Chapter 481: 481. A Little Help From The Starlight Sisters Ain’t That Bad

They walked in silence for a few seconds.

"This will be a significant amount of work," Elizabeth said. "The recovery analysis..."

"Six months sounds like enough time until you begin to understand the scope of what the Legion’s relay network implies for the institutional security review."

"The Valdric consortium connection alone opens questions that could take three months to map properly."

"I know," Rex said.

"I’m going to need access to materials that aren’t in the standard academic archive," she said. "Older correspondence records, the reincarnator registration logs from the past thirty years, and the Apostle network’s internal communications from the period when the Legion would have been establishing its screening infrastructure."

She looked at him directly. "Lady Valentina’s authorization opens most of those doors. Your involvement opens some of the others."

"What others?" Rex said.

"The others require someone who has actually been inside the operational structure we’re analyzing," Elizabeth said. "Not from a distance, but from the inside."

She held his gaze. "I’m not asking you to expose anything you’re not prepared to expose."

"I’m telling you that the analysis will be better with your direct input than without it and that I want to do this properly."

Rex looked at her with the attention of someone receiving a proposition and taking its measure. "When do you want to start?"

"Tomorrow morning," she said. "If the household study room is available."

"It will be," Rex said.

Elizabeth nodded again. She looked forward to the point where the corridor split toward the review office, which was now close.

"There’s one more thing," she said.

"Alexander, right?" Rex said.

She didn’t react to him having anticipated it, which meant she had expected him to.

"He’s going to ask where I was last night," she said. "He knows I didn’t come home."

"I only told him in the evening, saying I was working late at the inn and would stay there rather than cross the city at that hour, which he would normally accept without question because it’s the kind of decision I make when I’m working late."

"He won’t ask much because he knows Marceline and I are close because of my sister."

"But," Rex said.

"But he’s been sitting with that all day, and when I walk up to him tonight, the first thing he’s going to want to understand is not the Key or the analysis or Lady Valentina’s authorization." She said this without sentiment, the flat assessment of someone who knows exactly what they’re walking toward. "He’s going to want to understand where I was."

"What are you going to tell him?"

"The version that holds up," she said. "The inn, the work, the late hour."

"It’s accurate enough to be consistent." She paused. "He trusts me."

Rex looked at her. "Does that make it harder?"

Elizabeth was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," she said, and her voice was softer than everything else she had said in the conversation. "Yes, it does."

She stopped at the junction where the review wing split away from the main corridor.

"I’m going to tell him I’ll be working closely with you on the analysis for the foreseeable future," she said. "He’ll have feelings about that."

"He’ll manage them because he understands professional necessity, but he’ll have them." She looked at Rex with the expression of someone who is being entirely clear with themselves and is choosing to be equally clear with the person they’re talking to. "I want you to know that I’m aware of what I’m doing."

"I mean it with all of it. I’m not confused about the shape of this situation."

"I know," Rex said.

"Good," she said. "Then we’re still operating on the same terms."

Rex said, "We are."

She held his gaze for one more second, the specific look of a person confirming a decision for the last time before they stop reconsidering it, and then she turned toward the review office.

He watched her go.

He thought about a name that was currently on the minds of two people in this institution, what Valentina’s correspondence would yield, and the six months of authorized resource access to an academy that contained more useful information than most places he had visited.

Then he turned and walked back toward the Starlight household, where Lily and Diana were waiting.

’Fixing the key...? I think this shit could be possible, but I had to tell that bum Mordecai about this.’ Rex thought while holding his chin. ’This could also be something that’s going to be unavoidable.’

’Six months... and even one month is too much for me with my hands being so fucking full with different girls I wanted to fuck.’

’Maybe... just for this one whole week... I wanted to focus on raising Elizabeth’s desire level until it maxed out, and then I could go to the Underlayer to discuss this and also execute all those reincarnators and natives who count as fucking spies because they are from the legions.’

...

Lily and Diana were in the front sitting room when he returned, indicating they had settled in and chosen not to go upstairs to change, eat, or do anything else. Instead, they decided that waiting for him was the more productive use of their time.

Lily was curled up on the small sofa with her legs tucked beneath her, a book resting on her lap. She hadn’t actually been reading it; the page remained the same as when Diana, seated across from her near the window, had stopped paying attention to Lily’s activities twenty minutes earlier.

They both looked up when Rex came through the door.

"How long were you actually with her?" Lily said.

"Long enough," Rex said.

"That’s not a time," Lily said.

"It’s the time it took," Rex said.

He settled into the chair that had, by unspoken agreement over the past several days, become his. It was positioned close enough for both of them to feel central to the conversation, yet far enough from the door to create a sense of permanence rather than transition—an important distinction for anyone who paid attention to how rooms were arranged.

Lily closed her book and set it aside in the manner she typically used when she decided that something was no longer relevant to the current situation.

"She just hugged you," she said. "That’s so unlike her."

"Yeah, even I’m surprised," Rex said.

"Elizabeth does not hug people casually," Lily said. "She hugs Elliot, she hugs us, and she hugs Evelyn; in professional contexts, she does not hug people at all."

"The last time I saw her hug someone outside the family, it was when Professor Callindra retired after thirty years and Elizabeth cried, which she will deny if you ask her about it."

"I’m aware it wasn’t casual," Rex said.

"I’m saying it means something," Lily said. "She’s decided you’re someone she trusts."

"Not the professional kind of trust where she’ll work with you because the situation requires it, but it’s the actual kind of thing."

Rex looked at her. "What did you tell her while I was in the meeting?"

Lily’s expression changed slightly, similar to how it changes when she is deciding how much of her process to reveal. "Hmmmm..."

"She was worried," Lily said. "About you, and about the Key, and about what Grandmother was going to do when you walked out of that office."

She paused. "We told her you could handle it."

"You told her more than that," Rex said.

"We explained to her why we believed you could handle it," Diana said from the window, marking the first time she had spoken since Rex entered, carrying the weight of something she had been holding in reserve.

’Both of them... they’re still trying to glaze me so hard in front her, huh?’

’That only makes her even conflicted.’