Seeing both the girls' confused look, he explained himself, "The tea mistress deserved a philosophical answer, so I gave her one. But you girls need something else. You need my experience, so I give it to you." He made a pause. "And that was is my personal flair of freedom."

He explained some while also being purposefully vague to provoke their thoughts. They expected him to continue, but when he didn't, they considered his words for a while.

Alys frowned before replying, "Your personal flair of freedom is... decision making?" she attempted. "You are free to make your decisions on how to answer, which reflects your freedom to decide on how to live your life?"

Aaron laughed. "That's what you take from my answer? Are you truly analyzing my words or applying them to your own situation?" She blushed a little and didn't reply. "That's as good a reading as any, I suppose. But my freedom is power."

He gestured around them. "We're drinking tea that was prepared by a Two Star tea mistress in the second layer of the capital city of this kingdom. Millions would do anything to be in our places, billions dream of it but do nothing to accomplish this dream. It's power that gives us the privilege to do so.

"Sometimes, power is money; sometimes, it's status; sometimes, it's personal might. I have it all, and this power gives me freedom. The freedom to say anything to an esteemed tea mistress and have her respect my words instead of taking them as the random ramblings of an idiot. The freedom to say what I want to say with no one telling me otherwise. The freedom to create my clan, to go wherever I want, to pursue my ambitions.

"Decision-making is just a facet of my freedom, a consequence of my power. I would guess that you didn't see it because all your life, the power you had was borrowed. Currently, from me; previously, from the Arcane Circle; and before that, certainly from somewhere else. So for you, freedom is to decide among the choices given to you by the powers-that-be. And it's as good freedom as any. Like I told the tea mistress, a fish in the shoal can be as free as a mighty lone eagle, or a pack leader in my case, I guess. Defining freedom would be against the very concept of the word.

"Yours is the freedom that can only be found in the surety of being taken care of by someone powerful. Some troubles that would crush you otherwise, feel light and unimportant. There's nothing wrong with that, and I mean it wholeheartedly."

His last sentences explicitly defined religion and Lana's previous situation.

He could've given the tea mistress a different opinion on the feelings the tea gave him, but he had moved toward the concept of freedom for the benefit of everyone involved. Each woman would be affected differently by his words, and thus he carefully selected what to say to each, knowing the others would also hear it.

Yet the one he focused on the most was Lana. This whole outing was for her benefit. And his, of course, as he was still working on making her loyal to him. He knew from the beginning that it would be a challenge, but everything that had happened in the past days had increased the difficulty beyond his wildest estimates.

Lana was feeling betrayed by the one she trusted the most, someone who had been hierarchically above her, her goddess. The damage to her perception of those in power couldn't be easily repaired.

In fact, things were so dire that this was the only attempt he would make to mend her trust issues with softness. He wasn't very hopeful of it though. The Goddess of Light used softness to manipulate those below her, and he guessed he would need to prove himself different if he wanted Lana to view him differently.

He sighed and looked at her. "What do you think?"

She was biting her lower lip hard, almost enough to draw blood. Then, suddenly, she cried.

It startled him.

That wasn't what he had expected. He had expected anger. Although Tatou himself had long forgotten his anger towards Aaron, too naïve to understand the concept of holding grudges, Aaron expected her to hold to the feeling.

His reading of her was a young lady who had been raised to dutifully fulfill the expectations placed on her. Now that everything she knew was gone, only anger would've remained to protect her ego from the unfairness of the world, for unfairness defined her life. She, who had done as told time and time again, was betrayed by the ones she trusted the most!

She had directly told him that when he was asking about what had happened when she fainted.

What had changed?

Lana said nothing, she just hid her face using her hands and started sobbing uncontrollably. Alys looked pleadingly to Aaron, and when he nodded at her, she moved her chair closer to Lana and hugged the younger woman.

Aaron frowned.

It had been a very, very long time since he was so fundamentally wrong about someone. He waved to the waitress, dismissing her, and she bowed slightly before leaving. He looked at Lana like a puzzle he couldn't quite understand.

Then, while crying, she looked at him through her fingers, and he understood what was happening.

She was in love with him, and she was holding to that instead of her anger.

Previously, he had dismissed it as temporary, both because she had been mentally unstable and because he believed that her love for her brother would counter the feeling as soon as she was back to being herself.

But now Logan wasn't a factor anymore.

Instead of focusing on Aaron being a figure of power, and on the fear that it was just a matter of time until he discarded her after using her enough — as her parents and her goddess had done — she was focusing on how she felt about him.

