She was younger than Alistair had expected.
She looked young, but not inexperienced. The calmness she displayed seemed like something she had developed over time. She wore a fitted brown dress that suggested nobility without being flashy. Her slightly curly brown hair fell over her back.
She slowly looked at the two of them standing in the corridor.
Before Alistair said anything, she already knew his name. Seeing this, Elara stopped in the doorway, and the representative behind her nearly walked into her back.
"Thorne," she said.
Hearing this, Alistair and Due were taken aback for a moment before catching themselves again.
The guards moved quickly, their armor resounding in the narrow corridor.
Alistair held up one hand, not at the guards, but at Elara. "Four minutes before the rotation. I'm not here for a fight."
The guards didn't stop.
Due stepped into the path of the nearer one and said something low that Alistair didn't catch. Whatever it was created an obligation.
Alistair saw the thread generate in his vision, a small compulsion that stopped the guard mid-step with a confused expression.
The second guard reached for his weapon.
"Elara." Alistair kept his eyes on her, ignoring every other presence in the corridor. "I killed Arphus. I know that. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't matter, or tell you it shouldn't."
She looked at him quietly, assessing the exit, the guards, the representative hovering uselessly behind her, and the man standing in front of her who had just said the one thing most people would have buried.
"What do you want?" she asked coldly.
"I'm constructing a faction named the Sun Harvest," said Alistair, keeping his voice level.
"Not because of what you can do. Because of what I'm trying to build, and what you'd be part of if you chose to be. There will be no contract, no political arrangement. No one in that room will treat your Characteristic as the reason you're worth having there. I swear it on the name of Thorne."
Something moved briefly in her expression.
"That's what everyone says," she said.
Alistair nodded, not showing much of a reaction.
"Every representative in that room said something close to it."
"I know that too."
She tilted her head slightly. Not hostile, just disappointed enough times that the question had become genuinely interesting to her rather than hopeful.
"So... How are you different from the representative who just left?"
The corridor was quiet except for Due managing things behind him.
Alistair opened his mouth.
Nothing came out. Not the right answer, anyway.
Every version of it he reached for felt exactly like what she had just described – prepared, the kind of thing someone said when they had thought carefully about what she wanted to hear.
He knew it the moment he reached for it. She would know it the moment it left his mouth.
The silence went on longer than he had hoped.
She saw it. He watched her expression shift slightly, something behind it adjusting around what it hadn't expected.
A man who had walked into a guarded corridor, opened by acknowledging Arphus directly, and apparently had no prepared answer to the most obvious question she could ask.
However, before either of them could continue, the sound of countless footsteps reached them from further down the building. The rotation was arriving early.
Due's voice from behind, sharp and quiet. "We need to move."
Elara glanced toward the sound. Then, the representative, who was already retreating back into the meeting room. Then at Alistair, who still hadn't answered.
After a moment, she decided.
Her expression was clear that it wasn't about Sun Harvest. But she looked at Alistair once more, at the man who hadn't had an answer and hadn't pretended otherwise, and something in that settled for her.
Before he could say anything, her body was already moving. She headed toward the side passage that Due had already found. She knew the building's layout and arrived at the same conclusion as him about which way was safe.
Alistair followed. Due fell in behind them both.
Side passage, service corridor, the low door they had entered through, and then outside, cold air, the administrative district's eastern edge.
Elara put distance between herself and both of them immediately.
After travelling some distance, she turned around.
She looked at Alistair. Then, at Due, who had the expression of someone managing the aftermath of a small fire, his hand moved briefly to his collar before dropping again.
"I asked you a question," she said. "You didn't answer it."
"I know," replied Alistair.
"I'm not interested in anything until you do."
Alistair looked at her. The composure she was holding over whatever the last several minutes had actually cost her.
"I don't have one yet," he said. "That's the honest answer."
Something moved in her expression again, the same as before, quickly gone before it settled into anything readable. But it was there.
A white cloak briefly caught the morning light on the rooftop across from them before disappearing over the edge.
Due saw it and said nothing.
The guard response was audible from inside the building now, raised voices, rapid footsteps, the administrative district registering that something had happened in its east corridor.
"We need to move," Due said.
Elara looked at the rooftop where the cloak had been. Then at Alistair one more time.
She walked. Not away from them, but in the direction that led out of the district, which is the same direction they needed to go. There was no real decision in it.
***
They made it four blocks before Due stopped walking.
Alistair turned. Due's hands were still, his eyes fixed on something at the street's far end, not the guards, not Elara, not the rooftop. A doorway on the left side of the street, shadowed, seemingly empty.
"The presence," Alistair said quietly.
"It moved ahead of us." Due's voice was low. "It's been ahead of us this entire time. Not behind."
Elara looked between them. "What presence?"
Neither of them answered immediately.
She looked at the doorway. Then back at Alistair with an expression that said this situation is more complicated than it had appeared thirty seconds ago.
"How long?" she asked.
"Since before we entered Therasia," said Alistair.
Her expression didn't change. But something behind it did.
"Then whoever it is," she said carefully, "they were already in that building before you arrived."
The street was quiet around them. The doorway stayed empty.
Alistair kept his scan on it. The presence held its position, patient and controlled, watching them from a distance without making a sound.
'It's been watching us this entire time. What is it waiting for?'