The Light On Your Face For The First Time

Left to manage the crowd of Nobles, Lotusfoil found herself severely out of place. She wasn't a mediator, a public voice, an ambassador of peace—she was the observer, jotting notes and forming schemes. The spotlight was too scorching. The pressure of being backed into a corner by frightened and angry Nobles made her resent Redmaw for abandoning her here, under the impression that she had any semblance of control. Their questions battered her, to which she had no response besides, "I don't know. The other Knives will return soon. There is no danger here." It was an ignorant truth at best, and it wasn't enough to satisfy them. Seeing her fumble for explanations, the Nobles only bore down harder, like they took pleasure watching her squirm.

When the far door burst open to Redmaw—and Evander trailing closely behind him—Lotusfoil swelled with relief and rage. It was only fifteen minutes they'd been gone, but that was fifteen minutes too long. She stormed up to him armed with all the questions she'd compiled between the Nobles' complaints, then forgot everything she intended to say when he took her shoulder and leaned in. "Beocraft has returned with the others. You and I are leaving for another mission as soon as they are assigned their duties."

Another mission? Surely it had something to do with whatever Evander told him.

Before he kept walking, Lotusfoil grabbed his wrist. "Never make me babysit Nobles again," she griped under her breath.

Redmaw snorted. Then he gathered a few of the grey-masked aides and directed them to follow him, within seconds leaving her once more with the Nobles, only this time equipped with Evander. Not that he was any more useful than before.

While the spoiled Nobles milled restlessly between their dining tables, Evander hovered by Lotusfoil's side, hands clasped behind his back. His composure was but an illusion betrayed by his quiet voice. "So you've become indispensable to Redmaw," he remarked.

"We possess the same convictions," she said promptly. "His ambitions are my own."

"Are they?" Evander's mask tilted to her.

Lotusfoil second-guessed. But Redmaw already became vulnerable on his innermost level—there wasn't yet another level to his ambitions, were there? "To hone the Knives and protect Sancteid," Lotusfoil clarified.

"Ah. Yes."

Her doubts grew. "Where exactly are you sending us?"

"To the coast."

"I didn't know there was a coast nearby."

"The world has to end somewhere," he said with a hum, regaining decorum.

"Is this mission related to what happened?"

"The displacement event?"

"Is that what we're calling it?"

Evander chuckled behind his mask. "It is peripheral to that."

Excitement sizzled in her chest, amplifying her feeling of importance. She said nothing more at the risk of revealing as much.

Minutes of waiting dragged Lotusfoil's attention back to the crowd. Nobles now lounging in velvet-backed chairs, gloved fingertips tapping on auburn oak, a busy mural of technicolor robes and sequins and silk embroidery. Worried murmurs relaxing into speculation over when they might be able to return to tea or resume their garden walks. Chimes of laughter, placing bets on how quickly Redmaw would wrangle the escapees. Theirs was a garish scene that took the abstract horror of their reality—its questionable, purgatoryesque nature—and satirized it into some whimsical joke: aristocrats fretting over dents in their idyllic façade, as if the Sanctum was little more than a vacation home, forgetting the preternatural circumstances that delivered them in the first place. She begrudged and envied their lack of existential dread. What a privilege it must be.