Commander Parker appeared in the archive doorway, observing with her usual quiet intensity. She’d been there the night we broke Uncle’s control and had seen me at my worst. Now she watched me teach with something that might have been approval.
When the students dispersed—still talking, still working through problems together—she stepped forward.
Effective pedagogy, she said.
They’re learning the philosophy, not just the technique. I started gathering my own notes, organized now in a way that made sense to other people, not just my paranoid younger self. Understanding why prevents the kind of blind application that led to…
I didn’t need to finish. She knew.
Good. We need both. She pulled up her tablet. Documentation?
Complete. Submitted to the archives and international repositories this morning. I’d learned that too. Redundancy wasn’t paranoia if it actually protected knowledge from being suppressed. Full lattice schematics, failure states, adaptation protocols. Cross-referenced and stored in multiple locations.
Uncle would have hated that. The old council would have tried to classify it, control it, keep it contained.
Fuck them.
Safeguards? Parker asked.
As many as I could design. This mattered. This was the difference between building something useful and creating another weapon. The lattice requires collaboration by design with multiple casters and a distributed magical load. It can’t be executed by one person trying to dominate the system. The architecture won’t support it. Anyone attempting to use it that way will find their portals collapsing instead of stabilizing.
I’d made sure of that and had tested it myself more times than was probably wise, but I needed to know it would hold.
She made a note, her stylus moving quickly and precisely. You’re building something that doesn’t require you.
Exactly. That was the point. That was everything. If it only works when I’m there to maintain it, I haven’t built infrastructure. I’ve just created another dependency, another point of failure.
She studied me for a moment, something shifting in her expression. You’ve learned something your uncle never did.
Mentioning him still stung. Less now, but enough that Wisp pressed closer to my leg, offering comfort.
Parker nodded and left without further comment.
I stood alone in the archive, surrounded by documentation that would outlive me, diagrams other portal mages could study and improve, and knowledge that was finally, truly free.
Wisp pressed her semi-solid head gently into my side, the chill of her fur grounding me like a splash of night air.
For years, I’d believed the only safe place was inside my own head, behind my own barriers. That sharing knowledge meant losing power.
But standing in this room, knowing my students were somewhere discussing how to make my work better, I felt something I’d never associated with vulnerability before.
Peace.
I FOUND ELIO IN THE common room that afternoon, sunlight streaming through the tall windows and painting everything gold.
He sat with his violin, playing something I didn’t recognize—not one of his performance pieces but something quieter, more personal. He’d never have let anyone hear that kind of music back when every note was calculated for effect.
I waited until he finished, letting the last notes fade naturally.
Echo noticed me first. Her scales shifted, and for just a moment, before Elio registered my presence, she went the color of old bruises. Muddy violet, greenish gray. Then he looked up, and she smoothed back to contemplative blue.
He’d almost managed it.
After the announcement about your parents, I said when he lowered the violin.
His hands stilled on the instrument. Ah.
You okay?
