THE MORNING AFTER
Saturday, April 30, 1988
Castle of Elders — Harmonytis, Aelin
The castle had been awake since dawn.
Not loudly. The Castle of Elders did not do anything loudly. It was a thousand-year-old structure built by people who understood the value of stone walls and closed doors. But the quality of the quiet was different from a normal night's quiet. The kitchen staff had come in two hours early. The castle steward had been in his office since four in the morning with a pot of tea and a notepad filling up fast. In the guard residence on the castle's north side, the overnight watch had been changed and then changed again because nobody was sleeping anyway.
By the time the lavender sky had brightened to its morning register, the great hall of the Castle of Elders held five men, a Prime Minister, a drum tech, a manager, and a trainer, and every television set the castle owned.
The coverage had started the moment the special ended Friday night.
Not gradually. Not with the slow morning-after build that usually followed a major news event. The moment ABC signed off at ten o'clock Eastern Time, every major network news operation in the United States pivoted to continuous coverage, and by midnight it had crossed the Atlantic. By four in the morning Aelin time, it was everywhere.
Nathan had set up three television sets in the great hall, one tuned to ABC, which was running its own morning coverage of the special's reception; one to CNN, which had gone to continuous coverage at midnight and had not stopped; and one cycling through the BBC, ITN, and whatever European broadcasts the castle's aerial system could pull in cleanly through the Veil's interference. A fourth television appeared at some point, produced by no one in particular, because three was not enough.
Jace stood in the center of the room with a mug of coffee going cold in his hand, watching all four simultaneously with the expression of a man who had known this was coming and was still absorbing what it looked like.
"Turn it up on CNN," he said.
Nathan turned it up.
...confirmed this morning by three separate diplomatic sources that the White House has been in contact with Aelin's Prime Minister Galena Dallenger since the early hours of this morning, with initial reports suggesting the Reagan administration is preparing a formal statement regarding...
Jace looked at Galena.
Galena was already on the phone. She had been on the phone since eleven-thirty the previous night and appeared to have no intention of stopping. She was standing at the far end of the great hall near the tall windows with a notepad in her free hand, writing in a small, precise script that had not slowed down in several hours. She was still in the clothes she had been wearing when the special aired.
She met Jace's eyes across the room, held up two fingers, indicating two minutes, and went back to the phone.
"Reagan's going to move fast," Connor said. He was sitting on the long table rather than at it, legs crossed, a cup of tea balanced on his knee. Settled, if not rested. "He has to. After what Galena said on camera about the Oval Office, denying it isn't an option."
"He's not going to deny it," Jace said. "He's going to confirm it and then move straight to recognition."
"That fast?" Ricky asked. He was on the floor with his back against the wall and his long legs stretched in front of him, watching the CNN coverage on adrenaline and the stubborn energy of a man who refused to be the first one to say he needed sleep.
"Watch," Jace said.
They did not have to wait long.
At seven forty-three in the morning Aelin time… eleven forty-three the previous night in Washington… CNN broke from its ongoing coverage to a White House correspondent standing in front of the North Portico in a coat that suggested she had been called in from elsewhere in a hurry.
"This is breaking," the anchor said. "We're going to go live to our White House correspondent. Sarah, what do you have?"
"The White House has just released a statement," the correspondent said, holding a piece of paper in the wind. "I'm going to read it directly. The statement reads: 'The United States of America formally recognizes the sovereignty of the nation of Aelin and acknowledges the Brotherhood of Aelin as its rightful governing body. The relationship between the United States and Aelin is one of longstanding mutual respect and cooperation, and the United States looks forward to formalizing that relationship in the days ahead. The President commends the Brotherhood of Aelin for their courage and their commitment to transparency and extends his personal regards to High King Jason Elias and the members of the Brotherhood.'"
The anchor was quiet. "That's... that is a formal recognition statement from the President of the United States."
"It is," the correspondent confirmed. "And it is, I want to emphasize this, it is immediate. There has been no committee review, no State Department deliberation period, no waiting for allies to move first. The President signed this statement personally at approximately eleven-fifteen Eastern Time tonight. That is less than ninety minutes after the ABC special concluded."
The great hall was very still.
"Personal regards," Connor said. "He said personal regards."
"To High King Jason Elias," Erik said, from the chair he had occupied in the corner since approximately two in the morning. He said it with the quiet weight of a man for whom the implications of that phrase were landing in full.
Jace set his coffee mug down very carefully on the table.
"Right," he said.
The cascade began within the hour.
Ireland moved first. Not the Foreign Office language of a government deliberating, a direct statement from the Taoiseach's office, two sentences, issued before dawn Dublin time, confirming the Republic of Ireland's formal recognition of Aelin's sovereignty and noting that the relationship between the two nations was one of longstanding mutual trust. It was the statement of a country that had nothing to deliberate because the decision had already been made, centuries ago, and today was the first time they were permitted to say so publicly.
Iceland followed twelve minutes later. The same quality of statement, brief and direct. No waiting for precedent. No committee language. A nation that had been carrying this knowledge for generations and was relieved, Connor thought when he read it, to finally be able to set it down.
Norway moved within the half-hour. Scotland, as a nation within the UK framework, not able to issue independent recognition, but Malcolm Rifkind's office, the Secretary of State for Scotland released a statement of support that stopped just short of formal recognition and landed with exactly the weight it was intended to carry.
The United Kingdom's Foreign Office release came before sunrise London time, more measured in its language than Ireland's or Iceland's, carrying the standard diplomatic precision of a government that had known and kept the secret through official channels and was now formalizing what had never required formalizing before. Unmistakable in its content. Australia followed the UK. Canada and others followed Australia. It had the rhythm of a relay, some nations moving from centuries of alliance, others from hours of diplomatic calculation, all of them arriving at the same place.
Galena came off the phone long enough to drink half a cup of tea and brief Jace on what she was managing.
"Ireland and Iceland moved on their own," she said, with the composed satisfaction of someone confirming what she had always known would happen. "I did not need to call them. They had been waiting for permission to say what they have known for centuries. That is what their statements say, in diplomatic language." She paused. "Norway was also quick. Scotland issued through the Secretary of State for Scotland, not formal recognition, but the intent was unmistakable."
"Israel will move today," she said. "I spoke with their ambassador's office at two in the morning. Rebekah's story about Seamus and the war... it landed the way I expected it to land. They understand what it means. They are not waiting on anyone else's precedent."
"The Vatican?" Jace asked.
Galena's expression was composed but carried something that in a less disciplined person would have been amusement. "The Vatican is having a significant internal discussion," she said. "I expect their response will take somewhat longer than Israel's. We have raised theological questions that require consultation at levels above the standard diplomatic track."
"That's a polite way of saying we broke the Pope's week," Ricky said.
"I would not phrase it that way publicly," Galena said. "But yes."
Nathan was already at the table with a map of the world, a physical map, unfolded, and a pen. He had been marking recognition as they came in with small neat dots. Ireland and Iceland were the first marks west of Britain, placed with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had known they were going to be there and was glad to see them. The cluster around the North Atlantic was filling in rapidly. The dots were spreading south and east across Europe.
"France?" Connor asked.
Nathan's pen paused. "Not yet. And I don't think they'll move quickly."
"Because of Aldus?" Jace asked.
"Yes, because of Aldus," Nathan confirmed. "According to the Guardian Chronicles, he was born on what is now the French northern coast, where there once existed a kingdom called Cruxen, which was destroyed by a Viking raid."
"The kingdom Aldus was king of," Ricky said quietly, "I remember you showing me that and I wondered why some books say he was a Viking when he was actually French."
"The Vikings sometimes took hostages, like women and children," Erik said, "For all we know he escaped the kingdom's destruction as a captive and ended up joining them."
"Possibly," Nathan replied, "But he was listed in the Guardian Chronicles as the ruler of Cruxen and its High Sorcerer for many years, which tells me he wasn't a child when the kingdom fell. The French government now has to explain publicly how a fourteen-hundred-year-old sorcerer has been operating from their historical territory for most of recorded history without their knowledge."
