Riven stepped through the seam with her attention fixed on Derpy.
He stood beside his chair, waiting for her. The pale light from the windows reached his face clearly enough for her to recognize it, but the expression he wore kept her from crossing the remaining distance.
Mk1 emerged behind her. Mk2 and Mk4 followed, with Mk3 coming through last and looking immediately toward the people she had left in the sitting room.
“He is still here,” Mk3 said.
“We can see that,” Amy replied. “What we need to know is whether Derpy can hear us.”
Riven studied the bracelets at his wrists. The pull had brought her this far. Now that she stood close enough to touch its source, she could not separate the familiar connection from the strain running through it.
“We came for him,” she said.
Sinister held her gaze. “I thought you might.”
Vaeloria stepped between the table and the newcomers, leaving them room to see him without allowing an unobstructed approach.
“Then stay long enough to understand the situation. The War Office has already attempted to remove him. I will not have another struggle over his body before we know what it will do to him.”
Riven looked at the queen, then at Lenora. Neither appeared willing to move aside.
She lowered her hand. The dolls remained close behind her as the seam drew shut.
Sinister sat down again.
By the time Ace joined them, the chairs had been moved closer to the table and Lyn had checked the corridor twice.
The rune-lamps still gave no light. Vaeloria had stopped asking for their restoration, but the way she looked at Sinister made it clear that she had not accepted their loss. Every conversation in the room now took place around a failure of protection he could apparently end and had chosen to maintain.
Ace listened to a brief account from Lyn before taking a position against the far wall. Her hand settled near her weapon. She watched Derpy’s face with the composure of someone who had lived long enough to distrust a calm room as readily as a noisy one.
Lewd pulled her chair nearer to his.
He noticed.
“You do not have to sit beside me.”
“I know.” She placed Blight Vein on her lap. “I am staying close enough for him to hear me if that becomes possible.”
Sinister settled back without answering.
Lenora remained at the head of the table. Riven and the dolls stood where they could watch his hands.
Vaeloria looked around the assembled group.
“We need an account of the failed transfer that can be stated publicly. If we leave the clerk’s report unanswered, the War Council will decide what the city hears.”
“They will say you are protecting a weapon you cannot control,” Lyn said. “Or that you have already lost control of it.”
Amy rested her forearms on the table. “And either version gives the War Office a reason to return with stronger restraints.”
“Then we put the sequence on record,” Lenora said. “He offered to accompany them awake. They reached for the cuffs after he refused sedation. The queen denied the transfer.”
“Include the part where the wards stopped working,” Sinister said. “It would be a shame to leave out their most memorable experience.”
Lewd turned toward him. “We are trying to keep the next group from treating everyone in this room as an enemy.”
“I am helping you produce an accurate account.”
Ace spoke from the wall. “You are interrupting people who are doing the work.”
Sinister glanced at her. The rebuke appeared to interest him more than it offended him.
Vaeloria continued before he could answer.
“My refusal will be explicit. I will not allow the Council to describe this as a prisoner being concealed without the crown’s knowledge. They can challenge my decision openly if they choose.”
“They may call it treason,” Amy said.
“Then they will have to explain the accusation.”
Lenora looked toward Riven. “And we need everyone here to understand the same thing. No one makes a move on the War Office while we are deciding how to answer them.”
Riven did not promise. Her gaze remained on Derpy.
Lewd noticed the silence, but Sinister spoke before she could address it.
“You are putting considerable effort into making sure they approve of the way you refuse them.”
“We are trying to preserve choices,” Lenora said. “Derpy would want—”
“Derpy is listening.”
Her next words stopped.
Lewd sat straighter. “You said he was resting.”
“He was. Now he is watching.”
Ace pushed away from the wall. “From where?”
Sinister touched one bracelet with his thumb.
“Inside. He can see the room, but his position is rather useless if he intends to intervene.”
“Do not call him useless,” Vaeloria said.
“I was describing the position.”
Lenora gripped the back of the nearest chair. He had allowed them to spend the morning wondering whether Derpy could hear, and now he offered the answer as another opportunity to provoke them.
“Then he can hear this,” she said. “We are trying to get him through the day alive. What are you trying to accomplish?”
Sinister looked from her to the queen.
“I want the people behind that order close enough to understand what they helped make. They do not get to shape him through fear, then complain when something answers that they cannot manage.”
“You are still inviting escalation,” Amy said.
“They began this with a destination already chosen.”
Vaeloria held his gaze. “And I intend to prevent them from choosing the ending. You will hear the plan before you interfere with it.”
