Chapter 20: Honest Admissions — Odyn & Ichihana
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Part One: The Begrudging Truth (At Tactical Rest, Because Of Course)
The column had paused for a tactical rest stop, and somehow — through the specific gravitational mechanics of two people who had been carefully *not* standing near each other in public — Odyn and Ichihana had ended up standing slightly apart from the main group.
This was probably Sakurai's doing. She had a talent for arranging spatial configurations and then being somewhere else.
Ichihana adjusted her equipment with the focused attention of someone who did not need to adjust their equipment but required something to do with her hands.
"I suppose," she said finally, still looking at the equipment, "we can't keep pretending everyone else is wrong about what they're seeing."
"The evidence does appear to support their conclusions," Odyn agreed, with the diplomatic understatement of someone who had spent the past several weeks watching his siblings compile what amounted to a documented case file. "Seven years of professional distance were apparently less effective than we believed."
"Sakurai has been insufferable about it since approximately month four." Ichihana paused. "She was right."
"Roy has been keeping records."
"I know. He showed them to me."
"He—" Odyn stopped. "When?"
"Three weeks ago. To be helpful." Her expression conveyed what she thought of this. "He had a graph."
They stood with the shared experience of two people who have been the subject of a graph.
"The feelings," Ichihana said, and the word came out with the particular precision of someone choosing it very deliberately from a much larger and more tactical vocabulary, "extend beyond professional partnership. I don't think I'm able to honestly classify them as anything else anymore."
"Nor can I," Odyn said quietly.
She looked up then, directly at him, with the unflinching quality that had challenged his assumptions about human capability from their first session seven years ago. "So. We have that conversation. After the operations. A real one, without professional terminology or family pressure creating the context."
"Just truth," he agreed. "Whatever it leads to."
Their markings pulsed in the afternoon light, warm and unhurried, with the patience of things that have been waiting a long time and are comfortable waiting a little longer.
---
Part Two: The Thing She Never Properly Said
Ichihana's expression shifted — not the composed professional mask, not the tactical focus, something older and quieter.
"Before that conversation, there's something I've owed you for a long time."
Odyn waited.
"Seven years ago. When the clan rescued you." She chose words with the careful honesty she reserved for things that actually mattered. "I was part of that mission. Eight years old, maintaining barrier wards — barely, for maybe ten minutes at a stretch before the stamina gave out."
The memory surfaced in him with unexpected clarity. The chaos of the extraction. A small figure with silver eyes holding a ward longer than anyone had a right to expect from someone her size.
"When my stamina ran out, they saw an opening," she continued. "A child is easier than adult fighters. I was completely exposed."
"I remember," he said.
"You put yourself between me and them." She said it plainly, without softening it into tactical language or professional framing. "A traumatized prisoner who had every reason to focus entirely on his own survival. You chose to protect an eight-year-old who couldn't protect herself."
"I just—"
What happened next surprised him entirely.
Ichihana stepped forward and pressed a brief, soft kiss to his cheek.
It lasted perhaps two seconds. It was gentle and certain and carried the weight of something that had been waiting seven years for the right form.
Odyn went very still.
"That," she said, "is for saving a child who was too proud to say thank you at the time." The flush in her cheeks was visible, but her voice was steady. "That moment showed me who you are, underneath all the diplomatic training and the centuries of careful distance. It's shaped everything I thought about you since."
Odyn's hand moved — unconsciously, entirely without his permission — to touch the spot where her lips had been.
"You don't need to—"
"Yes, I do," she said, with the particular certainty of someone who has decided to stop owing a debt. "It mattered. You mattered, before I had language for why."
He looked at her for a long moment, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he had nothing diplomatically precise to say.
"All right," he said finally, quiet. "Then I accept it."
Something in her expression eased — not relief exactly, more like the settling that happens when a truth you've been carrying finds a place to land.
"Good," she said. "That's settled, then."
She went back to adjusting her equipment, which also did not need adjusting.
He stood there for another moment, his hand still near his cheek, thinking that seven years was both a very long time and, from a certain angle, exactly the right amount.
---
Part Three: Operation Crimson Dawn (The Part With Fighting)
The Yoshimura stronghold at dawn was the kind of landscape that reminded you, helpfully, that demonic influence did not have aesthetic preferences.
Rock formations that had no business existing at those angles. Organic dark energy pulsing through stone. The mountain terrain repurposed into something that breathed with hostile intent and seemed personally invested in making navigation difficult.
