She found Damon in the kitchen.

He took one look at her face and said "well?"

"He took the outline," she said.

"And?"

"And he’s not done," she said.

Damon looked at her.

Then he smiled.

"Four factions," he said.

"Not yet," she said. "He has to talk to his members."

"He took the outline," Damon said. "He’s not done. That’s four factions Eve."

She looked at him.

"Almost," she said.

"Almost," he agreed.

***

Corin came back to the estate four days later

But this time around he didn’t come back alone.

He brought seven people with him.

Eve was in the study when the ward chimed and she looked out the window and counted them crossing the courtyard and felt something tighten in her chest that was equal parts nerves and anticipation. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Seven people.

That was his senior leadership.

He hadn’t just consulted them. He had brought them.

She went downstairs.

They assembled in the formal dining room.

Eve had asked Silas to set it up for a larger group this time, more chairs, more tea, the kind of arrangement that said I was expecting you and I’m glad you came.

Corin’s people were....varied.

An older woman with silver locs and the careful eyes of someone who had been in too many political rooms and was still deciding if this one was different. A young man who couldn’t have been more than thirty, supernatural, with the barely contained energy of someone who had been angry about something for a long time and hadn’t found a place to put it yet. Two middle aged men who sat close together and communicated in the small gestures of people who had worked alongside each other for decades. Three others who ranged in age and expression from cautiously open to actively skeptical.

They all looked at Eve when she came in.

She looked back at all of them.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "Sit down. There’s tea."

Corin sat at the center of his group.

He had the outline in front of him, the same copy she had given him four days ago, now covered in annotations. Pencil marks in the margins. Sections underlined. Questions written in small precise handwriting at the bottom of several pages.

He had gone through it properly.

So had his people. She could see copies of certain pages that had clearly been distributed, the representation reform section, the oversight mechanisms, the transparency requirements.

The older woman with the silver locs....her name was Petra Vane, Corin had introduced her as the faction’s senior legal advisor, had a separate folder of her own notes.

Eve looked at all of it and felt something warm move through her chest.

They had done their homework.

"We have questions," Corin said.

"I expected that," Eve said.

"A lot of questions," Petra Vane said. Her voice was dry and precise. "Some of them uncomfortable."

"Good," Eve said. "Ask them."

Petra looked at her.

"You’re not going to tell us the uncomfortable questions don’t apply," she said.

"Why would I do that," Eve said.

"Most people in your position would," Petra said. "They’d manage the conversation. Steer around the difficult parts. Make it easier."

"I’m not trying to make it easier," Eve said. "I’m trying to build something that actually works. That requires the uncomfortable questions."

Petra held her gaze for a moment.

Then she opened her folder.

"Section four," she said. "The oversight mechanism for faction representatives. You’ve proposed an independent review body with rotating membership." She looked up. "Who selects the rotation?"

"Random selection from a pool of qualified candidates," Eve said. "The pool itself is assembled by a cross-faction committee in the first year and then reviewed every five years."

"Who decides what qualified means," Petra said.

"The cross-faction committee sets the criteria in year one," Eve said. "The criteria are published publicly and can be challenged by any faction through a formal process." She paused. "The challenge process is in section seven."

Petra turned to section seven.

Read it.

Made a note.

"It’s not perfect," Eve said. "No system is. But the challenge process creates a check on the criteria itself so no single faction can define qualified in a way that excludes everyone else."

"We filed something similar four years ago," the young man said. He had introduced himself as Tam. His voice had an edge to it that wasn’t quite hostility. More like....wariness. "It died in committee."

"I know," Eve said. "I read it. It’s cited in the footnotes of section seven."

He blinked.

"Page forty two," she said. "Footnote eleven."

He turned to page forty two.

Found footnote eleven.

Looked up at her.

"You cited our filing," he said.

"You did the foundational work on the challenge process," she said. "It would have been wrong not to acknowledge that."

He looked at the footnote again.

Something in the edge in his expression softened.

Not completely. But noticeably.

They went through the outline section by section.

Petra asked most of the legal questions. Tam asked the structural ones. The two middle aged men....brothers, she had gathered, named Edric and Fenn, asked about implementation timelines and practical mechanics. The others asked questions that ranged from specific to sweeping.

Eve answered everything.

Not perfectly. Twice she said I don’t have a good answer for that yet and here’s why and both times she explained exactly what the gap was and what she was doing to address it.

The first time she did it Corin’s expression shifted slightly.

After the second time he leaned over to Petra and said something quietly and she wrote something in her folder.

An hour in the silver locs woman said something that stopped the room.

"The faction seat weighting system," Petra said. "Under your reform it’s eliminated entirely. One faction one vote regardless of historical precedence or membership size."

"Yes," Eve said.

"The Military faction agreed to this," Petra said.

"Yes," Eve said.

"The Merchant faction agreed to this," Petra said.

"Yes," Eve said.

"Those are the two factions with the most to lose from equal representation," Petra said. "The Military faction currently has weighted voting on security decisions. The Merchant faction has weighted input on commerce regulations." She looked at Eve steadily. "You convinced them to give that up."

"I convinced them that long term stability is worth more than short term advantage," Eve said.