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“What? No!” Red’s hands slapped his cuirass and roughly shoved him back towards the stairs. “You really think now’s the time to chase after Sparks? These people have come from all over to hear you speak, you can’t keep them waiting while you hunt him down! This is bigger than both y’all!”

That’s the problem, Fenrir thought. But Red was right, wasn’t she? Orpheus had run off for a reason, not because anything was wrong. “Right. I know. You’re right.”

“Listen, just, get up there, make the crowd go wild, then we’ll worry about tracking down your grumpy shadow, okay?”

Fenrir sighed. “Yeah, okay.”

“I can join you up on stage instead if you think it’ll help?”

You want to go up there instead? He thought hopefully. But the words wouldn’t come, and Red simply stared at him, hands on his chest like he might actually chase after Orpheus instead of listening to her. You should, a voice inside thought, go find him.

Fenrir nudged the thought aside and said, “No, I’m alright.”

Red visibly relaxed. “You’re more than alright, Rawkner, trust me. Speech sound okay?”

“Yeah, your speech is...” He plucked the olive branch from the tangle of his thoughts, offering it to Red in lieu of the smile he couldn’t bring himself to fake. “Fine. Your speech is fine, Red.” He lifted an eyebrow after he said it, and Red caught on quickly.

“All hells, that’s what this is about? Rawkner, your hair looks good.”

“Now, was that so hard?”

Red grit her teeth. “Seriously. My speech?”

Fenrir opened his mouth to lie, and nothing came out.

Red threw up her hands. “I knew it! You hate it!”

Hate wasn’t a strong enough word. “Not sure everyone is interested in the logistics of an instantaneous communications system that sounds like more of the magic that, up until very recently, was poisoning the world.”

Red looked like she might actually bite him.

“I’m not denying it’s incredibly fascinating!”

“It’s the future!”

“Yeah but they” —he gestured at the gap between the stage and the banner, the cheering crowd and smiling faces who weren’t thinking of a future beyond the fact that, for the first in any of their lives, they were no longer fighting— “they’re just happy to be alive. Safe, you know. Able to finally…live. They need the space to envision their own future for the first time, not have me up there defining what it’ll look like.”

Red didn’t say anything. She looked at Fenrir, hard edges gentling in the silence. When Red did finally speak, her voice was too soft to call anything but fond.

“Guess that’s why you’re going up there and not me.” Fenrir wasn’t sure he agreed with that, but he didn’t interrupt Red when she continued. “Whatever you say, it will be what they need to hear. I trust you, Fenrir. You’ve got this.”

“We’ve got this.” Finally, his grin broke free. “Are you ready to change the world?”

“Let’s give them what they want, first.”

Red’s hug came uncontested, the strength in her arms steady and familiar. Fenrir closed his eyes and grounded himself in the reality of what was happening and the realization of a dream that hadn’t ever truly felt within reach before.

Until now.

The herald snapped in the wind when he stepped up beside it, whoops rising from crowd closest to the stage’s fence. Spring had arrived and summer’s heat edged closer with each passing day, but today the wind was cool. The air clean. The grass green and the people waiting for him…they were excited. Energized. Ready for whatever came next.

Am I? Fenrir wondered, wishing desperately Orpheus was there to answer: Yes.

Instead, he stepped out from behind the herald and into the sun, alone.

When the light hit his face, it was second to the roar that rose from the crowd. He squinted into the mass of bodies, recognition found in the smiles they wore, the excitement they harbored, the uniforms that marked many as the soldiers he had once commanded, the soot-stained jackets he knew well from the Stacks he called home.

And scattered amongst them all were the Rim-pale eyes of the men and women who shared more than a history of circumstance. People who well knew the brutality of the world they had left behind and the gravity of what was now offered to them.