Isaac studied her for a few seconds. She looked genuinely uncomfortable.

But instead of accepting the apology as is, he asked, "Were they part of your faction?"

Althea’s eyes widened slightly. She had expected him to be guarded, maybe even cold, but she hadn’t expected him to come out with a question that direct.

Most people with political instincts tended to circle before they struck. Isaac apparently didn’t see the point in that.

The question told her two things at once.

First, he was genuinely annoyed by whatever X-019 and Elyndra had done, and if Althea turned out to share their allegiances, that annoyance would extend to her by association.

Second, and more interestingly, he was testing her. The answer she gave would tell him how much she was willing to put on the table, and from that he could read both her intentions and something of the shape of Florathi’s internal politics.

She weighed it for only a moment before deciding.

"Can we talk inside?" she asked.

"Sure," Isaac said, and stepped back from the doorway.

The living room settled into something comfortable quickly enough.

Althea and Charlotta greeted everyone, and it turned out they were already acquainted with Arlene. Celia had visited them several times over the past days and had a habit of bringing Arlene along. There was a brief, warm exchange between them before everyone found a seat.

Alice and Emily had retreated to the kitchen, but they could hear the conversation happening in the living room with their exceptionally powerful senses.

Isaac sat across from Althea and waited. Celia had settled beside him, close enough that her shoulder occasionally brushed his.

"So?" he said.

Althea opened her mouth, then stopped. Her gaze had drifted toward Arlene, who was sitting quietly on the sofa next to theirs with a cup of tea balanced on her knee.

"Don’t mind her," Isaac said, with a small wave of his hand.

Arlene was under Vale’s curse, which meant that anything she witnessed here couldn’t leave this room as long as Isaac wished so.

An attempt to reveal what she’d seen or heard would kill her before the words were out.

And even setting that aside, anyone capable of extracting information from Arlene while bypassing a curse of that caliber would already have access to intelligence at this level. Althea’s internal faction details wouldn’t be news to someone like that.

Althea blinked, surprised by his words for a moment.

Her gaze moved from Arlene to Celia, then to the kitchen where Alice and Emily were moving around, and then back to Isaac.

A small, quiet understanding settled in her expression.

"So, she is also...?" she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.

’Stories of strong people always say they have multiple spouses. It makes sense Isaac’s situation is the same.’ Althea nodded to herself.

Isaac had the distinct feeling she’d arrived at a conclusion that was at least partially wrong, but before he could say anything, Arlene spoke,

"If it’s something sensitive, I can leave."

"It’s fine," Isaac said.

Emily came out of the kitchen a few minutes later carrying a tray with tea for everyone. She set it on the table without fuss, and Althea thanked her as she picked up a cup.

There was a brief pause as she inhaled the fresh aroma of the tea, and then she set down her cup and began,

"X-019 belongs to the City of Steel, which is governed by the Mother of Crawling Steel. Elyndra is from a different faction entirely. But both of their factions ally with the Third Priest’s faction. Or that’s how it’s formally described, at any rate."

"Described?" Isaac repeated. "So it’s different from that in practice?"

"It’s... complicated," Althea said. "The Third Priest’s faction sits close to the Emperor. On paper, they serve the World Tree directly and are one of the central pillars of Florathi’s structure. X-019 and Elyndra’s factions are listed as allies, but the reality is that they answer to the Third Priest. Not as partners, but as Third Priest’s.... henchmen, I would dare say."

"That means..." Isaac’s brows furrowed.

"I know what you are thinking. X-019 belongs to the city of the Mother of Crawling Steel, who is a Queen and the Emperor’s Wives, and yes, she answers the Emperor, or used to. Ever since the Emperor has gone silent, the allegiance of factions have shifted and now she follows the Third Priest’s faction," Althea explained.

There was a lot buried in what she’d just told him.

The Emperor’s silence was the first thing. A figure of that scale withdrawing from the center of power didn’t mean he’d become irrelevant, it meant the people around him had been forced to navigate without clear guidance from the top, and that kind of vacuum had a way of producing exactly the sort of factional drift Althea was describing.

But why would the Emperor withdraw? Even though he still gave orders, but it seemed to happen rarely.

The Third Priest’s position was the second thing. The way Althea had phrased it, the Third Priest wasn’t simply serving the Emperor.

He was operating in that silence, maybe keeping the Emperor in check, and possibly acting as something closer to an opposing force than a subordinate one.

And then there was the matter of the Queen. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Isaac understood, intellectually, that political marriages at that scale rarely were born out of love.

He knew that loyalty in courts and kingdoms was always at least partly transactional.

