They began moving back toward the Gwennan to talk strategy.

Not retreating.

Regrouping.

Ray moved first, fury sharpening every step. Mezzo followed close behind, tail tense, jaw set. Arcade dragged his equipment crate with one hand and muttered darkly to C.H.I.P. under his breath. Plum kept glancing back at the cathedral doors as though she could force them open by journalistic hatred alone.

Diana Lockhart remained by the entrance.

Still as a statue.

The paladins watched her.

The clergy watched her.

Even the saints carved above the doors seemed to watch her.

For a moment, she stood beneath all that golden judgement and looked exactly like what she was supposed to be.

Supreme Paladin Commander.

Loyal servant of the Church.

Perfect blade in polished armour.

Then Diana lifted her Arcbracer.

Looked at the glowing screen.

And turned it off.

The little light died against her wrist.

Several paladins shifted.

Diana no longer seemed to care.

Ray stopped beside the van.

“What are you doing?”

Diana descended the steps slowly.

“What I should have done earlier.”

Silver’s brows lifted.

“How dramatic.”

Diana’s eyes cut to him.

Not angry.

Not frightened.

Finished.

“Be quiet.”

Silver’s mouth shut.

Not because he wanted it to.

Because something in Diana’s voice made it clear she was not asking for cooperation. She was choosing mercy by not striking him with the nearest halberd.

Diana reached the group.

“I was trying to prevent this,” she said.

Mezzo barked out a laugh.

It was short, sharp, and completely devoid of humour.

“Oh, brilliant. Fantastic job of it, by the way.”

“I know.”

Mezzo threw both hands out toward the cathedral.

“Do ye? Because from where I’m standing, Celeste is locked inside the giant holy death-box and we're all out here havin’ a lovely wee strategy meeting.”

“Mezzo,” Ray warned.

“No, no, I'm curious.”

He pointed at Diana.

“Preventing it how? Because if this was the successful version, I’d hate to see the bad one.”

That quiet answer stole some of the heat from the moment.

Diana looked back at the cathedral, and for the first time the tiredness in her face cracked through the armour completely.

“I’ve been looking into the Church for years.”

Ray’s eyes narrowed.

“For years?”

“Yes.”

Diana’s tail flicked once.

“I was close. Close enough to know something was wrong. Close enough to know the Inquisition was hiding prisoners, records, relics—things that should have gone to the Council. But not close enough to prove it.”

Arcade looked up sharply.

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

“I was afraid the Knights would ruin it.”

Mezzo’s expression hardened.

Diana accepted the look without flinching.

“Inexperienced. Undisciplined. Loud. You had been operating for barely any time at all, and virtually every investigation involving you became a public emergency within forty-eight hours.”

Topsy opened her mouth.

Then closed it.

Because unfortunately, several memories supported this claim.

Diana continued, voice tightening.

“I hoped Silver might turn the tide.”

Silver blinked.

For once, caught off guard.

Diana looked at him now.

“An Arcturus. A nobleman. A man the Church could not easily dismiss. Someone Lady Umbranox might have listened to if matters became dangerous.”

Her eyes dropped briefly.

“After today, I understand that judgement was misplaced.”

Silver’s expression went cold at once.

“How comforting to be reduced to a disappointing strategic asset. Do let me know if you’d like me catalogued alphabetically.”

Diana did not rise to it.

“They framed my daughter.”

The words cut through him neatly.

Silver stopped.

Everyone did.

Ray’s anger shifted into something more careful.

“Crystal?”

Diana’s face tightened at the name.

“Yes.”

She looked toward the sealed doors again.

“Crystal discovered that the Church was blackmailing me. She believed that if she could find proof and deliver it to Lady Umbranox, the pressure against me would cease.”

Her voice roughened.

“Now she is imprisoned by the Inquisition.”

A terrible silence followed.

Diana swallowed.

“And now Celeste is too.”

Ray stared at her.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

Diana’s composure cracked a little further.

“Because I am a desperate mother.”

Mezzo’s jaw clenched.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is the only honest one I have.”

Diana looked at him.

“At first, I thought if the Church took an interest in you—if Hybrids were arrested, questioned, moved through the same hidden channels—then perhaps I could trace where they sent you.”

The air went viciously still.

Mezzo took one step toward her.

“You hoped we’d get arrested?”

Diana did not look away.

“Yes.”

Ray’s face went dark.

Topsy’s ears flattened.

Plum lowered her notebook.

Diana’s voice dropped.

“I told myself you were capable. That you were already in danger. That if anyone could survive long enough for me to follow the trail, it would be the Knights.”

Mezzo’s voice came out low.

“That is one of the worst excuses I have ever heard.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think ye do.”

He pointed toward the cathedral.

“She survives things, so apparently that means everybody gets another bloody turn trying to break her!”