Nathan capped his pen and continued: "That's an uncomfortable conversation to have in front of the United Nations."
He looked at the map.
"Asia and the Middle East will move more slowly. Israel is the exception, they have reason that the others don't. Japan, South Korea, and the Gulf states... they're watching to see what shape the American relationship takes before they commit. That is standard."
He paused with a small smirk on his lips.
"Latin America is a different calculation altogether. Most of those governments are going to wait for Rome. The Vatican's response isn't just theological for them… it's political cover. Until the Pope says something, a significant portion of the hemisphere stays quiet."
He looked at the Vatican dot on the map, which was conspicuously absent.
"Which is why what the Vatican decides matters considerably more than one might expect from an institution having an internal discussion… And there are nations with more complicated situations."
He did not name them. How he said complicated meant something precise, and everyone at the table who had been briefed on the Denmark and Greenland situation understood what he meant.
"Those conversations will take considerably longer and will go through Galena, not through us."
Galena, from her end of the table, made a note without looking up.
"The UN," Samantha said. She was sitting at the end of the table with her own tea, the most recent of several. She had changed from the previous night and had her hair pulled back and looked like someone who had slept approximately three hours and intended to be useful anyway.
"What does the UN do with this?"
"The UN," Galena said, "is about to have the most complicated month in its history."
She said it with the composed certainty of someone who had already thought it through.
"There is no framework. There is no precedent. A sovereign nation of nearly a million people has appeared that does not appear on any existing map and has been operating outside every international agreement since before most modern nations existed. The General Assembly will convene an emergency session. It will take some time to determine what that session actually accomplishes."
"But we'll have American recognition," Connor said.
"Yes, we already have American recognition," Galena said. "And British. And the others moving behind them. Which means that by the time the UN emergency session convenes, Aelin will not be walking in as a petitioner. We will be walking in as a sovereign nation with recognized allies. That is why the timing of the special mattered. Reagan had to move first and move fast. And he did."
By mid-morning, the Brotherhood had stopped watching the serious news coverage and started watching everything else.
This was Sidney's suggestion. Sidney had arrived at the castle at six in the morning, as he always arrived, without being asked and with full knowledge that he was needed. He was a compact, precise man with grey-streaked hair and the contained energy of a former military trainer who had spent the better part of a decade redirecting that energy toward five musicians who hit significantly harder than most of the recruits he had previously managed. He had watched the ABC special from the sitting room of the Greene family residence in Harmonytis, alone, and had found it almost entirely excellent and professionally acceptable, which for Sidney was equivalent to a standing ovation.
He had also watched it knowing exactly what the Brotherhood had just done.
"Two hours," he said, from the doorway of the great hall. "Watch the civilian reaction. Understand what you just handed him and what he cannot do about it. Then after two hours we go back to work."
Nobody argued with Sidney.
What they watched for those two hours was the world.
Not the governments. Not the diplomatic correspondence filling Galena's notepad at an increasingly impossible rate. The world.
The morning shows had pivoted entirely. Good Morning America had cleared its full broadcast for wall-to-wall coverage. The Today show was replaying segments from the special with commentary panels that included theologians, political scientists, music critics, and at one point a marine biologist who had been brought on to explain whether the Aelinian Panthers were biologically possible. The marine biologist's conclusion was that they were not biologically possible, which the anchor acknowledged and then immediately moved past because they were clearly real.
"Marine biologist," Ricky said.
"They were covering their bases," Nathan replied.
CNN had found the photograph. The one Barbara had mentioned, the ABC camera catching Barbara Walters laughing on horseback while Ricky rode alongside on Shadow… and it was running in the lower third of their broadcast every fifteen minutes. Barbara had been right that it would reproduce widely. It was already on the front page of the Washington Post's morning edition, which Nathan had acquired via portal key and fax relay at five in the morning because old habits die hard and Nathan Dallenger always read the newspaper.
"That's a good picture," Ricky said, looking at it.
"You look extremely pleased with yourself," Connor said.
"I was extremely pleased with myself," Ricky said.
The British tabloids had arrived.
Erik had found them. He set four tabloid front pages on the great hall table with the care of someone setting down small explosive devices.
The Sun: BATTLE CRY: KINGS OF THE WORLD!
The Mirror: KING JACE AND HIS WARRIOR BAND — THE FULL STORY
The Star: JACE ELIAS — IS HE IMMORTAL? (A WITCH SAYS YES)
And from the News of The World, which operated in its own category entirely: PANTHER ALIENS GUARD MAGIC ISLAND — I WAS THERE
The great hall was silent.
"A witch says yes," Jace read.
"A witch says yes," Erik confirmed. Flat. Deadpan. The way Erik said most things.
"BWAH-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!" Ricky cackled, startling the whole room. He quickly stood up and stalked up to Jace, cackling as he moved, moving his fingers in witchy ways, circling him and cackling out, "I’LL GET YOU MY PRETTY DRUMMER KING!!"
Then quickly moving to Connor, who instinctively ducked, and continuing with, "AND YOUR LITTLE LEAD SINGER, TOO!"
The great hall detonated.
Connor spilled his tea onto his pants, which then elicited a much more surprised tone of voice.
"Dude! I will end you!" Connor exclaimed, glaring at Ricky.
Nathan made a sound that was technically not a laugh but functioned as one. Erik dropped his face into both hands. Samantha folded completely, shoulders shaking, one hand braced on the arm of her chair. Even Jace, who had been maintaining the expression of a man in charge of something, lost it briefly, in the way that only Ricky could extract it from him.
From the far end of the great hall, Galena lowered her phone approximately two inches from her ear, turned to look at Ricky with an expression that was ninety percent Prime Minister and possibly ten percent something else, and said, very precisely: "Shh."
Ricky stopped. He looked at Galena.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, with complete sincerity and zero regret.
Galena returned the phone to her ear and went back to her call.
Ricky picked up the Daily Sport.
He read approximately four words of it, grinned at Jace and made witchy hands at him again, cackling much quieter now. Jace half-heartedly swatted at him with a smirk.
Ricky returned to the floor with the Daily Sport in his hands and this time actually read it. The room watched him to confirm the performance was concluded.
It was concluded. He was reading. But a stillness had come into him, in how he turned a page without quite seeing it, his eyes gone somewhere briefly private before coming back, and it made him look, just for a second, like a man sitting with something he had not told anyone. Then it passed, and he was just Ricky on the floor with a tabloid, and the room moved on.
"The volcano," Jace said, when the great hall had reassembled itself enough for words.
"In Ainmhithe…supposedly," Ricky confirmed, not looking up.
"Ainmhithe doesn't have a volcano," Erik said. His face had emerged from his hands. He was entirely composed, he always was after Ricky. It was unclear whether this was a coping mechanism or simply Erik.
"I know that," Ricky said, "Apparently Daily Sport believes otherwise."
Kavanaugh arrived at nine-thirty.
He came through the great hall doors looking like a man who had not slept and intended to keep going. He had a briefcase. The briefcase had reached a volume of material overnight that gave it the weight and density of something that had developed opinions. He set it on the table, looked at the four tabloid front pages Erik had laid out, looked at the Daily Sport, and looked at the room.
"There is no volcano," he said.
"We know," everyone answered together.
"I called their editor at seven this morning and told him that."
"What did he say?" Connor asked.
"He said he'd look into it." Kavanaugh opened the briefcase with the manner of a man who had not found this funny at seven in the morning and had not warmed to it since.
"We have forty-seven interview requests as of nine o'clock. The number has been growing at approximately one request every six minutes since midnight. I've sorted them into three categories; serious press we will consider, serious press we will decline, and everything else which we will not acknowledge."
He looked at Jace.
"Barbara Walters has called. She wants to say thank you. I told her you'd call her back today."
"I will…I'll call her today," Jace said.
