"I was the one who helped Razeal escape that day." Marcella said it without emphasis, without lowering her gaze, and as the words settled into the air she released her hold on Nova's blade, her fingers sliding away from the steel as if the weapon itself no longer mattered, her posture returning to stillness as though she had simply set something down that had been in her hands for far too long.
For a second, Nova did not react. She remained exactly where she stood, sword still raised, her eyes fixed on Marcella's face as if waiting for the sentence to correct itself, to reveal itself as something else, something less absolute, but it didn't, and the meaning of it began to sink in piece by piece, not all at once, but enough to fracture the certainty she had been holding onto since the moment she stepped into this hall.