He inclined his head with an exaggerated courtesy that made Lewd’s fingers tighten against her book.
Somewhere behind his eyes, Derpy heard every word.
The floor had become a shoreline by the time Derpy could stand without feeling the chains pull him upright.
Ash shifted beneath his feet. Beyond it, a dark sea moved only when he looked directly at the water. Pale threads crossed the sky, meeting at angles his eyes resisted following for long.
The sitting room remained visible through a veil suspended above the shore. He could see Lewd sitting beside his body, Lenora gripping a chair, and Riven waiting with the others. Their voices reached him unevenly, sometimes clear and sometimes muffled enough that he had to watch their mouths.
He raised his hand.
On the other side of the veil, his body did not move.
Derpy lowered it again. The warmth at his wrists remained even though he could no longer see the links that had held him.
“You will not reach it by trying the same thing harder,” Blight said.
He turned.
She stood several paces up the shore in the shape of a dragon girl, dark hair stirring against her shoulders. Her eyes caught the dim light like embers beneath ash. Celica stood beside her, brighter against the colorless landscape, watching him with an attention that made him feel examined rather than welcomed.
Neither carried a book. Here, the powers within the calamities had faces he could argue with.
“I can see them,” he said. “They are asking for me, and I cannot even tell them I am here.”
“That is what keeping you out of reach looks like,” Blight replied.
Derpy faced Celica. “Are you going to tell me this is for my protection?”
“You already know it is.”
He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “From my own body?”
“From what you would offer the moment someone told you surrendering it might keep the others safe.” Celica stepped closer. “You would put yourself back in restraints before you allowed them to suffer for standing beside you.”
“You say that as though caring what happens to them is the problem.”
“It becomes a problem when there is never any limit to what they can take from you,” Blight said. “I would burn that city before I watched them cage you again.”
Derpy looked at her, then toward the veil. Vaeloria was still speaking. He could not hear her words through the rush of water behind him.
“There are people in it who have done nothing to me.”
“I did not claim to be fair.”
Celica let the answer stand.
Derpy rubbed his wrists. He needed something he could understand well enough to use, and arguing about the value of the city would not give him that.
“Why did the Sister-Series respond now?” he asked. “Mk3 was in the room before any of this changed. What woke the connection?”
Celica looked toward Riven’s shape beyond the veil.
“She returned to this world.”
Derpy followed her gaze. “Riven.”
“The prototype,” Blight said.
Celica nodded. “Her return brought back more than another person. She is an anchor for the series. An authority the connection recognizes. Something that could not complete itself without her now can.”
“So she is the key.”
“And you survived long enough for her return to matter.”
Celica reached up and touched his cheek. The gesture surprised him enough that he did not pull away.
“I am proud of how far you have come,” she said.
His throat tightened. He wished she had said it somewhere he could leave.
“Then help me talk to them.”
Her hand lowered.
“First, understand where you are. This is my space. You remain connected to your body, but you are inside my rules. That is why looking through the connection does not give you control of it.”
Blight came nearer. “And the connection to me has not disappeared simply because the book changed hands.”
Derpy looked again at Lewd. Blight Vein rested across her knees.
“What are you doing?”
“Preparing her,” Celica said. “Blight and I will train Lewd. You will help us.”
He turned sharply. “She has not agreed to be pulled into this.”
“She asked for strength,” Blight replied. “She asked for a way to keep you.”
“That is not permission for everything you might want to do to her.”
Celica’s expression hardened. “We intend to make her capable of standing beside you when asking nicely no longer works.”
“Then ask her what she is willing to learn.”
“You are not in a position to refuse on her behalf.”
Derpy stepped toward her. “And you are?”
The sea stilled behind him.
“You do not get to refuse from inside my cage,” Celica said.
He stopped.
For several seconds, neither spoke. She had finally used a word that matched the fact that his feet could carry him along this shore but nowhere that mattered.
Then a thread drew taut through the veil.
It passed toward Lewd, brightening where her hands touched the book. Celica lifted her eyes. Blight watched with the satisfaction of someone seeing an arrangement begin to work.
Derpy turned in time to see Lewd’s head fall back.
Lenora caught her before the chair tipped.
“Lewd, can you hear me?”
Her eyes had rolled upward, leaving only white visible. Her body held rigid beneath Lenora’s hands. Blight Vein slipped against the chair arm, and Amy caught it before it reached the floor.
Vaeloria faced Sinister. “What did you do?”
He looked at Lewd, then at the book.
“She has been called inside.”