"Tom Brokaw also called."
Jace looked at him. "Tom Brokaw?"
"Tom Brokaw," Kavanaugh confirmed. "NBC News. He would like… and I quote, 'five minutes, just five minutes, I understand if the answer is no.’”
Connor tilted his head slightly. "He said it twice? Five minutes?"
"Twice," Kavanaugh said. "With a pause between them."
"He means it," Connor said.
Jace looked at Connor. Connor gave the slight nod that meant he had read the contact and found it genuine.
"Not today," Jace said. "Next week. After we've had more time to process everything."
Kavanaugh made a note.
"Celebrity contacts," he said, and set a separate folder on the table. "As of nine this morning, we have received outreach from forty-three individuals in the entertainment industry who would like to express their support, explore collaborative opportunities, or in several cases, simply establish that they have always been enormous fans."
The table absorbed this.
"Always," Connor said.
"Always," Kavanaugh confirmed. "People who have, to my knowledge, never previously mentioned Battle Cry in any documented context."
He closed the folder.
"I have separated the contacts into two categories. The first is people who reached out to this office before last night. Before the special. Before any of this was public. Those contacts are genuine and will be treated accordingly. The second category…"
John tapped the folder, and emphasized, "… is everyone else. We will respond politely and noncommittally. We will not be returning most of those calls."
"How do you tell the difference?" Samantha asked.
"I have records going back to 1980," John said simply. "I know who called and when."
He looked at the Brotherhood.
"The oath-holders who have been in contact with us… Alice, Ozzy, The Crue, Speedwagon…all of the others. Those relationships do not change. Those are handled separately and always have been.”
He allowed himself a brief pause that conveyed everything he needed it to convey.
"Everything else is being managed."
Ricky looked at the folder. "Forty-seven interview requests?"
"As of nine this morning," Kavanaugh said. "The number is not static."
"What's the most surprising one?" Ricky asked.
Kavanaugh considered this with the expression of a man reviewing a list that had genuinely tested his professional composure at several points. "I will not say," he said. "But I will tell you it arrived at two-seventeen in the morning and included the word 'blessed.'"
Nobody pushed further.
Kavanaugh produced a second document from the briefcase. This one was longer, and he set it in front of Jace.
"The catalog," he said. "I've been on the phone with the label's royalties division since midnight. What happened last night, the rotation numbers, the international licensing requests, the back-catalog sales, it's not a spike. It's a structural revaluation." He looked at Jace steadily. "We are no longer operating at the scale we were operating at forty-eight hours ago. We need a financial team. A proper one. A CFO with entertainment holdings experience, a royalties specialist, someone handling international rights, and a dedicated philanthropy director. I have two names for the CFO position that I'd like to bring to you this week."
Jace looked at the document. Then at Kavanaugh. "Do it," he said.
"The philanthropy structure," Nathan said, from the end of the table. "We should formalize it. A foundation. Five programmatic arms, one per county, each reflecting what that county's Governor determines is the priority."
"Music education and survivor support," Connor said, without hesitation.
"Indigenous peoples," Jace said. "Paiute, and every other tribe that needs it. North America, South America, Australia, worldwide."
"Agricultural programs and veterans," Erik said. "Practical support. Things that produce results you can measure."
"Conservation and youth health programs," Ricky said. He said it quietly and without the comedic timing he used for most things, which made it land with more weight.
"Scientific research and engineering education," Nathan said. "Modeled on Daerdon but scaled for the mainland."
Kavanaugh was writing. He had not stopped writing since Jace said do it. "The philanthropy director," he said. "I want to propose someone from outside the existing team. Someone whose background is in victims' advocacy and humanitarian work, who understands how to vet causes thoroughly before any commitment is made." He looked up. "These are not five rock stars signing checks. The press will scrutinize every organization you support. The vetting has to be rigorous."
"It will be," Nathan said. "I'll be involved in the vetting process personally."
"So will I," Jace said.
Kavanaugh made a final note and closed his briefcase. Then he looked at Connor. "There is one more contact I want to flag separately from the celebrity folder. It came overnight through a channel I was not expecting. Theresa Saldana."
The room shifted.
"Victims for Victims," Connor said.
"She watched the special," Kavanaugh said. "She did not call to establish that she has always been a fan. She called because of what you said on camera and because she has spent six years building exactly what you described needing to exist. She left a number." He set a card on the table in front of Connor. "She said there was no pressure. She said she would understand completely if you did not call."
Connor looked at the card.
"I'll call her today," he said.
Kavanaugh nodded once.
The survivor response came in through a different channel.
Not through Kavanaugh's interview requests or the diplomatic recognitions or the tabloid coverage. It came through the Brigade.
The Brigade was Battle Cry's official fan club, and by 1988 it was not a small operation. It ran out of the management warehouse in Los Angeles, the same building that housed Kavanaugh's main office, the band's North American logistics, and the touring infrastructure that kept a world-class production moving across continents. The Brigade occupied its own section of the warehouse's second floor: a dedicated team that handled membership, events coordination, merchandise distribution, and correspondence. The fan mail division was run by two people, Marguerite Harmosa, who had been with the operation since 1983 and who possessed a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the band's correspondence history, and her partner Danny Reyes, who managed intake, sorting, and the response queue. Between them they had processed thousands of letters and developed a precise understanding of what normal Battle Cry fan mail looked like.
They called the castle at seven in the morning Aelin time because what was arriving was not normal.
Connor took the call himself.
He stood at the window of the great hall for ten minutes, listening, asking questions in a quiet voice, and then thanked them and hung up.
"How many?" Jace asked.
"By seven this morning, Marguerite and Danny had processed 1,640 letters," Connor said. "That number is overnight mail only. What arrived at the warehouse in the hours immediately after the special ended. It does not include what will come today."
He was quiet.
"They said the tone is different from anything they have processed before. Not fan mail as they understand fan mail. People writing to say…to say that what I said on camera was something they needed to hear. That they had been through something similar and had not known how to talk about it. Or had talked about it and not been believed."
He looked out the window at the King's garden, where the early morning light was moving through the ivy on the castle walls.
"Marguerite said she had to stop processing at four in the morning because she couldn't see the pages clearly. She didn't say why. She didn't need to."
The great hall was quiet.
"That's why you said what you did to the camera," Samantha said.
"Yes," Connor said without turning from the window, "That's why."
Sidney called time on the civilian coverage at eleven.
He did it the way he did everything, without announcement, simply standing up and saying: "Right. That's two hours. Let's talk about where we are."
They gathered around the table. All five Brotherhood members, Galena, Kavanaugh, Samantha, Sidney. Dr. Oksana had arrived at some point during the tabloid coverage, come through the castle doors with her medical bag and the expression of a woman who had watched the special and understood exactly what it meant for her workload.
Sidney looked at each of them in turn with the assessment he had been making and refining since 1983, the look that meant he was running his version of a diagnostic, checking for damage, fatigue, gaps in readiness.
"You've been awake all night," he said. "You're going to sleep this afternoon. Four hours minimum, I don't care what the phone is doing. Galena will manage the diplomatic track. Kavanaugh will manage the press. Your job right now is to be functional. That means rest."
He paused.
"What it also means is that starting tomorrow, we go back on a full training schedule, and what you did last night…"
Sidney looked at Jace, and continued, "…what you all did last night on that broadcast, was the right tactical decision. I supported it and I still support it. But you need to understand clearly what it does to the operational timeline."
"It accelerates it significantly," Jace said.
"It does," Sidney confirmed. "You have just publicly documented Aldus's methods, named his associates, described his operational patterns, and announced your readiness to fight him to a hundred and fourteen million people. He was watching. His people were watching. Whatever timeline he was operating on… it's gone now. He must move on your terms, not his. Which is what you wanted. But it means more advanced training cannot wait."
The table was quiet.
"He's angry," Connor said. Everyone looked at him.