Diana closed her eyes.

Mezzo’s voice shook now, not with fear.

With fury.

“You don’t get to wrap that in motherhood and make it clean.”

Diana opened her eyes again.

“I’m not trying to.”

Her voice was quieter.

“I am saying I am sorry.”

She drew in a breath that did not steady her much.

“And I am desperate.”

For a moment, no one answered.

Then Diana said, “Crystal and her brother were the only two of my litter I was allowed to keep.”

Her voice was almost flat now.

As if emotion would destroy the words if she let it touch them.

“I was too protective. I know that. I watched every door. Every friend. Every tutor. Every Church function. I thought if I kept them close enough, watched them closely enough, nothing would reach them.”

She looked back at the cathedral.

“But the Church was already inside the walls.”

Ray’s anger did not disappear.

But it changed shape.

Diana turned back to them.

“I am asking for your help.”

Mezzo looked ready to say something brutal.

Ray lifted a hand slightly, stopping him.

Not forgiving.

Just stopping.

“If helping you helps Celeste,” Ray said, “then we help.”

Diana nodded once.

“That is fair.”

Silver, who had been silent too long, folded his arms.

“There may be a conspiracy,” he admitted.

Arcade stared at him.

“Oh, good. He’s joining the conversation from yesterday.”

Silver ignored him.

“But Celeste’s power is still suspicious.”

Diana looked at him.

Really looked at him.

“What is more important?” she asked.

Silver’s eyes narrowed.

Diana stepped closer.

“What is more important, Arcturus?”

Her voice hardened.

“Your suspicion?”

A pause.

“Or saving Caerfaen?”

The words landed hard enough that even Ray did not interrupt.

Silver’s jaw worked once.

No answer came.

Arcade, wisely deciding now was not the time to let the rich people eat each other just yet, turned to Diana Lockhart.

“What exactly are they using on Celeste?”

Diana hesitated.

Up close, now that the formal stiffness had cracked completely, she looked tired. Not weak. Not uncertain. Just tired in the way people did when trapped between duty and conscience for so long that both had started to rot.

“It’s called a confession array,” she said at last. “A mana device calibrated to suppress deception. When it’s active, the subject cannot lie.”

Arcade stared at her.

“So,” he said slowly, “it’s basically a weaponised truth machine.”

Diana winced, because that was apparently the vulgar phrasing she could not technically dispute.

“Yes.”

Ray let out a sharp, humourless laugh and dragged a hand down her face.

“That is almost art. The Church spends centuries preaching that mana is dangerous, corrupting, unnatural if the wrong people touch it—then slaps a mana torture relic on Celeste the second they feel nervous. Gorgeous. No notes.”

Diana’s tail twitched once.

“It dates back to the Mana Wars,” she said. “At the time, it was considered necessary.”

“By who?” Ray snapped. “Fanatics with a paperwork fetish?”

“The Inquisition still uses them.”

That cooled the air all over again.

Even Plum stopped writing for half a breath.

Ray’s relief that Umbranox knew what was happening remained, but it had taken on a sharper edge now. This was worse than overzealous questioning. Worse than Church politics.

If the Inquisition had tools in play, then Celeste had not been brought in for clarification.

She had been brought in as a possible threat.

Pitch, who had been quiet up until now in the dangerous way he always got when fear started turning into strategy, suddenly swore under his breath.

“Oh, no.”

Everyone turned.

Pitch raked a hand through his hair, eyes wide with dawning horror.

“No, no, no, that’s bad. That is very bad.”

Ray stepped toward him.

“What?”

Pitch looked at them like they were all missing the obvious apocalypse standing right in front of them.

“It’s Celeste.”

“That is, in fact, who we are discussing,” Arcade said.

Pitch ignored him completely.

“She can’t lie properly on a good day. If they put her in a truth array, she’s going to tell them everything.”

Silver folded his arms, trying to reclaim some sense of order.

“If she has nothing dangerous to hide—”

Pitch wheeled on him.

“She has evidence,” he snapped. “On the Church. On Zygurr. On Godiad. On all the weird half-buried things we’ve found that we have not yet sorted into safe political categories, thank you very much.”

That hit.

Ray swore softly.

Plum’s eyes widened.

“Right. Yes. That would be… less than ideal.”

Pitch was pacing now, words coming faster.

“She knows about the labs, the false reports, the weird mana signatures, the stuff linked to the Church archives, the data leads, the—stars, she might tell them the entire working theory if they ask the wrong question in the right order.”

Topsy, who had been listening with her head tilted, raised a finger.

“Counterpoint.”

No one liked the brightness in her voice.

Topsy smiled in a way that would have been adorable in any less cursed context.

“Celeste is our lovable blonde aspie.”

There was a beat.

Then Topsy continued, utterly sincere.

