The room was completely still.
Drevon was looking at Lyra. Lyra was looking at Drevon. And everything that was supposed to happen next was sitting right there in the space between them, waiting for somebody to say the next thing.
Aelara did not breathe.
Lyra spoke first.She told him what the circle had given her. Not in pieces, not carefully managed. All of it, plainly, the way she said everything, like the truth was just the truth and there was no point dressing it up.
The wholeness was not something you took. It was not a door you walked through by yourself because you had decided it was time. The original people who built this room did not seal it because they were afraid of the power itself. They sealed it because of exactly what Drevon represented. Someone who wanted to reach it alone. Someone who had put marks on their own hands and tried to make the network recognize them as belonging.
Someone who was not chosen, but was very determined to be.
