ARIAâs wings flickered. Settled. Flickered again.
"And while youâre at it," Peter added, voice mild as milk, "stop shedding on the floor. We have guests."
"Master."
"Just saying."
"There is one guest. She is unconscious."
"Hospitality is a discipline, ARIA."
She inhaledâthe small, affronted sound of a being who, two and a half weeks ago, had possessed neither lungs nor the capacity for offenseâand the motes vanished.
The wings, however, remained exactly where they were: proud, leaking with her frustration, and deeply offended by realityâs refusal to cooperate.
Anastasia, in the corner, had said nothing for twenty-three minutes.
ARIA snapped her fingers with the exasperated grace of a woman declining to argue with inferior physics, and the girlâs body had been rinsed of its catalogue of bloodâthe matted hair, the seven distinct plasma signatures across cheek and jaw, the plough-mud between her toesâall lifted away at once like dust from an artifact ARIA had decided to catalogue later.
A clean medical gown had assembled itself from the same gesture, settling over the girl as if the room had finally remembered its manners.
The ruined tunic, however, had not been destroyed.
ARIA had floated the blood-soaked garment across the chamber to a glass cabinet, where it now hungâsealed, suspended, still damp with bloodâbeneath a soft dome of light.
Peter had watched the entire performance with the patient attention of a husband whose ASI had just done something
deeply
out of character and intended to savor the anomaly for the rest of the morning.
"Sentimental?"
he had asked.
"No."
"A
souvenir,
then."
"Master."
"Iâm only asking. Youâve always discarded things without a second glance. Suddenly this oneâ"
Anastasia, from her corner, had laughed onceâARIAâs lips had thinned.
"What," ARIA had said, with the dignity of a being filing a formal complaint against the universe itself, "do
either
of you
know
."
Peter and Anastasia had shrugged in perfect, marital unison.
ARIA had vanished the dome. Reconsidered. Reinstated itâsmaller. Walked away.
Peter suspected the tunic was the only object in the room ARIA had been able to touch without her instruments laughing at her. The only evidence she was willing, as a matter of pride, to preserve. He decided not to mention it.
He suspected ARIA had already decided he had thought it.
She had not turned around since.
The morning settled into a hush thick enough to spread on toast.
Peter watched the girl. ARIA watched her impossible readings. The room, at last, watched nothingâhaving concluded, in whatever soft architectural intelligence governed the floating rings and the breathing gold, that observation was no longer a productive use of its time.
Outside, the estate held the rest of the morning at armâs length.
Nyxire was, presumably, in her stable, contemplating the philosophical implications of being a horse with better manners than most of her masterâs consorts. The closet upstairs still contained the delightful wreckage of two people who had begun the day very differently than they had finished it.
After a long time, Peter said:
"Stasi. Tea?"
Anastasia did not answer.
He glanced at her.
She sat in her corner with the cold cup balanced between her palms, untouched, grey eyes fixed on the unconscious girl with the still, attentive patience he had only ever seen her wear at the card table when she thought no one was watching her count cards.
She was counting now.
He recognized the look. He did not recognize what she was counting.
"Stasi."
She did not hear him.
"Stasi."
She blinked. Slowly. The grey eyes drifted across the roomâacross the bed, across the breathing gold, across ARIAâs stymied wingsâand finally to him. They did not quite focus on his face. They focused on something
around
the architecture of his face.
Something her counting had not yet finished with.
"Da, lyubimiy," she said, absently. "Tea. Yes. I will. In a moment."
"You alright?"
"Da."
She did not move.
ARIA did not turn. Whatever she was reading on the suspended arpeggio at the far wall was, to her, infinitely more compelling than the small, still woman in the corner with the cold teaâand ARIA, for the first time in two and a half weeks, was catastrophically wrong about which thing in the room actually mattered.
Theyâd kept this situation among the
three
of them, guarding the secret like a fragile flame, until the young girl woke up and explained things to them.
Hopefully, she would shine some light on what the hell had happenedâbecause right now, all they had were fragments, guesses, and the echo of the
SNAP
.
Otherwise... all they had to do was wait.
The silence in the room stretched, heavy with anticipation. Every tick of the clock felt like a reminder of their helplessness.
She would wake up. Eventually. ARIA clung to that certainty, even as doubt gnawed at her edges. And most likely, it would be before they set off to Paris. The thought of leaving without answers was unbearable, but the thought of facing whatever awaited them in Paris without the girlâs truth was worse.
So, they waited, three minds bound together by mystery, fear, and the fragile hope that when her eyes finally opened, the world would make sense again.
But unlike the overthinking ARIA and Peterâwho failed to truly look at both Peter and the young woman at onceâAnastasia had done exactly that. Her gaze lingered, sharp and unyielding, shifting between the two as though she were piecing together a puzzle no one else had noticed.
For a heartbeat, Anastasia couldnât breathe. The realization struck her like lightning, but she couldnât yet name it.
All she knew was that the connection wasnât random. The girl and Peter were bound by something deeper, something that pressed against the edges of her understanding, reshaping them both in ways she dared not speak aloud.
Resemblance... that was there...
undeniable.
The understanding drew over her like cold water poured down her spine. She turned toward ARIA, disbelief tightening her chest. How could ARIA not see what she was seeing? How could she miss something so stark, so terrifyingly clear?