"Raizen," Saffi mumbled.
"Hm."
"The lizard." A pause. The word settling between them. "When it held the door. Did it know?"
He didn't ask what she meant. He knew what she meant.
"Yeah," he said. "It knew."
"That it wouldn't-"
"Yeah."
The confirmation sat weirdly between the two. Below them, a child on a lower platform shrieked with delight as a lantern lifted from their hands and began its ascent, the amber light rising past their upturned face and climbing toward the canopy.
"It called me a-" Saffi said quietly.
"You mentioned that."
"I just... Keep thinking about it." Her voice was careful, each word slow, the way she placed her feet on uncertain surfaces. "Not the insult. The accuracy. It looked at me for five seconds and understood something about my Eon architecture that I've been struggling with for months without identifying. Five seconds."
She shifted slightly against his shoulder.
"You already told me this-"
