The Gate was open. The room stopped arguing with me.
My Lucent Harmony, no longer a tight shield held under my ribs, settled into the walls and the floor. The Grey flattened two plain, ordinary squares under my boots, not as a trick, but as a statement of fact. The Crown of Twilight hung above my brow like a streetlight that had decided to mind its own business. My breath was a steady, quiet engine, four in, six out. There was no wobble. There was no tax.
Valeria hummed, a long, low note like a cello finding its pitch. "Finally," she whispered, and for once there was no sugar on it. "I was worried you'd make me retire before you did anything fun."
"Hold that thought," I said.
The Archduke watched me from across the roof, his expression unreadable, but his stance that of a craftsman observing a tool that had just, impossibly, improved itself in his hands. He was a professional to the marrow. He stepped in with the kind of clean, perfect cut that ends most days.
