While two kings had their little pissing contest in the wreckage, the actual interesting conversation was happening forty feet away, where nobody royal was looking.
Lux Nash was crouched over a scorch ring in the dirt, poking a dead portal-seam. Dead things occasionally lied to you, and Lux Nash trusted nothing that had stopped moving without confirming it personally.
A Luminari man drifted up beside her, glowing the polite, low-wattage glow of a soldier who knew better than to blind a lady at work.
"That was fast," he said. "The closing. I've watched mages spend an hour on one rift and lose. You collapsed a dozen in a single pulse."
"Yes." Lux didn't look up. "I'm aware. I was there."
He laughed, which meant he was either brave or too dim to read a room, and in Lux's professional experience those were frequently the same man.