But knowing it and hearing it laid out plainly were different things, and there was something about the idea of one of the Emperor’s own wives aligning herself against his faction that sat badly with him.

He glanced over at Celia without meaning to, and then toward the kitchen where he could hear Emily and Alice moving around.

He thought about how Florathi might’ve changed in thirty years, fifty years, a century, and become what they were now.

And then he thought about himself.

If he ever built something that large, would he would be looking out across a city full of factions that had quietly fought against each other?

Would his family become like that?

’No. I don’t want that,’ he thought.

Isaac clenched his fists under the table.

The simplest answer to factional politics was to concentrate power so completely that no opposing faction had room to breathe, and there was a version of him that understood the logic of ruling that way.

But...

Isaac trusted his wives.

He knew they would never engage in political games with him, or each other, even if the City became big.

Still, Florathi’s situation made Isaac realize how important it was to have harmony in his family, and the upper echelon of his City.

He needed to make efforts to make sure everyone remained friends. That even if they had different priorities and values, they never became enemies of different factions.

Gathering his thoughts, Isaac spoke, "So which faction are you part of? And what should I actually expect from the Third Priest? Is he going to be a problem?"

"I’m part of the Seventh Queen’s faction," she said. "As for the Third Priest... he isn’t a bad person. His main shortcoming is that he tends to be heavy-handed, and his loyalty to the World Tree overrides almost everything else.

"Since the World Tree offered you its blessing, the Third Priest has decided that the appropriate response is for you to travel to Florathi and thank it in person.

"In his mind, that’s the natural and correct thing to do, and he doesn’t see much reason to consider why you might feel differently about it," Althea explained.

"So that’s why you offered to let me travel with your group instead of waiting for the official delegation. You already knew he’d be pushing for that, and I would dislike him for that," Isaac said.

"Seventh Queen told me you might refuse him outright," Althea said, and there was a faint note of dry amusement in her voice. "Refusing the Third Priest isn’t without risk, but she thought you’d do it anyway, so I gave you an alternative before it came to that."

They kept talking for a while after that.

Althea was measured in what she shared, but she wasn’t evasive. Each answer opened the next question naturally, and Isaac found himself building a picture of Florathi that was considerably messier and more layered than the image the delegation had projected.

There were factions nested inside factions, old alliances that had shifted without anyone formally acknowledging it, and at the center of all of it, a silent Emperor whose sudden absence shaped everything even now.

It was a lot to hold, and Isaac was still turning it over when Emily appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, drying her hands on a cloth.

"Breakfast is ready," she said.

Isaac nodded to her, then turned back to Althea. "We’ll continue this later. Let’s have breakfast first. You should join us."

Althea gave a short perfunctory refusal, then agreed after a short insistence.

"Alright, give me a moment. I’ll invite Avery too," Isaac said.

Althea nodded. There was something in the way her posture shifted — a faint straightening, a brightness behind her eyes — that told Isaac she wanted to meet Avery. He stepped outside without explaining further.

Avery was waiting nearby, as she often was, and she came inside without any fuss when Isaac called for her.

The reaction her entrance drew from Althea and Charlotta was immediate, even if both of them tried to be subtle about it.

Charlotta went very still, like people did when they were consciously trying not to stare, and Althea’s expression cycled through something between reverence and disbelief before she smoothed it over.

They were Florathi royalty and clearly well-traveled, which made the reaction all the more telling. Avery was someone that even people who had seen a great deal of the world didn’t encounter every day.

They gathered around the breakfast table, and once everyone had settled, Althea spoke.

"It’s my honor to share a meal with the Spirit of Water," she said, directed at Avery with sincerity.

Avery smiled at her warmly. "The honor is shared. I’ve heard about your exploits for some time now, and I’ve wanted the chance to meet the princess of Florathi properly."

"Y-you know who I am?" Althea blinked.

"Of course," Avery said, and then began to speak.

She talked about Althea’s hunts of monsters that required entire coordinated parties of awakeners to bring down.

She spoke about the achievements of Althea as she hunted powerful monsters, or helped in hunts using her talent by acting as a commander.

Across the table, Alice had gone still. Her expression was calm on the surface, but Isaac could see the quiet spark behind her eyes as she listened.

She loved this kind of thing. The tales of legendary monsters, the moments where the outcome could have gone either way, and the awakeners who overcame all odds.

She could sit and listen to accounts like this for hours without getting restless.

"There are bards I’ve met who have made songs about some of those hunts. That’s what first made me curious about the princess of Florathi," Avery finished, looking at Althea with genuine warmth.