"He's not close," Connor said. "I'm not picking him up directly. But there's a…disturbance. I'm not sure how to really describe it. It's like the way a storm changes the pressure before it arrives."
He looked at Jace.
"He's not close. But he's not neutral either. What we did last night cost him something he cannot recover and he knows it."
"Can you tell direction?" Jace asked.
Connor was quiet, his eyes slightly unfocused with the inward attention he brought to reading the field. His eyes began to glow with the emerald fire of his amulet.
"East," he said finally. "And north."
The glow of Connor's eyes faded and he finished with, "That's all I have. It's not precise. It may not even be in our own dimension. It's like he's here, but barely."
Jace absorbed this. Then he looked at Sidney.
"Full training schedule starting tomorrow. But first…" Jace looked at Dr. Oksana and said firmly, "Physicals. All five of us, before we begin any of the heavy work."
Dr. Oksana nodded once, the brisk nod of a physician who had already intended to insist on exactly this and was pleased not to have to argue about it. "I'll start tomorrow morning, before training. I want baseline readings on all five before you push anything." She looked at Jace with the expression she reserved for him; professional, direct, and carrying the faint additional layer of someone who had pulled him back from the edge enough times to have opinions about it.
"Especially you, Guardian."
"Yes, especially me," Jace agreed, smiling at her.
"We're building toward the Sacrifice," Sidney said. He said it plainly, as he said everything that mattered, not softly, not dramatically, simply stated, "Not this week. Not next week. But that is where the training points. Stamina first. Conditioning. Weapons work. Every one of you needs to be at full capacity before we attempt it, and Jace needs to be in the best physical condition of his life."
He paused. His eyes steadied on Jace first, then landed on every person in the room as he spoke.
"The records from Daeron's time say the first recovery was weeks. The entries from the Archives support that. But Daeron was Daeron and Jace is Jace, and this generation is not that generation."
He looked at Jace steadily and said, "I believe it will be shorter. I cannot tell you by how much until we have done it and know."
"And then shorter again the second time," Nathan said. He said it with the quiet certainty of someone who had run the calculations.
"That's the theory," Sidney said. "We will find out whether the theory holds."
"What concerns me," Nathan said, "is the vulnerability window. While the Sacrifice is in progress, while Jace is carrying all five amulets, the four of us are effectively defenseless. If Aldus has any intelligence on what we're capable of and chooses that moment to move…"
"Which is why we do not attempt it until we are confident in the perimeter," Sidney said. "And why the timing of each attempt will be Galena's decision as much as mine."
He looked at Galena.
"You will need to know when we are going to do this. Every time. You will need to be there."
Galena nodded.
"I will coordinate the island's defensive positioning accordingly."
She said it the way she said most things, as a statement of fact about something that was already being organized in her mind.
"Nathan," Sidney turned to him, "The crossbow upgrade you've been working on for Connor."
Nathan straightened slightly.
"Connor, I've been designing a harness," Nathan began, turning to Connor, "A back-mounted system. You can lock Soilséir into it, it loads automatically from a bolt cartridge when it's seated, draws fast on deployment. You can stow it and access it in the field without breaking stride. I want to test the cartridge mechanism before I give it to you, though. I've had it on the bench for two weeks."
"Finish it," Sidney said, "He will need it very soon, if my suspicions are correct."
Connor looked at Nathan.
"Thank you," he said, with the sincerity of a man who understood exactly why that upgrade existed and what it meant that Nathan had built it.
Nathan's expression was composed and warm simultaneously.
"You're quick," he said. "The harness makes you faster. That is the entire point."
"What it also means," Sidney said, looking at Nathan, "is that you need to be protected, too. You know what you carry. You know what happens to The Veil if something happens to you. That is not a burden you carry alone… that is a tactical reality that affects every one of us and every person on this island. You do not take risks with yourself. Not now. Not with Aldus recalibrating."
"I know," he said. "I have known since the amulet bonded. I am not careless about it." A slight pause. "Ask Galena."
"He is not careless about it," Galena confirmed, from across the table, without looking up from her notepad.
"Good," Sidney said. "Then we understand each other."
He looked at Connor, who was still blotting up spilled tea from his leg, and asked, "Have you had a chance to examine that staff Jace found hidden in your attic?"
Connor stopped blotting and shook his head.
"I haven't really thought about it," he admitted, "There's been so much happening, I…"
"Understandable," Sidney replied, "But you should go up there and take a look at it this afternoon, once you have rested. It's never wise to work with a possibly overwhelming Visionary totem while sleep deprived."
Connor nodded in agreement.
Sidney looked around the table one final time, delivering his instructions to all in the room equally.
"Rest today. Physicals tomorrow morning. Training resumes tomorrow afternoon. We have work to do. That goes for you, too, Madam Prime Minister."
Galena nodded to him and touched Nathan's shoulder.
"I will have Yara and Daria handle the calls. I may have the other aides assist in the interim, if that would be acceptable with the other brothers."
No one argued.
One by one, each of them wandered off to their respective residences, with Nathan and Galena going to her residence in Harmonytis. Erik followed suit to Neart. Ricky plopped onto the overstuffed couch in the Great Hall and promptly started snoring softly. Samantha joined Jace at the Royal Residence, and it only took the two of them less than two minutes to crawl into the bed, snuggle into each other, and fall asleep.
Connor portaled back to Léirstinach.
He did not go to bed.
He had been feeling it since before the special aired, the pull from the upper floor, from the old wardrobe in the attic that he had been avoiding since the day he moved in. Four hundred years old at minimum, dark wood, carved panels, and something inside it that had been calling him as the Visionary Amulet sometimes communicated things it wanted him to pay attention to. He had been ignoring it because there had always been something more pressing. There was always something more pressing.
Tonight, after everything with the throne, the cameras, Reagan moving, and Aldus recalibrating somewhere to the east and north… he was not going to sleep anyway. He knew that much about himself.
He went upstairs.
The attic of the Léirstinach Governor's residence was not a dramatic space. It was stone-walled and low-ceilinged and smelled of old wood and dust and the undisturbed quality of a room that had been closed for a very long time. Connor had been up here twice since moving in, both times briefly, both times stopping well short of the wardrobe at the far end.
He did not stop short this time.
The wardrobe was exactly as Jace had described it, tall, dark heartwood, carved panels running floor to ceiling with figures and patterns he had not been able to make out in the poor light. He brought the lamp closer now and looked at them properly for the first time. Not decorative. The carvings were deliberate, Aelinian script running in vertical columns down both doors, interspersed with symbols he recognized from the oldest texts in the Daerdon Archive. This had not been made by a craftsman. This had been made by someone who understood what it was meant to hold.
He opened the wardrobe.
Old clothing, exactly as Jace had said. Books that were clearly journals, their spines cracked and faded. And leaning against the back panel, fully extended, taller than Connor himself would have expected, the staff.
Dark heartwood, the same wood as the wardrobe. Smooth where it had been handled for years and years, the grain of the wood still warm to the eye even in the dim light. Aelinian carvings ran the full length of it, letters and symbols pressed deep into the wood, and at the top, set into a mount that had been worked into the staff itself rather than added after, an emerald. Large. The same deep green as his amulet.
Connor reached in and closed his hand around it.
The emerald ignited.
Not gradually. Not with any warning. It simply went from dark to blazing in the space between one heartbeat and the next, and the green light did not stay in the stone… it ran. Down the staff in both directions from his hand, finding the carved letters and symbols and burning through them like fire finding a channel, green and fierce and alive, and the etchings glowed and deepened and settled into a permanent deep emerald color that had not been there a moment before.
Connor felt the staff wake up in his hands.
There was no other word for it. It had been asleep… patient, waiting, in that wardrobe for longer than he had been alive… and now it was not. It knew him. He could feel that it knew him, the same way the Visionary Amulet had known him the moment it bonded, a recognition that went deeper than sight or sound.
"سلام، تو،" Connor said, out loud, in his father's language, before he had decided to say anything at all. Hello, you.