"The fortification patterns indicate enhanced defensive capabilities beyond standard corrupted resistance," Roy reported from his support position, with the focused calm of someone who had catalogued enough demonic architecture to have developed opinions about it. "The integration has achieved sophisticated tactical application."
"Eastern approach has optimal infiltration potential," Ichihana confirmed, her silver markings beginning their pre-engagement pulse. "Complete team coordination is essential — the defensive layers are designed to isolate and pick off individual advancement."
The infiltration team moved: Odyn at point, Ichihana coordinating defensive coverage, Sakurai and Lilian providing support, Roy managing magical analysis from an advanced position while Ragnarok, Banryu, and Zerik led the diversionary assault that split enemy attention across the stronghold's perimeter.
The corrupted terrain responded to their approach with the specific hostility of an environment that had been modified to function as a weapon. Organic walls tracked movement. Twisted flora reached.
"Barrier synchronization," Ichihana said, and didn't need to specify more than that.
Odyn's manifestations engaged with hers without conscious coordination — teal-green and silver establishing overlapping protective coverage for the team with the ease of something that had long since stopped requiring active management.
"Even smoother than usual," Sakurai observed.
"Complete trust," Lilian said simply, "enables complete effectiveness."
The infiltration proceeded.
---
Yoshimura Takeshi had not been possessed in the way of the previous clan leaders.
He had been *replaced.* Roy's magical analysis had flagged it on approach — complete personality integration, the human consciousness fully subsumed by something that retained his tactical knowledge and martial discipline while operating with objectives that were entirely not his.
"This is different," Roy's voice came through the communication network with the specific tightness of scholarly concern. "The demonic intelligence isn't directing him. It *is* him, now. Everything he knew is available to it."
"Which means it knows how we fight," Odyn said.
"Comprehensively."
He looked at Ichihana across the corrupted throne room that Yoshimura had made of his ancestral hall.
She looked back with the expression of someone who has spent seven years learning to read a person and is currently reading *yes, I know, we adapt.*
"Trust each other completely," he told the team. "Not protocols. Trust."
What followed was not the kind of battle that announces itself with dramatic exchanges and single decisive moments. It was the kind of battle that demands you be *faster* than your opponent's ability to analyze — that requires decisions before consciousness can catch up to them.
Which was, it turned out, exactly what happened when a seven-year bond between two people finally stopped arguing with itself.
Ichihana moved and Odyn was already there. He committed to an assault vector and she had already covered the exposure it created. The corrupted Yoshimura's combat intelligence processed and adjusted and processed again, working with the accumulated knowledge of a master tactician — and kept finding that the gap it was targeting had closed before it could be exploited.
Because the gap wasn't between them anymore.
It had been the gap between *what the bond was* and *what they were letting it be.* That gap was gone.
The corrupted leader fell. The throne room began, with the immediate practical anticlimactic-ness of successful counter-possession, to clear.
"Corruption sources neutralized," Roy reported. "Environmental restoration can commence."
Sakurai looked at the space where Odyn and Ichihana were standing close together in the aftermath, markings blazing in perfect synchronized harmony.
"About time," she said, with profound satisfaction.
---
Part Four: The Conversation (For Real This Time, Without Tactical Terminology)
Note: This conversation takes place in the actual conversation, after the operations.
The small meeting room had two chairs and a table and absolutely no tactical displays.
Ichihana sat across from Odyn and took a breath.
"I'm going to say something," she said, "and I'm going to say it without any professional framework, and I'd appreciate if you didn't let me retreat into one halfway through."
"Agreed," he said.
"I care about you. Not as a partner. Not in the sense that our coordination metrics suggest compatible operational temperaments." She met his gaze directly, the emerald eyes that had been cataloguing him honestly since their first antagonistic session seven years ago. "In the sense that you are the person I most want beside me. In any circumstance. I've known it for a long time and I've been calling it something else because the real name was inconvenient."
The teal-green markings pulsed warm.
Odyn was quiet for a moment. Not the diplomatic pause that bought time for strategic phrasing — the genuine kind, where you're making sure the words you choose are honest rather than correct.
"When I came to the alliance compound," he said, "I trusted no one. The training, the doctrine, the centuries of experience — all of it had been used against me. You were the first person who didn't treat that like a complication to be managed." He paused. "You treated it like information. You adjusted your approach and you demanded more from me anyway. I didn't know how to process that."
