For a long few seconds after Leon and Naiad left her alone with her father, Valeria stared at the door, simply contemplating the implications of what Leon had just done and all that had happened over the past few hours. He’d brought her father back to her alive, and he’d left her alone with him seemingly without care that she might take the opportunity to run away.

Given how difficult it had been for the three of them to get so far, however, Valeria knew that she and her terribly injured father wouldn’t get far even if she decided to try and run. Still, she appreciated the privacy and the trust that Leon was showing her beyond her capacity to express.

Almost as if he were faking his unconsciousness—something Valeria might have suspected if she hadn’t confirmed his state for herself when he first passed out—Justin started coming to a few minutes after Leon and Naiad left. Valeria’s heart felt heavy and madly beat as she watched her father slowly wake up, the face of the man she had the most respect for contorting and twisting with pain as he did.

It had been a long time since she’d last seen her father—more than half a year, in fact. She had often wondered how she would react when, or if, they ever saw each other again, and anger was usually her dominant emotion. He’d abandoned her when he quit the capital, leaving her to the mercies of the Bull Kingdom. It was fortunate for her that nothing wound up happening—thanks, in part, to her association with Leon—but the pain of that abandonment couldn’t be understated. Her father was the one person she was related to on this entire plane, he had raised her single-handedly, constantly telling her stories of how they would return to the Nexus with their job complete and finally reunite with her mother.

It was a quiet dream of hers for a long time. She’d never known a mother’s love—in that, she could empathize greatly with Leon, even though his lack of such a thing didn’t seem to be something that weighed on his mind. Unfortunately, her father’s actions had greatly shaken her faith in his ability and desire to make that dream of hers come true.

Justin’s eyes opened, but his gaze was hazy and unfocused. Valeria was patient; she wanted to scream and rage and vent all of her anger and frustrations at him, but she refrained. There would be time enough for that later, but for now, she kept her emotions in check as much as she could. She wanted a cool, rational discussion with her father, getting carried away wouldn’t do her any good.

She waited a few more minutes for Justin to fully come to, and only started to speak when he focused his gaze upon her and started to sit up on the sofa.

“Valeria…” he whispered, his breath labored and apprehensive, seeming to be quite nervous about her presence.

To a degree, she could understand. From what she could sense, her father was weakening by the second. His aura was flagging and sputtering out, weakening with every breath he took. Already, it had weakened to the point that she could see through it, indicating that his injuries were so severe that he’d descended from the eighth-tier down at least to the fifth.

It was concerning, but he was alive and Leon’s healing spells were working well. This, she was not worried about.

“Father,” she replied after a moment’s pause. “It’s good to see you, how are you feeling?”

Justin breathed deeply, clearly trying to force some strength into his body, but his injuries prevented that. He started to sag back down into the sofa as Valeria stared at him, her sapphire-blue eyes unwavering and silently accusing him of a great many things.

“I’m… doing about as well as I could ever hope to be,” he answered.

“That’s good to hear,” Valeria replied. “Leon has told me that he expects you to survive. This greatly gladdened me.” Her tone was greatly dissonant with her words; she spoke in such a neutral way that she might as well have been commenting on the speed at which paint dried. “I suppose you ought to know what’s happened since you’ve been gone…”

Valeria proceeded to tell Justin everything that had happened not only with her, but also with the Bull Kingdom, and with how she and Leon’s relationship had changed. By the time she finished, she had laid it on thick enough that Justin’s face burned with shame and regret, though Valeria’s tone had remained almost unchanged throughout. She maintained a neutral and stoic tone, fearing that if she let it slip for even a second, she would never regain her cool and possibly forever destroy any relationship she and her father might yet have.

When she was finished, she paused for a long moment as she waited for her father to speak.

“… I’m sorry,” Justin said, his voice hoarse and strained, and not just because of his increasing weakness—his aura had fallen to the point that Valeria could identify it as fourth-tier, and it was showing no sign of stopping despite Leon’s healing spells doing good work on fixing his body. “I never should’ve left back then, but… I had thought that I only needed to come up here, to see what there was to see, and then I could finish the mission I had been tasked with. I had thought that it would’ve only been a matter of weeks and then we could’ve left this place for the Nexus. For your mother.”

Valeria stared at Justin unblinkingly. “You want to see her that badly?” she asked, a slight undercurrent of barely-contained fury in her voice that prevented Justin from responding immediately. “You would, without speaking with me, destroy everything that I’ve built for myself so that we could return to a place that we’ve been banished from? So that you can see Mother again?”

Justin’s face grew redder than it already was, though this was both in shame and anger. Both emotions warred in his mind, and in his weakened state, he wasn’t able to summon the will to try and contradict his daughter without settling on one of them.

Valeria continued before he had a chance to decide. “I can understand your decision. You desperately want to see the woman that you love again. I desperately want to meet her, to find my mother and become a real, whole family…” Valeria paused for a brief moment as she considered the fact that Leon was in a similar position. His mother was somewhere in the Nexus, having been separated from him almost from birth. “There are few things I want to do more than journey to the Nexus and find her…”

“… But staying with Leon is one of those things…?” Justin finished, seeing exactly what was on his daughter’s mind.

