ring structure. They explain Thalia's anchoring ability and the risk it carries. They explain that the core of the Cathedral thinks like Kaelren, which means conventional tactics won't work.
I listen. I absorb. I file.