"You were infuriating," Ichihana offered.
"You told me so frequently."
"You were also—" She stopped. Started again. "The person who stepped in front of Sato's men for an eight-year-old he'd met approximately forty minutes earlier. When he had every reason not to." She looked at her hands for a moment. "I've been holding that since I was eight. I just didn't have the right word for what it meant until recently."
"What word did you find?"
She looked up. "*Yours.*" A beat. "As in — the kind of person who is mine. Who I am trying to be. The standard." She made a small, slightly frustrated gesture. "I'm better at tactical language."
"I know," he said, and there was warmth in it. "You're doing well."
---
The kiss happened because Ichihana stood up, moved around the table, and decided that she had said the difficult part already and there was no reason to be less clear about the rest.
It was not a grateful peck on the cheek. It was the real thing — soft and certain and carrying seven years of accumulation that had been looking for this specific form.
When she pulled back, her face was flushed and her chin was up with the determined quality of someone who has done the brave thing and is prepared to live with the outcome.
"I needed to do that at least once," she said. "To know what it felt like."
Odyn was looking at her with an expression she had never seen on him before — not diplomatic, not analytical, not composed. Just entirely present, and slightly undone.
"Don't apologize," he said, before she could. "I don't—" He stopped. Started again, working past centuries of careful vocabulary toward something more direct. "I don't want you to have only done it once."
She blinked.
His hands came up to frame her face — careful, uncertain in a way that had nothing to do with physical hesitation and everything to do with the fact that this was new territory and he was navigating it honestly — and he kissed her back.
It was, if anything, clearer than the first one.
When they separated, both of them were breathing a little unsteadily, and the markings had achieved a synchronization that could only be described as smug.
"This changes things," Ichihana said.
"Yes."
"Significantly."
"Agreed."
"Lyra is going to be insufferable about it."
Odyn laughed — the real kind, that surprised him slightly on the way out. "Lyra has been insufferable about it for weeks before anything happened."
"Sakurai trained her well."
"Sakurai and Lyra have never met."
"Sakurai is a force of nature. She operates across dimensions."
He was still smiling. She had, she realized, made him laugh twice in the space of an hour without trying to. This seemed like relevant data.
"So," she said. "We figure out how to do this honestly. Within the context of royal family visits and clan expectations and a four-year-old who has been practicing her best behavior."
"Together," he said.
"Together," she agreed.
The markings settled into steady, contented warmth, and for the first time in seven years, neither of them felt the need to classify it.
---
Part Five: Allen Kyocera Has an Awkward Evening
Allen had the practiced stealth of a Neo-Roshengumi reconnaissance specialist, which meant he moved through the compound without drawing attention, noticed everything in his peripheral vision whether he intended to or not, and was currently experiencing the very specific discomfort of a professional observer who has observed something that was none of his business.
He had been carrying critical intelligence about the final corrupted clan. He had taken a quieter route. He had glanced toward movement through a slightly open window with the automatic situational awareness his training had made involuntary.
He had then looked very firmly in the opposite direction and continued walking.
The intelligence he carried was about the final clan's direct spiritual connection to Kitane. This was genuinely important. He focused on this as he made his way to the command center, where his father Seth stood with Sakurai, Lady Miyako, and several alliance leadership figures including Ichihana's parents.
"Allen," Seth acknowledged. "Report."
"The scouting confirms worst-case assessment," Allen said, with professional precision that was doing a great deal of work. "The final clan maintains direct ancestral loyalty bonds to Kitane. The corruption is structural, not incidental — spiritual reinforcement built into the clan's foundational heritage. We are not facing possession. We are facing a clan that *chose* this, generations ago."
Roy stepped forward with scholarly alarm. "Ancestral loyalty bonds would create regenerative resistance against standard counter-possession techniques. The spiritual architecture precedes any individual member's corruption."
"Correct," Allen confirmed. "We'll need approaches that target the bond architecture itself rather than individual possession channels."
The tactical discussion proceeded with the focused efficiency of people taking a serious threat seriously. Allen delivered his intelligence completely and accurately and then stood at the edge of the group while the analysis continued, looking like a man thinking about operational logistics.
Sakurai, who missed nothing, watched him for approximately forty-five seconds.
"You seem contemplative," she said, with the specific quality of innocent curiosity that Allen had learned to recognize as its own category of danger. "Did something interesting happen on your route over?"
