"I don't KNOW what happened," Sirius spat. "It was too fast and I was distracted. But I KNOW this started because YOU couldn't wait. Because YOUR impatience and YOUR ambition put us all in this situation."
"I did it for the family! For THIS!" Orion gestured at the open door with the kind of desperate justification people used when they knew they were wrong but couldn't admit it. "For what our ancestors left behind!"
"And was it WORTH it, you idiot?" Sirius's voice broke on the words, grief overwhelming anger temporarily. "Was it worth Lykea? Worth Lyzea? Worth destroying our families for whatever secrets are down there?"
Orion looked at the black heart in his hand, then at where Lyzea's statue had been, then at the place where the hole in the ground had been, where she'd descended beyond reach. The progression of his gaze tracking the stages of loss that couldn't be reversed.
