“They are not subtle,” Charity said.
“They do not need to be,” Temperance replied.
Alethea’s attention returned to her, her smile softening slightly.
“And you?” she asked. “Are you certain?”
Temperance did not answer immediately. Instead, she let her gaze move once more through the room and then, finally, she looked back at her friends.
“Yes,” she said.
Charity studied her for a moment longer, as though testing the truth of it, and then nodded once, decisively.
“Good,” she said.
“Then we shall proceed.”
Temperance let out a quiet breath, something light and steady settling into place beneath everything else, and as the noise of the room continued to build around them, she realized, not for the first time but with a clarity that felt newly complete, that nothing about this felt uncertain anymore.
It did not feel like something she was stepping into blindly, rather something she had already chosen and was now, simply, walking toward.
“You might at least pretend to look less composed,” Edmund said, coming to stand beside Harper.
Harper did not immediately respond, though there was the slightest shift in his posture. “I see no advantage in pretending otherwise,” he said at last.
“No,” Edmund replied, a quiet note of amusement threading through the word, “you rarely do anything without seeing an advantage in it, which is precisely why it is so noticeable that you are doing nothing at all.”
Harper turned his head then, not fully, but enough to bring Edmund into view, his expression steady, though not entirely unreadable to someone who had known him as long as Edmund had.
“There is nothing that requires doing.”
“That has never stopped you before,” Edmund said, and this time there was no amusement in it, only a kind of quiet recognition. Harper considered that for a moment, his gaze drifting briefly away before returning, not to Edmund, but to the doors again, where the light shifted faintly with movement beyond them.
“I have found,” he said slowly, “that interference would be unwelcome.”
Edmund let out a soft breath that might almost have been a laugh, though it held something warmer beneath it.
“Yes,” he said. “That does tend to be the case when the matter no longer belongs entirely to you.”
Harper did not object.
“I did not expect this of you,” Edmund said after a while, not abruptly, but as though the thought had been forming for some time and had finally reached the point at which it could no longer be left unspoken.
Harper glanced at him.
“No?”
“No,” Edmund said, meeting his gaze fully now, “you have spent a considerable portion of your life ensuring that you would not have to.”
“That was not without reason,” he said.
“I know,” Edmund replied at once, and there was something steady in the way he said it, something that made it clear that he was not dismissing what had come before. “And I am notsuggesting that it was. Only that you have chosen differently now, which is… significant. If anything, I would have expected you to consider it so thoroughly that you might talk yourself out of it entirely.”
“That possibility was addressed,” Harper said.
Edmund huffed a quiet laugh at that, shaking his head slightly.
“I am sure it was.”