The emerald pulsed once, warm and certain.
And then the attic was gone.
He was standing in a room he did not recognize.
Stone walls, high windows, the quality of light that belonged to a different era. The kind of room that felt lived in by someone who spent more time thinking than sleeping. Books stacked on every surface with the unapologetic accumulation of decades, a map on the wall with markings Connor could not read from where he stood, a radio that looked like it had not been turned on in years, a fire settled into steady warmth. Someone's study. Someone who had thought carefully about the world from this chair through the better part of a century and had the shelves to prove it.
And standing near the window, turned toward him, was a man. The clothes placed him in a much earlier decade than now. He wore a dark tweed jacket, soft at the elbows, a collared shirt buttoned to the throat, a waistcoat with a watch chain. The dress of an older Irish man who had settled into his preferences sometime around 1965 and saw no compelling reason to change them. Late 1970s, Connor thought. The last decade of a very long life.
Connor's first thought, before anything else registered, was that the man reminded him of his father. Dark hair, curlier than his father's, slicked back, the curl asserting itself anyway at the temples where the grey had thoroughly taken over. Lean, a little taller than average, with the kind of face that had strong bones under it and had earned every line honestly over nine decades of living. Green eyes. The same green as the amulet at Connor's chest. He was watching Connor with an expression that carried more warmth than a stranger had any right to carry.
He had a similar quality to the face, similar darkness to the coloring, but the Irish in this man was fully expressed in a way Connor's own features only partially reflected. Where Connor's Persian half pulled the darkness deeper and gave the bones a different angle, this man was entirely one thing, shaped by one island, one century, one long life that had seen more of the world's worst and best than most people could imagine. And his eyes, when they met Connor's, had the look of someone who has been waiting a very long time for a moment and is now watching it arrive.
Connor's second thought arrived about half a second later.
"Alen," he said, "Alen O'Leary."
The man's expression shifted into a smile… quick, genuine, with a flash of humor underneath it that Connor recognized the way you recognize a quality in someone that you also carry yourself.
"Took you about three seconds," Alen said. "I'll take it."
His accent was Irish, not Patricia's soft western lilt but something older, from a different part of the country entirely, shaped by a different century. He crossed toward Connor with the unhurried ease of a man entirely at home in this space.
"Are you all right, lad? The first time the Realm pulls you in, it can be… " he tilted his head slightly, "… disorienting is the polite word for it."
"I'm fine," Connor said, and then reconsidered. "I'm… not hurt. I'm not sure fine is accurate."
"Fair," Alen said. "You're in the Visionary Realm. Every amulet has one, the Guardian has his, you have yours, and the Warrior, the Conjurer, and the Sentinel each have their own. The realms are built by the amulet itself over the generations, a little of each predecessor left behind."
He looked at Connor steadily.
"You are not in danger here. You cannot be harmed here. This is yours, Connor; it belongs to you as much as it ever belonged to me. Moreover, because you are the one holding the amulet now. I just happen to still be in it."
Something in Connor's chest settled. Not fully, the disorientation was real and the green light still pulsed at the edge of his vision, but enough.
"Alen O'Leary," Connor said, a little excitement leaping into his eyes, "Sixth Visionary."
"Your direct predecessor," Alen confirmed. "And I've been wanting to have this conversation for… "
Alen considered, with the expression of a man doing actual arithmetic, and continued, "… approximately twenty-seven years. Since before you were born, if we're being precise."
He looked at Connor with the steady warmth of someone examining a face he already knows intimately.
"You are exactly as I saw you. Every vision I ever had of you. Exactly."
Connor absorbed this.
"You've been watching me?"
"I stood at the Cardinal Point the night the Guardian was born," Alen said. "I was there when Seamus felt the next Guardian draw his first breath. I watched the opaline light ripple across that newborn and I felt it, the next Visionary. Not yet born. Not yet a thought in his parents' minds. But coming."
He met Connor's eyes steadily.
"I have been watching for you since that night. Your childhood. Your bonding. Your brothers."
A silence, with the weight of a man choosing his next words.
"Your trials. All of them."
The emerald amulet at Connor's chest pulsed once, warm and steady.
"The staff," Connor said.
"First things first."
Alen nodded toward the staff in Connor's hands.
"Look at it… you're holding it fully extended. Ronin made it that way, fully extended, intended to be carried. But it has a mechanism… "
Alen pointed to a place on the grip that Connor's thumb was already near, "… there, under your thumb. Press it."
Connor pressed it.
The staff moved.
Not collapsed, not folded…but contracted, the heartwood drawing in on itself with a quality that was entirely Ronin's conjuration and entirely impossible by any ordinary understanding of wood, until what had been a staff Connor's own height was something he could slip inside a coat or pack against his back without thought. The emerald at the top pulsed once as it contracted, as if acknowledging the change, and then settled.
Connor stared at it.
"Press it again," Alen said, with the tone of a man who has watched this reaction before and finds it genuinely satisfying every time.
Connor pressed it. The staff extended back to full height in the same impossible smooth motion, the heartwood expanding with the certainty of something that knew exactly what it was supposed to be.
"Ronin's work," Alen said. "My beloved brother, Ronin Langsley, Nathan Dallenger's predecessor, was the finest Conjurer I ever saw work. He forged this staff to channel your powers and magnify them across the field. Every power the Visionary Amulet grants you, the staff amplifies. In battle, at range, in the field. It is also a fine weapon of combat in its own right. You will find that out for yourself."
Alen offered slight smile and recalled, "I used to carry it contracted, clipped to my back. Until I got old and my back had a problem with that."
"Where did you store it when contracted?" Connor asked.
"Clipped to a leather mount I had made for the purpose," Alen said. "Between the shoulder blades… clears the arms on draw, seated low enough not to interfere with the crossbow."
Connor was quiet.
"Nathan is building me a harness for the crossbow. Back-mounted. He watched me draw fourteen times to get the angle right."
Something crossed Alen's expression, warmth and recognition simultaneously.
"Of course he did. That is exactly what Ronin would have done."
He looked at Connor and smiled.
"So, you use the crossbow?"
"Soilséir," Connor said. "Yes."
"I used it too," Alen said. "Same crossbow. It passes with the amulet, generation to generation. It is a beautiful weapon. Ronin modified the mechanism twice during my tenure, once for draw speed, once for the bolt seating. Tell Nathan I said well done. He can't hear me say it directly. But tell him."
"I will," Connor said. And then, because it was the obvious question: "You and I look somewhat alike."
Alen regarded him with open amusement. "We do. Look at any two generations of Visionaries and you'll find it. The amulet seems to find men cut from similar cloth. Not identical. But there's a family resemblance across the centuries that has nothing to do with blood." He studied Connor's face with the frank attention of someone who has been looking at it in visions for decades. "You have your father's coloring. Jabril's darkness in the bones. I am..." he gestured at himself with a wry economy, "considerably more Irish than you are. All of it, in my case."
"My mother is Irish," Connor said.
"Patricia," Alen said. "I know. I've seen her. You have her eyes."
Connor looked at him, at this man with his predecessor's green eyes and his father's general quality of face and his mother's heritage written across every feature, standing in a study that belonged to a different century and talking to him with the ease of someone who had been having this conversation in his head for twenty-seven years and was pleased to finally be having it out loud.
"You're not what I expected," Connor said, with a grin.
"What did you expect?"
Connor considered honestly.
"Something more formal. More, I don't know… weighted?"
Alen's expression was entirely amused. "I spent decades watching you grow up," he said. "I watched you play your first show in a half-empty room in Reno at nineteen, so nervous before you walked on stage that you nearly talked yourself out of it, and then you opened your mouth and the room changed. I watched you argue with Sidney about a piece of Visionary theory in your second year of training and be completely correct and too stubborn to let it go even when he conceded the point. I watched you bond with four men who became your brothers and I watched what Sorienne did to you and I watched Jace and your Brotherhood come for you."
