Chapter 478: 478. The Talk Between Aunt And Nieces While I Was Busy Negotiate With Valentina

Meanwhile, outside Valentina’s office.

The corridor on the Academy’s upper floor was a type of quiet that only existed in buildings where significant events unfolded behind closed doors. It wasn’t an empty quiet; it was a held quiet, where the air itself seemed conscious of its role, deliberately muffling any sound that might travel too far.

Elizabeth stood near the window at the far end of the corridor, which offered her a clear view of Valentina’s office door and the staircase, enabling her to see anyone approaching from either direction. She was not pacing.

She had deliberately chosen not to pace, as pacing would convey a message she wanted to avoid in a corridor where anyone could pass by; instead, she stood with her arms folded and her weight on her back foot, a posture that appeared to show composed patience but felt entirely different.

The meeting had been running for twenty-three minutes.

She knew it was twenty-three minutes because she had checked her watch twice and was actively preventing herself from checking it a third time, which was taking more effort than it should.

Rex had entered the office carrying Kregg’s compact document along with a piece of intelligence that Elizabeth still didn’t fully understand. Valentina was with him, and Elizabeth knew Valentina well enough to realize that she did not handle surprises gracefully, whether they were positive or negative.

She would maintain her composure, projecting precision and authority while concealing any unintentional emotions. However, beneath this façade lay the essence of a woman who had constructed her entire organization on the belief that she alone controlled the flow of information—what moved through it and how.

Anyone presenting her with unexpected news was, by definition, someone who had already taken actions she would have preferred to thwart.

Rex had entered the room intentionally, alone. He had instructed Elizabeth to wait in the corridor, much like a student awaiting a disciplinary meeting—an experience Elizabeth hadn’t encountered since she was nineteen.

She checked her watch.

Twenty-five minutes.

The sound of footsteps on the staircase echoed from below, and Elizabeth recognized them before the source appeared. She had spent enough time in close quarters with both of her nieces to distinguish the difference between how Diana moved and how Lily moved, even from a floor away.

Diana’s footsteps were measured, maintaining a consistent pace with no variation. In contrast, Lily’s footsteps had a slight quickness, the rhythm of someone who always seemed eager to reach the next destination.

They came up together, saw her, and came directly to her without the hesitation that would have meant they were uncertain about their reception.

"We got bored," Lily said. "So we checked to see if Rex was back or not."

"Not yet," Elizabeth said. "You found the waiting room."

"There wasn’t a waiting room," Lily said. "We were just at the bottom of the stairs."

"For half an hour," Diana said. "What are they discussing anyway?"

"Something important... for the future of Aethelgard."

"Rex told us to give him a moment," Lily said. "He did not specify how many moments."

Elizabeth looked at them both and then looked back at the office door.

"He’s still in there," she said.

"We know," Diana said. "How long has it been?"

"Twenty-six minutes."

Diana considered this without visible concern. Lily considered it with a little more visible concern, though it manifested less as worry and more as the focused attention of someone running through possible scenarios and evaluating their likelihood.

"That’s not a bad sign," Lily said, finally.

"It’s not necessarily a good one," Elizabeth said.

"If Grandmother was upset, the meeting would be shorter," Lily said. "She doesn’t waste time on conversations she’s decided are over."

Elizabeth looked at her niece with the expression she used when Lily had said something accurate enough to be genuinely useful. "Yep..."

"That’s true," she said. "That’s a fair point, Lily."

"She once ended a faculty review meeting in four minutes," Diana said. "She thanked everyone for their time and closed her notebook, and they all understood it was over."

"Mm-hmm. I remember that meeting," Elizabeth said.

"The provost from the northern Chapter attempted to make his point, but when she looked at him," Diana said.

"He stopped talking," Elizabeth said.

"He stopped mid-sentence," Diana confirmed.

Lily sat down on the windowsill with the ease of someone who had grown up in buildings like these and saw no reason to remain standing when she could be comfortable. She looked at Elizabeth with a directness that reflected Lily’s own quality; it was an openness that resembled naivety but was too thoughtful to be considered truly naive, even though it appeared that way from certain perspectives.

"You’re worried about something other than what happens in the meeting," Lily said. "You’ve been worried since this morning."

Elizabeth glanced at Lily, then shifted her gaze to Diana. Diana stood with her back against the wall, arms relaxed at her sides, a posture that indicated she was listening intently and not signaling any particular opinion about what was being discussed.

"The key," Elizabeth said after a brief pause.

Neither of them spoke. They allowed her the time she needed to decide how to explain, knowing that interrupting her decision-making process would not be helpful.

"The Key to the Underlayer," Elizabeth said, referring to the artifact. "It was destroyed during the expedition."

"It broke during the retrieval, and we came back with fragments." She paused. "Valentina is going to want to know how that happened and why, and the honest answer is complicated."

"Complicated how?" Diana said.

Elizabeth looked at the window. The Convergence Waters were visible at this height, the edge of the island, and the open water beyond it, and she looked at that rather than at either of them for a moment.

"I have reason to believe it wasn’t an accident," she said. "Not the way it was reported."

The corridor was quiet.

"Rex..." Lily said.

It was not a question, but Elizabeth answered it anyway.

"I don’t know," she said, which was technically true in the sense that she could not prove what she believed. "What I know is that Alexander was holding the object when it broke, and he genuinely believes that he stumbled; no one in the group has any reason to doubt his account."

She stopped. "Except me."

"And you told Grandmother about this?" Diana asked.

"I told Lady Valentina that Rex had brought her an intelligence piece that required her direct involvement before anything else moved forward," Elizabeth said. "Rex handled the meeting directly."

"I’ve been out here for the past half-hour waiting to find out what that means for the Key situation."

Lily was quiet for a moment, turning the matter over with the careful quality she brought to things she wanted to understand properly before she said anything about them.

"He knew you suspected," Lily said.

"He knows I suspected," Elizabeth said. "We’ve spoken about it."

"And he went in there alone," Lily said. "Without a version of events that would protect him if Grandmother questions him about it."

"Yes," Elizabeth said.

"Elizabeth," Lily said, and the tone she used was the tone she used when she was about to say something she wanted someone to actually hear rather than just receive. "Rex walked into that room with something significant enough to take Grandmother’s attention completely off the key."

"He planned this."

"He planned it from the canyon, or possibly earlier." She paused. "I don’t know what he told her, but I know him well enough to know he did not walk through that door without understanding exactly what he was walking into."

"That’s what worries me," Elizabeth said.

"It shouldn’t," Lily said. "It should be the thing that reassures you."

Elizabeth looked at her.

"He’s managed worse," Diana said, with the flat certainty she applied to assessments she had already completed. "In situations with fewer advantages than he has right now."

"Grandmother is formidable, yes, but she is working with incomplete information, and Rex controls which pieces she has access to."

"That is not a position Grandmother has been in very often."

"He does that," Lily said. "He gives people the information that serves the outcome he needs, and he does it in a way where they feel like they’ve received everything, and by the time they understand what they didn’t receive, the situation has already settled into the shape he wanted."

"You say that like it’s a compliment," Elizabeth said.

"It is," Lily said, without any particular defensiveness about it. "I’ve watched him do it with people who were actively trying to catch him."

"And they never do."