TaliaThe seventh lock is yours. It has always been yours. Your father put a name on it and then spent seven years trying to be the one who could open it.
You ask her what is behind it.
TaliaSomething we both want and neither of us can survive. So let's not, and let's win with six.
It is a betrayal of everything she has spent two cycles building, and she proposes it in the same tone she uses for wine.
By dawn the atrium is broken glass and she is standing in it holding out her hand, and for the first time she is not managing you.
TaliaI am going to be terrible at this. Stay anyway.