He paused and looked at Connor with genuine affection and admiration. A smile spread across his face and he said, "You are not a stranger to me, Connor Braydee. You never were. Why would I be formal with you?"
Connor managed a nod and smiled in return. The fire shifted. The green light deepened slightly.
"There are things I need to tell you," Alen said, and the humor settled into something steadier without disappearing entirely, "Not everything…the Visionary's gift is not served by knowing too much of what is coming, and you know that already. But there are things you need to carry."
"Tell me," Connor said.
Alen was quiet. When he spoke again, his voice had shifted, still measured, still deliberate, but carrying something underneath it that Connor recognized because he had heard it in his own voice on certain nights.
"I know what Sorienne did to you," Alen said. "Not from visions. From memory."
He met Connor's eyes.
"She took me as well. In my third year holding the amulet. She used enchanted chains, the same ones, I have no doubt, or ones made by the same hand. She used the same methods. The same cruelty with the same specific purpose."
He paused.
"I found her account of it in her own records, years later. She considered me a possession. Property. She only saw her prey as property to be used and discarded."
Connor did not move. He had read the archive entry, enchanted chains, soul shard implantation, forced compliance, he had read it in his own predecessor's journal and understood immediately what it meant. But hearing it from Alen's own mouth, in Alen's own voice, was something entirely different.
"My Brotherhood came for me," Alen said. "Seamus led them. He battled Aldus directly to get to me; the same way your Guardian and your brothers came for you. That is what they do. That is what the bond you share with your Guardian and Conjurer is for. They are a lifeline, and you are theirs."
He held Connor's gaze steadily.
"You already know you were not the first. I am telling you now, from the other side of it, that what she did to the Visionary has never broken one of us permanently. Not in six generations. You killed her, Connor. I watched that too. What she left behind is still in you, but the woman herself is gone, and she is not coming back."
Connor was quiet. "You recovered."
"Fully," Alen said. "It took time. It took my Brotherhood, and it took Seamus specifically, and it took longer than I wanted it to. But I recovered. I went on to serve for the remainder of my tenure. I used that staff in battle. I loved, and I led, and I did what the amulet asked of me. And I left this staff in that wardrobe for you, because I knew you were coming, and I wanted you to hear directly from me that the road through it exists. I walked it. You are walking it. The road exists."
Something in Connor's chest that had been held carefully in place for a long time shifted slightly. Not released, not yet…but acknowledged. By someone who had earned the right to acknowledge it.
"Thank you," Connor said quietly. "For saying it directly."
Alen nodded once.
"Now," he said. "Sorienne's shard…I know it is there. I have seen it. I have felt it in myself before. It can be removed; it is not permanent; it is not beyond reach."
He met Connor's eyes steadily.
"But it can only be removed by the hand of your Votaress."
Connor went very still. He knew the word. He had watched Nathan marry Galena, had watched the Votaress bond form between the Conjurer and the woman who ran Aelin's government. He knew precisely what the word meant.
"I don't…" he started.
"Yes, you do," Alen said, quietly and without pressure, "You already do. Think of the kiss. Think of what the shard did when she kissed you."
Connor thought of it. The shard going quiet. The immediate silence of it, like a sound cut off mid-note. He had felt it. He had known what caused it. He had not followed the thought to where it led.
"Indira," he said.
Alen nodded once.
"She was in your heart before Sorienne put the shard there. That is why it quiets for her. That is why only she can draw it out. Sorienne chose the wrong man to mark. She did not know about Indira. That was her final mistake, and you made sure it was her last."
Connor stood with this, and it felt longer than it was.
"What else?" he asked carefully.
"Trials," Alen said. "Your generation will know battle defeat. Loss. Harm that cannot be prevented no matter how well you prepare or how strong you become. I will not tell you the specifics…that is not the gift, and you know it. But I want you to hear from me directly: there is no version of this generation's history in which those things do not happen. They are not failures. They are the cost of fighting something that has had nine centuries to prepare."
"And the victories," Connor said. Because he had felt them too, in the precognition that arrived in fragments, the shape of something larger than the current darkness.
"Great ones," Alen said. "A new era for Aelin. The thing this generation was built toward. I have seen it. I have seen you in it."
The green light deepened between them.
"Your powers," Alen said. "They will grow. They will expand beyond what you currently understand the amulet to be capable of. I say this not to alarm you but to prepare you, because there will be moments when what the amulet puts in your hands frightens you. The scale of it. What it asks you to hold."
He looked at Connor with the directness of a man who had been through exactly this and was speaking from the other side of it.
"Do not be frightened of it. The amulet does not give you what you cannot carry. It never has. Not once in six generations."
Connor met his eyes. "Not even you?"
"Not even me," Alen said. "And I want to be clear with you about something."
He straightened, and in the straightening, there was the full weight of what he was about to say.
"You are the strongest of us, Connor Thomas Braydee. There has never been a Visionary stronger. Not in six generations. Not in the history of the Brotherhood."
Connor opened his mouth.
"Infinitely stronger than me," Alen said, before he could speak. "And I was more formidable than my own predecessor. The line has been strengthening with each generation, and you are the culmination of that. What you will be capable of when your powers reach their full capacity… It is why this generation is the one. It is why Jason Elias was born when he was born and you were born when you were born. The fulfillment generation does not happen by accident."
The light was beginning to thin at the edges. The room starting to recede.
"I am proud of who you will become," Alen said. His voice was quieter now, the vision closing, "I have watched you your whole life, Connor. I know who you are. I am proud of it. I am very proud of you, son."
Connor looked at him, at this man with Irish green eyes who had spent decades watching him grow up, who had left him a staff and a set of truths and the comfort of being known by someone who had no reason to flatter him.
"Thank you," Connor said. "For waiting."
Alen smiled. Fully, this time. "You were worth waiting for."
The vision released.
Connor was on the attic floor.
He did not remember sitting down. He was sitting with his back against the wardrobe, the staff across his lap still glowing softly in its permanent deep green, the lamp burning steadily beside him, and the attic quiet around him.
He stayed there for a long time.
He thought about Indira. About the shard going quiet when she kissed him. About the word Votaress and what it meant and the fact that Alen O'Leary, who had been watching him in visions since before he was born, had said she was already in his heart before Sorienne put her mark there. That it had been her final mistake.
He looked at the staff across his lap. Ronin's work, Nathan's predecessor, the same man who had blessed infant Jace in the Cardinal Point. The same hands that had laid a blessing on the Guardian's newborn head had forged this staff for the Visionary who would stand beside him.
He thought about what Alen had said about his powers. About not being frightened of what the amulet allowed him to hold.
He thought about the word strongest.
Eventually he stood, took the staff, and carried it downstairs. He leaned it against the wall beside his bedroom door where he would see it in the morning. Then he lay down on his bed, still dressed, and stared at the ceiling for a while.
He was asleep before he knew he had closed his eyes.
The physicals took most of the next morning.
Dr. Oksana ran them in order of what she described as "ascending complexity," which meant Ricky first. She had him in and out in forty minutes, satisfied with his baseline numbers and considerably less satisfied with his sleeping habits, which she noted in her records and mentioned twice.
Then Erik, who cooperated with complete good nature and whose baseline readings she described as "unreasonably healthy," then Connor, who was also very healthy and fit, and then Nathan, who Nancy told to lay off the cookies and donuts, but deemed otherwise healthy and ready for training.
Jace was last.
He sat on the examination table in the castle's medical room, a stone-walled chamber off the south corridor that Dr. Oksana had equipped with thoroughness and a degree of medical technology that would have surprised anyone who assumed an island cloaked from the outside world was necessarily behind the times… and waited while she worked through her checklist with the unhurried precision that was simply how she operated.
"Blood pressure is excellent," she said, without looking up. "Heart rate nominal. Lung capacity…" she made a note. "Also, excellent. You've been taking care of yourself."
"Sidney's orders," Jace said.
"Sidney's orders are correct." She moved around the table. "I want to say something to you before I write the formal assessment."