She had said multiple times that the Goddess of Light was love, and she placed great importance on that feeling. Now, Lana's love for Aaron was the last thing protecting her mind from the breakdown he had expected. A love that she no longer would forbid herself from developing, because she didn't care as much for her parents as before. She resented them too.

But not Aaron.

The result of different feelings being directed at distinct figures of authority in her life was that he became the very last pillar supporting her current understanding of life and herself.

He had thought she would become an edgy teenager, hating everything and everyone just because. Instead, she had become a cute, enamored young woman who was allowing her heart to run free for the very first time in her life.

Aaron barely managed to stop himself from laughing. Hadn't he said twice that one shouldn't define freedom?

That was Lana's freedom.

The freedom to follow her heart.

The freshness of it in the middle of ploys from unknown people from all sides was refreshing. That she even kept her bright outlook on life after what she had just gone through was worthy of respect.

In fact, it was worth a lot of respect.

'Very well, Lana,' Aaron thought. 'I accept your freedom. But I can't be romantically involved with someone hierarchically below me in the same organization, that's against my morals. Would you leave my clan to allow me to court you?'

Now wasn't the time to ask her that. Merely suggesting her to leave the clan would make her feel like being abandoned again. But he also couldn't just ignore her feelings after deciding to accept them. So, he stood up, moved his chair close to her, and hugged her while she cried.

"Everything is going to be alright," he said softly. "I'm here for you."

Like last time when he had said he would help, she started crying even harder, desperately clinging to him.

He comforted her with utmost care.

Alys couldn't stop herself from feeling jealous. She knew her limits both in cultivation and in future prospects. Hoping to become the next emperor's wife was already a big enough dream. To ever touch the Patriarch's heart was way beyond her.

But Lana had done it.

Alys wasn't young, and she had lived through her fair share of relationship drama. Her experience allowed her to easily detect the shift in the way the Patriarch was treating Lana. It was subtle, but it was there.

Oh, to be young and have the world before oneself!

Oh, to have endless possibilities!

Oh, to be sweetly naïve!

Alys retreated from them and focused on drinking her tea and caressing Bella. She could feel the annoyance from the black panther. It wanted to hunt, to kill, to conquer. Instead, it was forced to be domesticated by Alys' wishes.

Unfortunately for the panther, Alys was also old enough to have lived through her fair share of unfair situations, enough to learn to accept it. She would bend the knee when needed, as the Patriarch had correctly assessed, but she would also boss those below her when allowed to do so.

This was simply the way of the world. The strong ruled, the weak obeyed. A day ago, Alys had been the weak beneath Bella — she had named the panther — and had almost been enslaved. Now, Bella was beneath Alys.

Alys didn't hold any grudges against the panther, but there was no lost sympathy either. After all, the beast had almost enslaved Alys. As the Patriarch had told the Psychotic Pigs with different words, what goes around comes around. She would withstand the bad the world threw at her and accept the good that she was gifted.

After a while, when it was clear the Patriarch wasn't in a hurry to leave the tea shop, Alys also started training her Space Energy. Her control attribute wasn't back to being fully healed yet, but it should be back to a hundred percent in a few days. She wanted to be prepared to become even better at the techniques taught by the Patriarch.

And now that she accepted that her Space Energy could interact with other energies, she was eager to improve her spell to detect them too.

Eventually, Lana stopped crying, then slept in his arms, half sitting. When she woke up a few hours later, her facial expression and body language revealed she was feeling much better.

"We have things to do in the Temple of Darkness. Do you think you're good enough to come?" Aaron asked softly.

She blushed when she looked at him and found his face so close to hers. She lowered her eyes to his lips for an instant, bit her own lips again, and nodded once. He smiled, caressed her head a little, then slowly retreated from her.

'Not yet,' he thought. 'Not while you're in my clan.'

He stood up, paid for the tea, then led them through the streets of Illyria, appreciating the evening's chilly breeze. The moon had just come out, and it wasn't even completely dark yet.

Alys walked to his left; the panther rested on her shoulder. Lana walked to his right, where he would have an easier time protecting her in case anything happened. She held Tatou in her arms.

The ex-priestess was walking closer to Aaron than usual. He would have to take care of her emotional dependence on him later, as it wasn't healthy. But for now, he reckoned it would be good for her to have his presence reassuring her.

Alys, on the other hand, was wisely keeping herself a little more distant. It wasn't much, a simple step away, but it showed her wisdom in reading the mood and acting appropriately.

After the soul contract had been forced upon it, the panther hadn't done anything suspicious. And Tatou was even showing affection for Aaron, certainly being influenced by Lana's feelings.

"There," Alys said, pointing at a small stone building close to the city entrance. It had no sign to give a hint on what it was. "That's the only publicly known Temple of Darkness in Illyria."