Allen was his father's son, which meant he had training, discretion, and an absolute commitment to accurate reporting that sometimes created complicated situations.
"I may have inadvertently observed something," he said carefully, "that is entirely private and should remain so."
The room's attention shifted. Seth's parental assessment moved from tactical to personal with practiced smoothness. Yui's maternal intuition, which had been tracking her daughter's emotional trajectory for approximately seven years, arrived at a conclusion before Allen had finished the sentence.
"*Resolution,*" Sakurai said, with the tone of someone who has been waiting for a particular word and has just heard it. "That kind of something."
"I would characterize it that way," Allen said, with the careful neutrality of someone providing intelligence while preserving operational security.
"*Finally,*" Sakurai breathed. The relief in her voice was genuine and comprehensive. "I was beginning to worry one of them would reach diplomatic old age before they got there."
Kazuya's expression did the specific thing of a father who had been waiting for this confirmation, had fully expected this confirmation, and was nonetheless experiencing it with fresh satisfaction. "My daughter's approach to complex situations tends toward thoroughness over speed," he said. "This has always been true."
"The soul-bond recognition has been evident through enhanced manifestation patterns for months," one of the elven representatives noted. "The authentic acknowledgment should optimize their coordination further."
Seth's parental approval was quiet and genuine. "The timing serves the alliance well. The final operation will require everything they have."
"This also," Lady Miyako observed, with the strategic awareness of someone who had been considering diplomatic implications for some time, "simplifies certain upcoming formalities considerably."
Yui smiled the particular smile of a mother who had watched her carefully disciplined daughter wage a seven-year war against her own feelings and had always known how it would end. "The honesty was overdue," she said simply. "But it was hers to find in her own time."
Allen stood with the mild relief of someone who has delivered sensitive information with appropriate discretion and would now very much like to return to the operational intelligence that was his actual job.
"The ancestral loyalty bond architecture," he prompted, "will require comprehensive counter-strategy—"
"Yes," said Roy, who had also been doing the math on *when* this had happened and *where* Allen had been, and had updated his documentation accordingly. "Let's discuss that."
---
Part Six: Lyra Arrives (Nothing Will Ever Be the Same)
The Anuyachi clan headquarters had been prepared with the meticulous care of a house that was about to receive both royalty and a four-year-old, which required balancing competing priorities.
High King Berethon stepped through the dimensional portal first, with the bearing of a king who had spent seven years unable to reach his stranded children and was now here, finally, in the place where they had built a life. He took in the compound with eyes that were trying to see everything at once.
Queen Hyatan followed, her silver gaze immediately finding her eldest son among the welcome delegation.
Princess Lyra came through third, holding her mother's hand, her lavender hair catching the afternoon light. Her eyes — the remarkable dual-colored inheritance that shifted between flame-orange and silver depending on what she was feeling — went wide as she took in a compound she had previously known only from stories.
Then they found Odyn.
"*There you are,*" she announced, with the profound satisfaction of a four-year-old who has been told someone lives somewhere and has now confirmed this personally.
Odyn crouched down before she could run to him, and she crashed into his arms with the full committed momentum of a small child who has decided to hug someone and is not moderating this decision at all.
For a moment, he simply held his youngest sister — this person who had barely existed when he'd been stranded here, who had grown into someone he knew only through communications and descriptions and the warm weight of her now — and said nothing.
"I practiced my best behavior," Lyra informed him, from approximately his shoulder.
"I heard," he said, his voice quieter than usual. "You did very well."
"Mama said there would be a party."
"There will be a party."
"With dancing?"
"With dancing."
She leaned back to examine him with the thorough assessment of someone who has been given information and is verifying it against reality. "You look the same as in the pictures," she decided. "But bigger."
"You look different than in the pictures," he said. "But the same."
She accepted this as fair. Then her flame-orange-silver eyes moved, with the homing instinct of a small child who has been given a specific thing to look for, to the woman standing slightly behind his shoulder.
"*Is that her,*" Lyra whispered loudly, to Odyn, as though Ichihana could not hear this.
"That's her."
Lyra looked at Ichihana with the unblinking scrutiny of someone conducting a very important evaluation.
Ichihana met the gaze of a four-year-old with the composed dignity of someone who has survived corrupted demonic champions and is not going to be undone by a child in formal robes.
"Hello, Princess Lyra," she said. "I've been looking forward to meeting you."
"Are you really his soul-bond lady?"