“She will tell her truths.”

Pitch stopped pacing.

“…What does that mean?”

“It means,” Topsy said, counting on her fingers, “if they ask a direct question, she will answer honestly, yes. But it might not be the useful honesty they’re hoping for.”

Ray blinked.

“Go on.”

Topsy rocked back on her heels.

“She might tell them she thinks stained-glass saints look haunted. Or that she once cried because a moth landed on her pastry. Or that some priests have very untrustworthy eyebrows.”

Plum coughed into her fist.

Arcade made a strangled noise that might have been laughter.

Topsy warmed to the topic instantly.

“They’ll ask, ‘What do you know about Godiad?’ and she’ll maybe answer, ‘Their building smells wrong and I don’t like the tiles.’ Which is true. Or they’ll ask, ‘Who are you?’ and she’ll say something devastatingly sincere like, ‘I’m trying very hard.’”

Mezzo, despite everything, let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

Topsy nodded solemnly.

“Interrogating Celeste is like shaking a glitter jar. You will get truth. It just may be deeply inappropriate truth.”

That, bizarrely, helped.

Not enough.

Not by a long shot.

But enough that Mezzo’s shoulders came down by half an inch instead of staying up around his ears.

“Right,” he muttered. “That is… actually a little comforting.”

“Glad to be of service,” said Topsy.

They gathered in tighter then, all instinct and urgency and barely contained fury, heads bent toward one another while the cathedral loomed above like an enormous golden lie.

“All right,” Ray said. “Ways in.”

Plum was first, naturally.

“There’s the obvious dramatic method,” she said, already flipping to a clean page. “Cause a public incident at the main doors, create enough noise that someone important comes out, then force the issue.”

“Terrible,” said Arcade.

“Thank you. Alternatively, service entrance. Cathedrals this size always have one. Supply access, lower kitchens, archive routes, clergy passages.”

Pitch nodded once.

“Shadow-jump gets me partway if I can anchor.”

“Drainage line,” Arcade said, glancing up toward the force field emitters. “Old places like this always pretend they don’t have practical infrastructure, but they do. Water has to go somewhere.”

Mezzo cracked his knuckles.

“Or we could just start punchin’ paladins till the Church gets collaborative.”

“Tempting,” Ray said.

“Suboptimal,” Hughes muttered.

Topsy bounced once.

“I could fake a medical emergency.”

Plum turned to her.

“Would it be fake?”

Topsy considered this.

“Emotionally real, structurally false.”

“Good enough.”

Arcade looked at Diana.

“You know the layout. Fastest route to wherever they’d take her.”

Every eye turned to the Supreme Paladin Commander.

Diana stood very still.

Duty warred visibly across her face.

Years of service.

Oaths.

Rank.

Institution.

Faith.

All the awful machinery that told decent people to stand still while bad things happened properly.

Then she looked at the cathedral doors.

Then at the team.

Then, briefly, at Silver.

Whatever she found there did not inspire loyalty.

Her mouth tightened.

“The lower west corridor connects to the older confession halls,” she said quietly. “There’s a maintenance door beneath the side transept. It should be sealed.”

Arcade perked up immediately.

“Should be?”

“It is old,” Diana said. “And the lock was blessed by men who thought engineering was a vulgar hobby.”

Arcade’s grin was feral.

“My favourite kind of lock.”

Ray studied Diana for a second.

“And the guards?”

Diana exhaled.

Then she stepped back from the path.

“Go,” she said.

Mezzo blinked.

“That easy?”

She gave him a look.

“Do not mistake conscience for ease.”

Then, more quietly, with all the force of a decision that would cost her later:

“I will pretend I didn’t see you.”

Ray gave one sharp nod.

“You’re a gem, Lockhart.”

“I am absolutely not.”

“Closest thing we’ve got.”

Diana did not argue.

The plan snapped into shape after that with the speed of people who had run out of time and knew it.

Arcade grabbed his kit.

Plum tucked her notebook away with visible sorrow.

Topsy stuffed something unidentifiable into one cheek pouch “for later tactical reasons.”

Mezzo rolled his shoulders like he was getting ready for a bar fight in a very expensive cathedral.

Silver stood at the edge of them all.

Furious.

Silent.

And suddenly useless in a way no one had ever dared imply to his face before today.

No one asked his opinion.

No one looked to him for permission.

For the first time since arriving, the shape of the team had rearranged itself without him.

Ray turned as she started up the side approach.

“We get her, we get out, and if any priest tries to stop me, I become a theological problem.”

Mezzo immediately pointed toward the side transept.

“Right! Rescue mission! Love a rescue mission. Moving on.”

Above them, bells began to toll somewhere deep in the cathedral.

Heavy. 

Slow.

Ominous.

Inside, Celeste was still alone.