He looked at her.
"What you're building toward," she said. "The Sacrifice. I've read the historical accounts. All of them, including the ones in the Daerdon Archive that are not in general circulation."
She met his eyes with the directness of a physician who had decided honesty was the only useful tool in this conversation.
"The accounts are consistent on two things. First, the physical cost decreases with repetition. Each time the Guardian attempts it, the recovery shortens and the capacity increases. The historical record is unambiguous on that point. Second, the first attempt is the most dangerous. Not because of what the dragon form does to you, but because neither you nor your body has any previous knowledge of what is coming. It is an experience for which there is no preparation except the preparation you are doing now."
She paused.
"I am not telling you this to frighten you. I am telling you so that when you come back down the first time and the recovery is difficult, you understand that it will not always be difficult to that degree. That knowledge matters when you are in it."
Jace was quiet.
"How long do you think the first recovery will be?"
"I don't know," Nancy answered, "I won't guess. What I will say is that I will be there, and Samantha will be there, and between the two of us you will be adequately managed."
She made a final note.
"You're cleared for full training. Don't make me regret that."
"I never make you regret it," Jace said with a goofy grin.
"You make me regret it consistently, Your Majesty," she said pleasantly, and planted a little kiss on his cheek.
"Now, get off my table, Guardian."
Sidney started them that afternoon in the lower training ground… an open courtyard on the castle's western side that the Brotherhood had converted from its original function as a stable yard into something that served their requirements. The stone walls were high and thick. The ground was packed earth over stone, uneven in places because Sidney had made it uneven deliberately. There was nothing soft about it.
He ran them for two hours.
Not light work. Not the careful reintroduction of a trainer bringing athletes back from a long rest. Sidney trained them the way he trained them when something real was coming, with purpose and without tolerance for half-measures. Stamina circuits first, then individual power work, then the beginning of the formation drills that were the foundation of everything the Sacrifice required.
The formation was a piece that was new.
Cardinal points… Connor to the west, Nathan to the north, Erik to the east, Ricky to the south, Jace at the center. They had worked the formation before, in earlier training, but not with the Sacrifice as the explicit endpoint. Working it now, with that knowledge in the room, changed the quality of attention everyone brought to it.
"West holds," Sidney said, watching Connor lock into his position with the stillness of a man who had been told this once and intended to prove it was not necessary to say it again.
"West holds," Connor confirmed.
"Your anchor point is your feet," Sidney said. "Not your power. Your power goes into the center. Your feet stay on the ground. If your feet move, the formation breaks. If the formation breaks during the actual Sacrifice, we stop immediately."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"You feel him pulling. That pull will be considerable. You do not go with it. You send your power and you stay where you are. That distinction is everything."
He ran the formation without the transfer; just the positioning, the breathing, the locked stance… for forty-five minutes. Then he stopped them.
"Good," he said. Which from Sidney was the equivalent of an extended standing ovation.
He looked at Jace, who was standing at the center point with his arms loose at his sides and his breathing controlled and the opal amulet doing what it always did when the formation came together, responding to the proximity of the four other amulets with a faint warmth that was entirely involuntary and entirely characteristic.
"How does it feel?" Sidney asked.
"Right," Jace said. "It feels right."
Sidney nodded, once. That answer had been the correct one.
Nathan gave Connor the harness two days later.
He presented it the way he presented most things he built; without ceremony, simply handing it over and then explaining the mechanism in the same tone of voice he used to explain anything technical, which was thorough but not slow.
"The back mount sits between your shoulder blades," Nathan said. "It locks Soilséir in at an angle that clears your shoulders on draw. The cartridge holds twelve bolts and loads automatically when the crossbow seats... you'll feel it engage. One pull to deploy, one motion to seat it on return. I've run it through two hundred draw-and-return cycles on the bench. The mechanism is clean. There's no catch on the release."
Connor turned the harness over in his hands. The leather was dark and fitted, the hardware minimal and precisely placed; no excess weight, nothing that would shift or rattle. The mounting bracket for Soilséir was exactly where Nathan had described, and the bolt cartridge sat against the spine of the harness in a housing that was both secure and immediately accessible.
"How did you design the angle?" Connor asked.
"I watched you draw," Nathan said. "Fourteen times, from four different positions. The angle clears your draw arm by a consistent margin regardless of whether you're standing, crouching, or coming off a portal exit. It's not a general solution. It's specific to how you move. Try it."
Connor shrugged the harness on, adjusted the shoulder straps twice, and then reached back for Soilséir. The crossbow came free cleanly, the bolt cartridge engaged with a quiet, definitive click, and the whole motion from back to ready took approximately the same time as a breath.
He ran it three more times. Each time clean.
"Nathan," he said.
"It works," Nathan said, with the matter-of-fact satisfaction of a man who had been confident it would work and was simply confirming that confidence was justified.
"It works very well," Connor agreed. He held Soilséir, looking at the mechanism Nathan had built into the grip… the modification was subtle, exactly where Nathan's modifications always were.
"You really watched me draw fourteen times?"
"I needed accurate data," Nathan said.
"Wasn't it boring, though?" Connor asked with a grin.
"It wasn't as boring as it was…slowly enlightening." Nathan offered.
Connor chuckled and returned Soilséir to the harness. The bracket seated it with a solid, certain click.
"Thank you, Nate," he said. The same way he had said it at the table, with the same weight. "I know why you built this."
Nathan met his eyes.
"You're fast and you're accurate and you were losing time on the draw and the stow. That is no longer the case. That's why I built it."
They both understood that was not the whole of why he built it. Nathan had built it because Connor was the Visionary, and the Visionary was a target, and a target who could get Soilséir into the field in one motion and off his back in one motion, moving again before an opponent had processed the draw… that target was harder to hit. Neither of them needed to say that out loud. They had been brothers long enough.
The night before the second week of training began, Jace went to the Daerdon Archive.
He had read Daeron's account before. Pieces of it, in the Daerdon University library during Barbara's visit, translated in fragments by Nathan for the cameras. But he had not sat with the full text alone, as it was meant to be read… as one Guardian to another, across nine centuries of the same responsibility.
The Archive room in the castle's north wing was smaller than the Daerdon University library but no less deliberate. Cases of journals and official records, the most sensitive material kept behind locked glass. The Guardians' accounts occupied a full case on the east wall; six generations of journals, some bound in leather, some stitched into folios, two of the oldest housed in protective boxes because the material could not bear regular handling.
Daeron's account was in the second box.
The Archivist had given Jace clean cotton gloves and set the folio on a reading stand under a careful light. Jace had dismissed him with thanks and sat down alone.
The script was old, a form of the Aelinian written language that had evolved considerably since the eleventh century, but Jace had been reading Aelinian since the bonding had opened the language to him, and the older forms, while slower, were not inaccessible. He worked through the early sections of the folio first. Daeron's account of the bonding. His description of the first years. The incremental discovery of what the Guardian Amulet was and what it asked.
He found the Sacrifice entry in the folio's middle section.
Daeron had written it three days after the first attempt. The hand was different from the sections before it, slower, more deliberate, as if the act of writing had required more effort than usual. Jace understood why. Three days after the first recovery had begun, the hand would still be unsteady.
He read it slowly.
Daeron described the formation the way Sidney had described it… cardinal points, the anchor of the feet, the pull that was not meant to be followed but to be channeled. He described the moment the transfer began as a tide going out… not violent, he wrote, not painful, but irresistible. And then he described the transformation.
He wrote: "I cannot tell you what it is to be that and also still yourself. I can tell you that both things are true simultaneously. The dragon is not a thing that replaces you. It is a thing that is made from you, that is entirely you, at a scale and in a form that the island has not seen before. The ocean recognized it. The cliffs recognized it. I believe they had been waiting."
Jace sat with that.