A small pause.
"...Yes," Ichihana said, glancing briefly at Odyn. "I am."
Lyra's face achieved the expression of someone whose long-held theory has been empirically confirmed.
"Your magic lights are dancing," she said, pointing at their synchronized markings with the authority of a primary source. "Mama said they would. She said that's how you know."
"Your mother," Ichihana said, "is very wise."
"She says that too," Lyra agreed seriously, and then — with the unselfconscious directness of four-year-olds everywhere — held out her arms.
Ichihana looked at her. Then at Odyn. Then, with the expression of a woman making a decision that she recognizes will have lasting personal consequences and is making it anyway, she picked up the princess.
Lyra examined her thoroughly from this new vantage point. "You're pretty," she concluded. "And your hair is nice. Can I touch it?"
"...Yes," Ichihana said.
Lyra touched it with great solemnity and apparent satisfaction. "Okay," she said. "You can be my sister."
Behind them, at a respectful distance, Sakurai made a sound that she would later claim was a cough.
---
Part Seven: Royal Approval and the Question of Formalities
Berethon and Kazuya conducted their formal greetings with the mutual dignity of two leaders who had been allied for decades across dimensional barriers and were finally meeting in person over something that had turned out, in the end, to be rather personal.
"Your son," Kazuya said, "has brought our daughter considerable happiness. That matters more to us than any diplomatic consideration."
"Our gratitude is mutual," Berethon replied. "Your family gave our children a home when circumstances put one beyond our reach." He looked at Odyn — really looked, in the way of a father who has been worried for years and is allowing himself to stop. "He's well," he said, more quietly. "Genuinely well. I wasn't certain I would find that."
"He found something worth being well for," Kazuya said, with the simplicity of a man stating observed fact.
Hyatan had made her way to Ichihana directly, with the purposeful grace of a queen who has already decided something and is proceeding to formalize it. She studied the young woman her son had chosen with assessment that was thorough and warm in equal measure.
"He told me about your first meeting," Hyatan said. "Not directly — Odyn is not direct about such things. But I know my son, and I know what it means when he describes someone with that particular quality of precision." She paused. "He was trying very hard to sound objective."
"He wasn't," Ichihana said.
"No," Hyatan agreed, with maternal satisfaction. "He wasn't." She placed her hands on Ichihana's shoulders in a gesture that was both formal and entirely genuine. "Welcome to our family. We have been waiting for you, even before we knew to look."
Ichihana, who had survived seven years of emotional compartmentalization and corrupted demonic champions and Sakurai's comprehensive campaign of patient interference, found that the straightforward warmth of a mother's welcome was the thing that nearly broke her composure.
"Thank you," she said, with more simplicity than she usually managed. "That means — thank you."
---
Lyra had been placed back on the ground at some point, which she had tolerated, and was now conducting a systematic tour of her siblings.
Sarai had shown her the basic principle of nature-attuned enhanced senses, which Lyra had described as "like having very good ears but also *more.*" This was accurate.
Ragnarok had lifted her onto his shoulder, which she had found acceptable.
Banryu had demonstrated proper stance, which she had imitated with four-year-old earnestness.
Zerik had attempted to explain analytical enhancement protocols, which she had listened to with polite incomprehension before asking if it meant he was good at puzzles. He had said yes. She had declared this useful.
Roy had given her a very small, carefully chosen book about Earth's magical traditions, which she had received with both hands and appropriate solemnity.
She had greeted Khanna and Alek with the immediate comfort of someone who had always known they existed and was simply meeting them in person now, and found them immediately satisfactory.
She had, throughout all of this, kept returning to position herself near Ichihana with the instinctive orbit of a child who has identified someone important.
"She checks on you," Odyn murmured to Ichihana at one point.
"I know," Ichihana said.
"She did that with Mother during the years you couldn't meet in person — she'd loop back every twenty minutes to verify that the people she'd decided were hers were still there."
Ichihana watched Lyra negotiate with Banryu about whether four was old enough to learn the first defensive form (Banryu's position: yes, with appropriate scaling; Lyra's position: she already knew some of it from watching and would like to demonstrate; Banryu's revised position: *oh*).
"She's extraordinary," Ichihana said.
"She is," Odyn agreed.
"She decided I was her sister before she'd met me."
"She decided before we had," he said. "She's more efficient than we are."
Ichihana looked at him with the expression she'd stopped trying to classify. "She gets that from somewhere in the family."