Althea was pink by the time Avery stopped talking. It was an oddly endearing sight. It reminded Isaac of someone meeting an idol who turned out to know their name.

Breakfast was easy after that.

Alice, emboldened by Avery’s accounts, started asking questions about monster regions, about rare abilities, about the behavior of creatures that most people only knew from written records.

Avery answered her thoroughly, and at some point Althea joined in, and the two of them together took Alice through centuries of hunts and legendary encounters.

Avery told stories about awakeners from so long ago that they had passed into folklore, people who had fought things that shaped the geography of entire regions and were now remembered as heroes in texts that most people treated as mythology.

Alice listened to every word.

It was a good breakfast.

Afterward, Isaac stayed in the kitchen to wash the dishes.

Alice had moved to help him without asking, but he waved her off. She and Emily had made the food, and that was enough.

He had been at it for a few minutes when he became aware that Professor Catherine had appeared beside him.

"Don’t worry about it," she said.

"About what?" Isaac glanced at her.

"The factional disputes. It won’t happen with us. Everyone in this family loves you too much for something like that to take root." She leaned against the counter, unhurried.

Isaac stopped. He turned to her.

"It’s clear that the topic was heavy on your heart. I can tell you were thinking that," she gave a smile, and ruffled his hair.

Isaac rolled his eyes at the ruffling of hair, but the tension that had been sitting at the back of his neck since Althea’s explanation had eased somewhat, and he was aware of it.

He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. Catherine already knew. She disappeared after making sure he was now no longer having a heavy heart.

He was nearly done with the last of the dishes when the doorbell rang.

Alice went to the door and opened it, then stopped.

"Uncle," she said, greeting the guest.

Chairman Lucius stood on the doorstep, composed as always.

"You’re still here. Good. I was worried I’d have to travel all the way to the Eltari City to find you," he said.

Alice wasn’t sure what to make of that, but she stepped aside and let him in. "Is everything alright?"

"It is. Where’s Isaac?" he asked, stepping into the entryway and looking around.

"He’s in the kitchen."

"Good. Go to the living room and wait for me. I have something to discuss with him first."

She went to the living room without pressing him, even though the instruction had left her curious.

Chairman Lucius made his way to the kitchen and found Isaac standing at the sink, drying his hands on a towel.

The dishes were stacked and clean.

Chairman Lucius took in the scene for a moment with an expression that was somewhere between mildly surprised and reassessing something.

"You can do housework well," he said. It came out somewhere between a statement and a question.

Isaac set the towel down. "I grew up alone, so yes. Is that surprising?"

"Given how proficient you apparently are in the kitchen, I assumed your talents were somewhat selective," Chairman Lucius said.

The corner of Isaac’s mouth twitched. It was barely past breakfast and the man was already finding angles. Isaac decided to move the conversation somewhere else.

"Are you here to meet Selene? Her evolution is still going and it’s proceeding smoothly. You don’t need to worry."

"Good." Chairman Lucius reached up and slid a spatial ring off his finger.

Isaac caught it when Chairman Lucius tossed it over. He turned it in his fingers, then directed his perception inside, expecting almost anything given the level of urgency and secrecy the old man was performing.

What he found was clothing.

Tailored, clearly expensive, and clearly not purchased at random. There were sets for Isaac, Alice, Emily, Selene, Professor Catherine, and Celia. Each one looked like it required either very detailed measurements or someone with a sharp eye and a long familiarity with all of them. Nothing else was in the ring. Just the clothes.

Isaac looked up from the ring and looked at Chairman Lucius, and something clicked into place quietly and completely.

A slow smile spread across his face.

Chairman Lucius’s expression changed to one not quite irritation, but something close to it.

Neither of the men said anything.

The living room wasn’t far, and the people sitting in it had senses that made distance irrelevant.

Anything spoken clearly in this kitchen would be heard by them.

They both knew that, which was why they didn’t speak.

Yet, they could converse with their gazes

’These were sent by Mother-in-law?’

’Yes.’

’That’s why you came to me with it instead of just giving them to Alice and Selene yourself. You couldn’t explain where they came from without getting into territory you’re not ready to get into yet.’

The mild irritation on Chairman Lucius’s face deepened, which was as good as a confirmation.

The old man clearly didn’t want Isaac’s help, but had no choice.

That only made Isaac’s grin wider.

He couldn’t help it.

A man who had spent his entire adult life navigating situations of political complexity, who could conduct an entire negotiation without giving anything away, completely stuck because he didn’t know how to hand clothes to his daughters without lying to them.

He had come to Isaac, of all people, because he trusted him to help with the situation.