<span class="mu-b">Sandora now knows everything. Perhaps she can join forces with you: this is why she came. The Academies might know something, after all they work with Stars, right?</span>
At last, you stand.
“Can Sandora be escorted on the shore?”
Rosandra jolts.
“A Heathen shall not be suffered to touch Holy Land with—”
“I was a Heathen for a while,” you interrupt, your voice calm.
Weird.
This game, this dance… you were always so terrible at it.
But now the words come out almost on their own. You are just stating what happened. Is it enough to survive this terrifying dance?
You hold Rosandra’s brown gaze. You do not expect her to lower it and she does not.
“You have proven yourself, Argia Candente. But this does not allow you to break long-held rules out of a whim.”
“Do the same rules dictate we should treat a diplomatic mission as a threat?”
“They entered Maduan waters.”
“And they did nothing to deserve an Eye of the Sun to the face,” you grimly remind her. “At least let’s provide her with better quarters. Not a cell.”
Rosandra sighs.
At last, you both look away at the same time.
“You never cease to be a headache, Argia Candente.”
You share a small grin with Rubida, is glowing from the way you handled this.
“I am grateful,” the Asterite says, standing up as well. “But good food and a comfortable bed will do nothing for me when the time comes. If one of the Sisters incarnates, the energies inside my body are going to bloom and burst out in a flower of misshapen meat. I had no idea something like this could even happen.”
“We will work on it,” you reassure her. “Soralisa, I need you to work with our resident teacher. Try to discover where this pivot might be and how to break it.”
You turn to Rosandra.
“If we find this place, can we even fight the Worm? You were there the first time.”
[cont.]