"She gets it from my mother."
"That explains the efficiency and the complete lack of patience for people not admitting obvious things."
He smiled. "Completely."
---
Part Eight: The Blessing (Because Some Things Deserve to Be Said Out Loud)
Lady Miyako had the particular quality of a woman who has spent her career making complicated things happen and finds formal ceremonies somewhat less demanding than the political maneuvering required to arrange them.
"We gather," she said, with the authority that turned a statement into an event, "to witness and bless the soul-bond union between Prince Odyn of Arkynor and Ichihana of the Anuyachi clan."
The ceremony that followed was, by the standards of major diplomatic occasions, remarkably simple. It had been designed that way deliberately, by people from both cultures who understood that the best ceremonies don't create meaning — they give existing meaning somewhere to stand.
There were elven words for what the Vhaeryn'thal represented, spoken by Hyatan with the cadence of something ancient and true. There were Japanese forms for the joining of two families, offered by Yui with the composure of a woman whose emotions were entirely present and entirely managed.
There was Seth's formal recognition on behalf of the Neo-Roshengumi, and Kazuya's clan endorsement, and Lady Miyako's governmental recognition, and the Anuyachi clan representatives who had watched Ichihana grow up and were watching her grow into this with visible satisfaction.
Roy stood and said nothing, which was unusual, and looked at his brother with the expression of someone who has been taking careful notes for seven years and has arrived at the final conclusion with relief.
Ragnarok didn't say anything either. He simply stood there with his arms at his sides, which somehow communicated more than a speech would have.
Sarai watched with her enhanced senses, and later said that the spiritual resonance in the room during the formal recognition was the strongest she'd ever felt — not loud, but *deep,* the way something sounds when it's always been true and has finally been said.
Allen stood near his father and thought about the window, and the two seconds he'd seen, and the long path that had been building to this moment for seven years. He found he had no regrets about accidentally witnessing it. It had looked like exactly what it was.
---
Throughout the ceremony, with great seriousness and apparent restraint, Lyra sat with her parents and watched.
She waited until the formal portion concluded.
Then: "Their magic lights are dancing even more now."
"Yes," Berethon said, with paternal dignity.
"Is that because they're happy?"
"That's exactly why."
"Good," she said, with profound four-year-old satisfaction. "That's what's supposed to happen."
Sakurai, standing to the side, looked at Lilian.
Lilian looked back.
*Finally,* both their expressions said.
*Only seven years,* Sakurai's added.
*Could have been eight,* Lilian's responded.
*Fair point,* Sakurai conceded.
---
The party that followed had dancing. It had Lyra's favorite foods (which had been researched in advance, via communication array, by Roy, which was extremely Roy of him). It had two families finding each other across the improbable distance of seven years and different worlds and the persistent warmth of bonds that had been waiting to be acknowledged.
At some point in the evening, Ichihana found herself standing at the edge of the garden with Odyn, watching their respective families negotiate the logistics of a celebration they had not been asked to plan.
"Spring wedding, Roy says," she observed.
"Roy has been saying spring wedding for three weeks."
"Lady Miyako has venue requirements."
"I know. She sent a list."
Ichihana was quiet for a moment. The garden was full of warm light and the sound of Lyra's laughter from somewhere near the dancing, and the particular quality of an evening that knows what it is.
"I don't actually mind," she said.
Odyn looked at her.
"The spring," she clarified. "The planning. The fact that approximately forty people made decisions about our lives before we did." A pause. "It's annoying, and I intend to have opinions about the venue, and Sakurai is going to be impossible — but I don't mind the part where they all wanted this for us." She looked up at him. "People who love you wanting you to be happy is not the worst problem to have."
"No," he agreed. "It's not."
"Seven years," she said.
"Seven years."
"We were very slow."
"Extremely," he confirmed.
"The bond," she said, looking at their synchronized markings, "was considerably more efficient than we were."
"It always knew," he agreed.
She looked at him with the direct, clear-eyed quality that had been looking at him honestly since their first antagonistic session, before she'd known what it meant.
"I know," she said. "I think I always knew too. I just needed to catch up to myself."
The teal-green-silver warmth pulsed between them, patient and unhurried, with the particular contentment of something that has been waiting a very long time and is now, finally, exactly where it is supposed to be.
---
End of Chapter 20
Next: Chapter 21 — The Inevitable War: Calm Before the Storm