He read the account of the return; the light contracting, the form releasing, the fall. He read Daeron's description of waking in the arms of his Warrior, in the cold of the cliff top, with his Visionary's face the first thing he saw. He was cold, Daeron wrote. Colder than I have ever been. And then I understood that I had been, briefly, not alive. And that my Brotherhood was around me. And that we had done it.
He recovered for weeks. He said so plainly. He also wrote: "I was told by our trainer that the second time would be shorter. I did not believe him entirely. I believe him now."
Jace closed the folio carefully and sat in the Archive room for a while in the quiet.
He thought about the cliff at the south bay. The formation at the cardinal points. The ocean receiving the light.
He thought about Samantha's voice saying come back.
He thought about Erik's hands, which were the Warrior's hands; the strongest hands on the island… catching whatever came back down.
He put the gloves on the reading stand beside the folio and walked back through the corridor to the Royal Residence, where the fire was lit and Samantha was reading in the chair nearest the window with the Aelin night outside the glass and the castle quiet around her.
She looked up when he came in.
"You went to the Archive," she said. She had learned to read the quality of quiet he came back with from certain places.
"Daeron's account," he said.
She watched him settle into the chair across from hers. "And?"
He looked at the fire.
"He recovered," Jace said. "Every time. And it was shorter each time. And eventually he could stay in the form longer." He paused. "He did it for two hundred and seventy-five years." He looked at her. "Whatever it costs… the Brotherhood has done it before. That generation survived it. We will too."
Samantha held his gaze. She had the look she sometimes had when deciding between the honest answer and the easier one. She chose the honest one, because that was who she was.
"I know you will," she said. "I will also be there when you come back down. Every single time. That is not negotiable."
"I know," he said.
"Good," she said. She picked up her book again, "Then we agree."
He walked the castle. The corridors, the great hall, the King's garden, and the cobblestone path down to the bayside, where the sea moved cold and steady against the stones below the castle wall. The afternoon had cooled slightly, and the lavender sky was very clear, the kind of clear that happened sometimes when the island weather decided to be uncomplicated for a few hours.
He stood at the bottom of the cobblestone path where it met the bayside and looked at the water for a long time.
They had done it. The declaration was made, the world had turned, Reagan had moved, and somewhere to the east and north Aldus was recalibrating with the fury of someone who had lost the operational advantage he had held for nine centuries. The secrecy was gone.
What remained was the work.
Sidney had said it plainly… they were building toward the Sacrifice. The thing that the Brotherhood's records described in terms careful enough that Jace understood why they had been careful. All five amulets converging into one. The Guardian becoming something that was not human and not entirely human either. The Brotherhood defenseless while it happened. The ocean receiving him. The dragon emerging.
He had read Daeron's account, and the subsequent Guardians' accounts of the training, the preparation, the cost. He understood what it would ask of him. He understood what it would ask of his brothers… the transfer alone stripped them of what they were, temporarily, and left them exposed in a way that none of them ever were otherwise.
He looked at the opal amulet at his chest. The colors moved in it; silver, green, blue, red. All of them, in the one stone.
The Guardian Dragon was the fulfillment generation's answer to Aldus. Not the only answer, but the one that had never existed before. Previous Brotherhoods had held him off. This generation had been built to do more than hold.
He thought about Daeron's name in the atrium floor. Two hundred and seventy-five years of holding this. The longest Guardian in the Brotherhood's history.
He thought about his mother.
Katherine Elias had died in 1982. A year before the amulet. A year before the alley in San Diego, before Seamus, before the white light and the wooden box and the weight of the chain going around his neck.
She had known, though. That was the thing. She had known from the day he was born. She had been in that room in the birthing house when Seamus arrived, when the opalescent light rippled across her newborn son's skin and Seamus sank to his knees and said the dragon stirs within him. She had stood in the Cardinal Point and watched all five amulets glow at once over her child. She had heard the Conqueror named. She and Thomas both had. And they had said: then we will raise him well. Then we will teach him to walk in the Creator's light.
She had carried that knowledge for twenty-three years and raised him in it and never once let him see the weight of it… not the fear, not the grief at what she knew was coming for him. What she did let him see was who he was. A boy who played drums on every surface within reach. Her drum boy.
He had thought about her on the night of the bonding, and on most of the significant nights since. He thought about it now with the quality of grief that does not diminish with time so much as it finds new angles…she had known the full shape of what he was born to do. She had known it longer than he had. What she never got was to watch him do it. She died a year before the alley in San Diego, before the amulet came home to him, before any of it became real in the way she had spent twenty-three years quietly preparing him for.
She would have watched that special. She would have sat in front of the television on a Friday night and watched her son on an opaline throne with torchlight catching his eyes and she would have had something to say about it. He did not know what. He would never know what. That was the shape of the loss… not that she didn't know, but that she never got to see it.
She had called him her drum boy.
He looked at the opal at his chest.
He thought about 1983. The bar in San Diego, the alley, the amulet bonding with a force that stopped his heart. The world ending and then beginning again as something completely different. Five men who had been a band, becoming five men who were also something ancient and enormous, not yet fully understood.
Five years. And now this. The world turning again, a second seismic shift, the same five men standing in the same changed gravity and having to find their footing all over again. First the amulets had changed everything. Now the world knowing had changed everything. Two moments, five years apart, both of them permanent, both of them pointing in the same direction.
Forward.
He stood at the bayside until the cold worked through his coat, and then he walked back up the cobblestones to the castle.
Connor was in the atrium when Jace came back through.
He was not sitting. He was standing in the center of the carved stone walkway with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the floor, reading the names, the way he sometimes came here to do. The iron lanterns were lit against the corridor's dimness. The oldest inscriptions glowed amber in the warm light.
He did not look up when Jace came in.
"You felt it too," Jace said.
"The pressure to the east," Connor said. "Yes."
He paused. "It's not fear. I want to be clear about that. It's not fear."
"I know," Jace said.
"What I felt earlier…" Connor looked up. "When I told Sidney the direction. What I didn't say in that room, because it didn't need to be said in that room, is that what I felt from him wasn't just fury. It was recalculation. He is not acting yet. He is thinking."
Connor's green eyes were somber in the lantern light, yet steady and clear.
"That is the version of him I am most wary of." He said honestly.
Jace looked at the floor. At the names. Daeron's name. Gaelen's. Maethren, Brannach, Eiran, Seamus. Six rows of men who had stood somewhere on this island and made the same decision, in their own generation's way, and held what Aldus could not take.
"The Sacrifice," Jace said. "When Sidney says we're building toward it… you understand what that means. All five of us."
"Yeah, I understand what it means," Connor said. "What happens to me when you come back down. What I don't feel."
He was quiet.
"The only death of yours I won't carry. I've thought about that," he said, "I find I'm grateful for it. And I find that being grateful for it is the strangest thing I've felt in a long time, given what it means is happening while I'm not feeling it."
They stood in the atrium, the Guardian and the Visionary, in the carved stone passage of a thousand-year-old castle, the names of the men who had come before them running the length of the floor at their feet.
"Nine centuries of Brotherhoods," Connor said. "And not one of them had the bond." He looked up. "We're the ones it was building toward."
"Yes," Jace said.
Connor looked at the names one more time. Then he nodded, once, with the resolution of a man who has already made his choice and is confirming it not for himself but for the record.
"Then let's be ready," he said.
They walked out of the atrium together, through the corridor and back into the castle, toward the sound of Nathan's voice in the great hall reading a diplomatic communiqué aloud to Galena, toward the smell of the kitchen staff starting the evening meal, toward the world that had shifted permanently overnight and was not going to shift back.
The Castle of Elders was very awake.
It intended to stay that way.
TRAINING LOG — SIDNEY GREENE
December 30, 1988
Formation drill, eighth consecutive month. Full Brotherhood present.
Transfer attempted for the first time.
Duration: eleven seconds.
Jace held.
Notes: See attached assessment. Recommend moving to bi-weekly transfer attempts beginning January. The Guardian is ready. The Brotherhood is ready.
The Sacrifice is no longer theoretical.