The truth of the severed star-vein was a stone thrown into the still pond of the Starborne Court. The ripples were everywhere: in the hushed, urgent voices, in the recalculated charts that now glowed with angry, red voids where lies had been, in the way the Asteri looked at Ren, no longer as a specimen, but as a colleague who had just handed him a priceless, terrible text.
But knowledge, as the Asteri had said, was a currency. And the Starborne, for all their celestial detachment, were canny traders. The revelation bought Ren and Kael a stay of execution, a tentative audience, but not yet an alliance. The court retired to deliberate, leaving them in the charged silence of the great library.
It was Elara who found them as the artificial light of the Spire began to dim, mimicking the dusk