Ace drew her weapon. Lenora kept one hand behind Lewd’s shoulder while bringing up her own, its point directed at the face of the body seated beside them.
Riven moved before either could demand an explanation.
The dolls raised their weapons with her. Mk1 spoke, and small magic circles formed before her mouth, each shaped by the syllables passing through it.
“We want the real Derpy. Let us speak to him.”
Mk2 advanced beside her. “What have you done with him?”
Mk3 held her ground near the queen. “I remember when we spared Derpy. I know who we chose to leave alive, and you are not the one who spoke to us then.”
Vaeloria lifted a hand. “Lower your weapons. We do not know what striking him will do to Derpy.”
Riven’s doll-hand changed.
Wood, seams, and joints narrowed into a blade. She brought its edge past Sinister’s face quickly enough that Lenora felt the movement beside her before she saw the thin cut open along his cheek.
“Give him back,” Riven said. “Now.”
Sinister did not withdraw. He raised two fingers toward the blade as a bead of blood gathered against his skin.
Frost spread from the point of contact.
It raced along the transformed hand, whitening the edge and filling its seams. Riven tried to pull away. The blade shattered before she could free it, scattering frozen fragments across the floor.
She stared at what remained of her hand.
Then she looked at his face.
“You look like my friend,” she said. “But this is wrong.”
She backed away until her shoulders met the wall. Her legs folded beneath her, and she sat with the damaged hand held close.
“Monster,” she whispered.
The dolls faltered. None lowered a weapon completely, but their attention divided between her and Sinister as he rose.
“Stay away from her,” Lenora said.
He crouched beside Riven before she could leave Lewd to stop him. Riven flinched when he lifted his hand, then remained still as he rested it on her head.
She had come to pull her friend free. Now she sat beside the person occupying him, unable to decide whether the familiar contact offered safety or proved how thoroughly something else had taken his place.
Sinister leaned close.
“Derpy has a task for you and your sisters.”
Riven’s eyes lost their focus.
Ash gave beneath her feet.
Riven looked up and saw Derpy standing a short distance away. He turned toward her with an expression she recognized before he said anything.
She hurried to him.
“There you are. Are you hurt?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I think I am going to be.”
Her gaze moved over him, searching for restraints she could cut.
“Tell me where it is holding you.”
“Riven, I need you to do something first.”
A shape formed beside them. Lewd stumbled as the shore settled beneath her, then saw him and crossed the distance without looking at anything else.
She struck his chest hard enough to push him back a step, wrapping both arms around him. Derpy caught her and held on. For a moment, the pressure of her hands against his back was more real than the shore or the room beyond it.
Then she pulled away.
“Why did you let him out?” Her voice shook. “We made a fail-safe for this. We stood around that book together.”
The memory rose between them: gathered hands, the book beneath them, a promise set into more than paper. Derpy watched it form and fade.
“It was meant to stop either of us from going too far,” he said. “It was not meant to stop him from existing.”
“He has taken your body.”
“Under a bargain I made.”
Lewd stared at him. “You sound as though you are defending it.”
Derpy looked past her toward Celica and Blight. They stood farther along the shore, close enough to hear and making no attempt to interrupt.
“He has not crossed what the fail-safe was meant to prevent,” he said. “Not yet.”
“He froze Riven’s hand.”
Riven drew it closer to herself.
Derpy’s jaw tightened. “The bargain does not let him physically hurt anyone. That is one of the limits I put on him.”
Lewd looked from Riven’s hand to his face.
“Then look at what he has already found a way to do around your limits.”
He did not answer.
“You thought of a condition,” she continued. “You did not make this safe.”
Derpy lowered his eyes, then turned toward Riven.
The change was small. His shoulders settled. His voice lost the uncertainty she had heard when he first saw her.
“I need the War Council and the War Office taken out.”
Riven stopped searching his face for pain.
Lewd went still.
Derpy stepped nearer to Riven and touched her hair, gently enough that she leaned toward the contact before the rest of his instruction reached her.
“By any means necessary. They will keep doing this while the factions behind them remain in place. Do not harm Vaeloria. The queen is not part of the order.”
“Derpy,” Lewd said.
He continued, his attention fixed on Riven.
“Anyone tied to the War Office or the War Council factions—remove them.”
Lewd lunged between them.
“No. You do not get to say that and send her away before we—”
Sinister stepped through a fold in the air.
He shoved her back. Lewd stumbled across the ash, reached for Derpy, and vanished before her hand could close around his sleeve.
Derpy turned on him.
“You did not need to do that.”
