"How long?"
i studied her, assessing. "If you rest properly? A few hours. Perhaps less. I can give you a temporary boost of energy, but it will not last long once we arrive."
"Then do it."
"After you rest." i’s tone permitted no debate.
The lady wanted to argue, to demand they press on imdiately. But her body had been pushed beyond its limits. The exhaustion was a riptide, pulling her under.
"What if..." she began, her voice barely audible. "What if sothing happens while we linger here? What if she needs ?"
"Your son is there. He is overprotective and nosy, but he would lay down his life for hers. He will let nothing happen to her."
That much was true. Long Chen’s loyalty was absolute.
"Fine," she conceded, the fight seeping out of her. "A few hours. But no more."
"Agreed." i’s fingers began tracing intricate symbols in the air, gathering threads of soft golden light at their tips. "Now close your eyes. Let work."
The healing magic washed over her like a gentle tide, soothing the sharpest edges of pain and loosening the constriction in her chest. It could not nd what was fundantally broken, only the sight of her daughter could do that, but it granted a necessary reprieve.
As the lady drifted into a fitful half-sleep, her final conscious thought was a silent plea.
Wait for , my child. I am coming. Just a little longer.
In the waystation’s perpetual twilight, i kept her vigil. One hand rested on the hilt of her sword; the other maintained the steady flow of the healing spell.
She had served this family for twenty or so centuries. She had witnessed wars, betrayals, glorious births, and peaceful deaths. But she had never seen a grief like this, one that hollowed a person from the inside out, leaving behind a brittle shell sustained by sorrow alone.
She could only hope the daughter understood the cost of her absence.
And that the reunion, when it finally ca, would be worth the journey.
Ti in the waystation was a shallow, still pond. There was no sun to divide the hours, no moon to shepherd the night, only the pale, perpetual glow of the luminous stone, holding the quiet in a soft, unchanging embrace.
i kept her watch, one hand resting lightly over her mistress’s wrist, her fingertips monitoring the thin, thready pulse that had grown so faint over the long years. She asured ti in heartbeats, in the slow rise and fall of a chest that had forgotten how to breathe deeply.
The healing spell worked not with haste, but with reverence. Threads of gold-tinged light seeped into translucent skin, gently urging warmth back into cheeks that had been cold as marble. Gradually, the lady’s breathing lost its ragged edge, deepening, settling into a rhythm that spoke of rest rather than struggle.
After what might have been minutes or an hour, her eyelids fluttered open.
"i?"
"I’m here." i slid an arm behind her shoulders, supporting her as she slowly sat up. "How do you feel?"
The lady paused, taking a silent inventory. The violent trembling had stilled. The crushing weight of weakness had lifted from a drowning hold to a burdenso cloak, still heavy, but sothing she could move beneath. "Better. Stronger."
"Good." i offered the packet of dried fruit and nuts. "Eat. You will need your strength."
She ate without ceremony, tasting nothing, her consciousness already leaping ahead to Earth. To her daughter. To the mont that had been a desperate, starved ache for eight endless years.
"The healing will anchor you for a ti once we arrive," i said, her gaze sharp and assessing. "But it is a shield, not a cure. Do not test its limits. Your body is still....."
"I understand." The lady rose, testing her weight on her legs. They held. There was a tremor in them, but they held. "I only need to see her. That is enough."
i stood as well, adjusting the lie of her sword belt with a familiar, precise motion. She gave her mistress one final, sweeping look, checking the set of her shoulders, the clarity in her eyes, the resolve that had returned to her posture. Satisfied, she moved to the center of the chamber where the air still humd with the echo of their interrupted passage.
"Ready?" i asked, her hands already moving, tracing the intricate, shimring symbols that would call the gate to Earth.
The lady gathered her cloak tightly around herself, as if it were armor. Beneath the silk, her heart hamred, a wild, hopeful drum against her ribs.
"I have been ready for several years."
i took her arm, her grip both steadying and steadfast, as the gate began to swirl into existence before them, its light building from a glow to a radiant door.
"Then let us find your daughter."
Together, they stepped forward into the waiting light.
— — — — —
By evening, the hospital corridors humd with low, urgent whispers.
The nurses had talked. The paradics had talked. Yueling’s mother had certainly talked.
The story was simply too compelling: Lu Zeyan, a prominent businessman and respected mber of the Lu family, once engaged to Lin Shuyin before her imprisonnt, lay in a hospital bed following a car accident, capable of uttering only one repetitive phrase: "I love you, Shuyin."
The sa Lin Shuyin who had been released from prison re days ago. The sa Lin Shuyin who had stord the Lu family’s southern branch that very morning and, by all accounts, held an entire boardroom in thrall.
The timing was too perfect. Too damning.
But how could anyone prove intent? Lu Zeyan had been in a verifiable accident. He displayed textbook signs of traumatic brain injury. These were tragic, docunted facts.
Weren’t they?
In his private room, moved from the ER once the imdiate physical threats were stabilized, Lu Zeyan lay in the gathering dark and felt the architecture of his mind continue to crumble.
He could not recall the address of his childhood ho.
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