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"You were getting to it in an hour, after we'd done grain and patrol routes." Athena's mouth quirked. "She and Toren are well. Better than well. Earth's finally treating the alliance like a lifeline instead of a curiosity, and that's Toren's doing. Marina's got every telescope on Earth pointed at our dying sun, and that part is hers. She asks after Plovus in every message. Wants to know if he's got his father's eyes."

"Tell her he does."

Something eased in Diana's chest that she hadn't known was clenched. Marina on Earth, aiming a scientist's entire attention at the star that was killing this world. Toren beside her, turning two governments toward each other one hard conversation at a time. The two who'd started this improbable alliance, still holding their end of it across the dark. It steadied her to know they were out there.

"Is she scared?" Diana asked. "Marina. Of the numbers."

"She's a scientist. The numbers are the one part of it that doesn't scare her." Athena's smile went thin. "It's the people she can't measure that keep her up. Same as you, if you ever admitted to sleeping."

"I sleep."

"You lie down. It's not the same." Athena watched her over the rim of the cup. "All right. What is it?"

"What's what?"

"Diana." Athena set the cup down. "I wore that exact face for a year. I know it from the inside. The distraction. The little smile you catch and put away. The way you're listening to something no one else in the room can hear." She let that sit. "I'm not going to ask you who."

Diana didn't confirm it. She didn't deny it either. She looked at the amber-eyed baby savaging the cushion and said nothing, and Athena, who had once been exactly this careful, let the nothing be an answer.

"I'll say this once and then leave it alone," Athena said. "Whatever it is, be careful. This court eats people who feel things out loud. And if you ever need someone on your side who isn't playing the same game as the rest of them, my door doesn't lock." She scooped the girl up before the cushion could be eaten. "Now hold your goddaughter. She's about to commit a crime."

Diana took the baby. The small weight settled into the crook of her arm, a different weight than her own son and yet the same one, and she thought, not for the first time, that the future of two worlds fit in the bend of an elbow and nobody in the council chamber ever seemed to remember it.

*** Kavren ***

The barracks had a new sound that week, and Kavren heard it the way he heard everything, from the edge of a room.

It was the young ones, mostly. Warriors too young to remember two working suns, raised on the shortfall and the slow shame of a proud people living on grain that came down on someone else's ships. They didn't blame the sky. The sky was too big to blame. They blamed the alliance, the humans and the king who'd opened the door to both, and they said so in the corner of the mess where they thought only their own were listening. There was a name moving through those corners now. Jadirel. A warrior who gave the anger a shape and somewhere to point it.

Dresh dropped onto the bench across from Kavren and shoved a portion of dried meat over without being asked. They'd been boys together under the same captains.

"You hear the young ones?" Dresh said.

"I hear everything. You know that."

"Jadirel's got a following now. Three moons back he was a loud voice at a cold table. Now he's a loud voice a lot of tired boys agree with." Dresh chewed. "Somebody should tell the Dowager."

"The Dowager knows the color of your boots and what you dreamed about last night."

Dresh snorted. "Fair." Then, quieter, without the grin: "You all right? You've been somewhere else the last few weeks. I've known you since we were nine. You don't go places."

"I'm fine."

"That's the second lie you've handed me this month. I only ever caught you in one before, total, in twenty years." Dresh held it a moment, then set it down, which was the other lesson a barracks taught. When to leave a man his lie. "Whatever it is, brother. Keep your head. The tired boys aren't the only ones counting who's loyal to what these days."

Kavren didn't finish his meal. Jadirel he would watch, file and hand up the line when it mattered. It was the matter under his own ribs that he had no drawer for, no report that could hold it, and no honest way to set it down.

*** Diana ***

The scientists broke the calm four days later, and they did it in the worst possible way, which was quietly.

They brought new numbers to the full council, human and Weredragon researchers standing at one table for once. The models didn't argue and didn't posture, and that was what turned the room to ice. The dying sun's collapse was speeding up. What they used to measure in decades they now measured in years, and the newest figures pulled the years shorter still. The slow catastrophe Diana had shaped her plans around had become a fast one she hadn't.

Boradrith called the emergency session before the day was out. Varek stood at the military end of the chamber, and she was glad of him there, one more person in the room who'd chosen this world over the easy kind of loyalty. The hawks did exactly what she'd known they would. They reached for the oldest tool in the box. Take everything Earth would give and everything it wouldn't. The ships, the equipment and the people. Wring the alliance dry before the sun died and the leverage died with it.

"Take it now," Khrelan said, navy scales dark in the low light. "There may be no later. A dying planet cannot afford manners."

It was Varek who steadied the room, before Diana ever opened her mouth. He didn't argue policy. He wasn't built for it and he knew it. He just stood there in the flat voice of a warrior no one could accuse of loving humans too easily.