“You need to stop letting people into the middle of an instruction.”
“And you need to stop behaving as though this is your kingdom.”
Sinister glanced toward Celica. She remained where she was, her expression unreadable. Blight watched the place Lewd had occupied.
Riven looked between the two faces.
Neither denied what had just been ordered.
Derpy exhaled slowly. Beyond the veil, he could see Lenora holding Lewd upright while Ace kept her weapon raised.
“You made yourself the threat they could see,” he said. “They think I am trapped in here while you decide everything.”
“You are trapped in here.”
“But not silent.” Derpy looked back at him. “They will see what happens next and think it belongs to you. Or that I am turning into you.”
Sinister smiled.
“Now you see the arrangement.”
Riven remained beside Derpy, waiting. She had found the friend she came to rescue. The instruction had come from his mouth, in his voice, with no hand forcing it from him.
He looked at her once more.
She remembered the order.
Lewd woke with Lenora’s arm behind her shoulders.
She dragged in a breath and caught Lenora’s wrist. The sitting room swam into focus: Amy with the book, Ace watching Sinister, the dolls standing among fragments of ice.
“Derpy is alive,” she said quickly. “I saw him. I spoke to him.”
Lenora bent closer. “Can we get him out?”
Lewd’s grip tightened.
“Something else is wrong. He is thinking through all of this. Giving instructions. It is not only the one out here making decisions.”
Vaeloria moved toward them. “What instructions?”
Lewd looked toward Riven.
Her eyes had opened.
“Stop her,” Lewd said.
Riven rose from the floor and crossed the room before anyone could move into her path. The dolls went with her. Lyn reached the door as the last of them passed through it, their footsteps already accelerating along the corridor.
Vaeloria called for the guards.
Lenora looked toward Sinister. He had straightened beside the wall and was brushing melting frost from his fingers.
“Derpy, please come back to us,” she said.
She did not know which of them heard her.
Riven slowed at the first junction long enough to gather the dolls around her.
She relayed the order Derpy had given, including the exemption for Vaeloria. Mk3 watched her closely. Mk2 looked down the corridor as though already measuring the route to the War Office.
Riven placed her hands against Mk1’s shoulders.
“Go back to the queen. Stay with her, but do not tell anyone in the chamber what I have told you.”
Mk1 nodded, then glanced toward the others.
“I will stay there.”
She turned back along the corridor.
Riven faced Mk2 and Mk3. “Go to the War Office. Stay outside the doors.”
“Until you call us?” Mk2 asked.
“Hold your position.”
They left together.
Mk4 remained beside her as Riven took the route toward the War Council wing.
“Sister, how do you know it was him?” she asked. “We came because something had changed. What if this is another part of it?”
Riven kept moving, but she looked at Mk4 before answering.
“I spoke to my friend. The real one.”
“That does not tell us why he wants this.”
Riven faced forward again.
She had no fuller answer to give.
They reached the War Council doors and stopped. Mk4 watched as Riven lowered herself to sit beside the entrance. After a moment, she sat too.
At the War Office, Mk2 and Mk3 took the same position.
No weapon struck a guard. No demand was announced. The dolls sat outside the entrances while officials paused inside and messengers hurried away to report that they had arrived.
Their stillness gave no one a reason to begin a fight. It also gave no one confidence that leaving them there was safe.
When the report reached Vaeloria, Mk1 was already back in the sitting room.
“Two outside the War Office,” the guard said. “Riven and another outside the War Council. They are not answering questions, Your Majesty. They are sitting by the doors.”
Vaeloria looked at Mk1. The doll remained quiet.
Then she looked toward Derpy’s body.
Lewd’s account had given her enough to fear the order. The report gave her no way to tell when it would be carried out.
“I hope you know what you are doing, Derpy,” she said.
Elsewhere, Vemi paused at the threshold of a room that was too warm.
Vambasta sat in human form with spiked cuffs around her wrists. The restraints suppressed her magic and forced her instincts into a silence that looked nothing like calm. Vemi watched her hands, then her face, trying to decide whether stepping closer would help or draw attention she could not afford.
Across from them, Seraphine opened her fan.
She studied Vambasta over its edge, listening to the last words of the negotiation. Then she closed it, considered the answer, and opened it again.
Vemi remained by the door.
Every pause belonged to Seraphine. She let the others fill them, offering explanations and terms while she watched which words made Vambasta’s fingers tighten against the cuffs.
At last, the fan snapped shut.
Vemi felt the heat against her face increase.
Seraphine had finished listening.