For the first time, Valeria smiled, though it was thin-lipped and shallow. “As much as you want to go to Mother, I want to stay with Leon. When you left, I was left alone and lost. Everything that I had made for myself had been taken away. But Leon and Elise took me in, supported me in my grief, and barring Leon’s understandable confrontation, have never treated me poorly the entire time I’ve been with them, despite what you did to his family.

“Father, there is a great capacity for forgiveness in Leon, just as there is a great capacity for power. If he has the support of the right people who can make up for his shortcomings, then I think he will not only become the next Storm King, but I believe he will be a great leader in the Nexus. One powerful enough, even, to force Kamran to return Mother to us.”

Justin chuckled weakly. “Maybe,” he admitted, though the smile on his face was bitter and pained. “Maybe if Kamran were the only problem, then maybe we could have a chance of taking him on. But things are not what they were eighty thousand years ago, when the Nexus was dominated by Clans descended from the powers-that-were. Mankind, pure and righteous, is taking its place in this universe as men like Kamran and the league he is a part of finishes the work of the Great Lord all those countless millennia ago. All those who still bear the signs of the Primal Age must be purged if humanity is ever able to seize control of its destiny.”

Valeria listened to her father speak, the frown on her face growing deeper with every word. Her father had never spoken of these things before, never once told her of any leagues or purges even when he taught her about the broad political situation up there.

And then Justin asked a question that Valeria knew she would have to answer, but given what he had just told her, it was even more consequential than it already was.

“Do you love Leon Raime?”

Justin’s eyes bored into Valeria, demanding an answer from her, and she wasn’t of a mind to resist it. She wanted this part of their reunion over and done with.

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.

“Then you must know the danger you invite,” Justin replied, his face expressing no surprise, only a little bit of worry. “Leon Raime must die. That is the policy of Kamran and a great many others who hold vast amounts of power in the Nexus. If you link yourself to him, then you place yourself in great danger. If that link is romantic, they will not allow you to live. If you become Leon’s lover, you will not survive their wrath, for they will wa—they already want his bloodline exterminated. Kamran and his league have already done so much to ensure that the Thunderbirds and so many others become nothing more than relics of the past, and they will not want to see Leon rise and breed and negate all that they have done for humanity.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Valeria quietly whispered as she glared at her father. For her, this wasn’t nearly as big of a decision as Justin thought it would be. In fact, she didn’t even need to think about it to know where she stood on this issue. “Kamran is a man who kidnapped my mother to force you to kill a child. If what you say is true, then he is not only a murderer and a kidnapper, but also guilty of genocide. I would never compromise myself to please a man like that. I will go with Leon, whether or not he reciprocates my feelings. We will gain power, venture into the Nexus, and we will find our mothers. We will kill Kamran and any others he may be allied with. With or without your help.”

A long silence followed Valeria’s bold declaration, during which Justin just tiredly stared back at her, his aura continuing to fall and already reaching the third-tier. Any lingering magics he had in his body that gave him his eighth-tier strength was rapidly dissipating and diffusing back into the ambient magic power of their surroundings.

After several seconds, Valeria said, “I would like it if we could set aside our differences. I don’t want to be a vassal to Kamran anymore. I don’t want us to be beholden to him, or to anyone else. I want us to make peace with Leon, to break with Kamran and find a way to bring Mother back on our own terms. We don’t need to kowtow to him.”

Justin sighed, partly in pain and partly due to what Valeria was saying.

“I don’t think that would work, little one. Even if we could agree on something, I’m too weak now. I have no subordinates left, I have no power left…”

“You’re still my father!” Valeria cried, her composure finally breaking from seeing Justin’s weak acceptance and seeming utter lack of concern with his fate. “I will not allow you just give up like this!”

“I don’t know what you want me to do, kid,” Justin replied with a sad smile as his aura slid down into the second-tier. “This is pretty much it for me. Without my power, I’ll have maybe a couple decades of life left in me before I die.”

“Then work to get your power back!” Valeria cried as tears started to flow from her eyes. “You did it once, you just have to give yourself time to heal and you’ll be fine! We can go to the Nexus and get Mother together!”

“That’s a nice dream, but a dream I think it will remain,” Justin whispered. But then, his eyes found Valeria’s, and he put on the biggest smile he was able to make, though that wasn’t saying much. “But, for you, I will hang on for a little longer. I suppose if I’m grave-bound, then there’s little point in keeping anything from Leon. I will tell him everything I know, and then I’ll let him decide my fate. Any hope I have of knowing that you and your Mother will be safe will now rest in your—and his—hands.”

Valeria could say nothing more. Her calm façade had broken, and she practically leaped over to the sofa Justin was languishing on and pulling her father into the tightest hug she dared to give the injured man.

No matter what he said, no matter how defeated he may feel, she was not willing to just let him go like this. But for now, she could live with his decision to stick around at least long enough to tell Leon whatever the younger man wanted to know.