Chapter 410: 410. Everything Feel Into My Trap, Now I’ll Execute It Slowly While Enjoying It

Elizabeth crouched down and picked up the largest fragment. She examined the jagged edge and noted the three smaller pieces still scattered on the ground. After a moment, she looked up at Alexander, her expression shifting from neutral to something far more intense.

"Alexander," she said.

Alexander looked at her.

"Tell me," she said, with the precise, controlled tone of someone choosing each word with immense care, "that you did not just drop the Key to the Underlayer on a stone canyon floor after we spent three days retrieving it."

"I... I... c-c-can explain!" Alexander said.

"Please," Elizabeth said. "...do explain with some logical twist in it."

"I-I-I stumbled...!" Alexander said. "I was carrying Veylor, and I stumbled...! And it was in my other hand, and I—"

"You stumbled," Elizabeth said.

"It was an accident."

"After everything that has happened in the last three days," Elizabeth said, her precise voice conveying significant meaning despite its lack of volume, "including the canyon, the chamber, the Legion, Apollo, and everything else, you stumbled."

"Elizabeth—"

"You were holding it in one hand," she said.

"I-I know," Alexander said.

"One hand," she said again.

Mireya had not moved from where she was standing when the Key broke. She was looking at the fragments on the ground, and then she was looking at Rex, and Rex was still watching the middle distance with the mild expression of someone who had nothing in particular to comment on.

She knew. Rex could also see that she knew, or that she had a version of knowing that was close enough to functional, a specific suspicion that she couldn’t prove and couldn’t let go of.

She looked at him with the expression of someone who has just watched a second thing happen that they weren’t prepared for and is doing the math on whether the two things are connected.

Rex met her gaze briefly, with nothing in his expression at all, and then looked back at Alexander and Elizabeth.

Mireya didn’t say anything.

Rex watched this from approximately four meters away with the neutral expression he maintained when observing situations he had produced and was now observing the outcomes of. The broken Key was exactly what he’d needed to happen.

The Key must not reach Aethelgard in one piece, nor should it be examined by Elizabeth, Valentina, or anyone else within the Apostle network’s research framework. Additionally, it must not be transferred to any group—be it Legion, Underlayer, second stratum, or any other—in a form that could be utilized.

Destroying it while standing in a canyon surrounded by people who had just been through a significant engagement required misdirection, not effort, and Alexander’s genuine desire to show Elizabeth the Key had provided the misdirection at precisely the right moment.

Elizabeth stood up with the largest fragment and looked at it in her palm.

"It’s completely non-functional in this state," she said. "The dimensional compression requires the full structural integrity..."

"A broken Key is just compressed material." She closed her fingers around the fragment. "Everything we came here for."

"B-But hey... at least we got Apollo back," Alexander said. "He’s our hope to get to the Underlayer in some way..."

"Yes," Elizabeth said.

"And Veylor too! And all the expedition members are in tact!"

"Yes," Elizabeth said again, with the tone of someone who is acknowledging a correct statement without being particularly consoled by it.

Alexander glanced at the shattered pieces scattered on the ground before shifting his gaze to Elizabeth. After a moment, he looked back down at the fragments again.

"I’m sorry," he said.

Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment. The precision in her expression faded, replaced by a different kind of control—one that comes from a person who loves someone while also feeling genuine frustration towards them.

"I know," she said; this did not signify forgiveness or absolution, nor was it the end of this conversation, but it clearly marked the conclusion of this particular moment.

She put the fragment in her pocket. Then she looked at the group with the brisk, practiced efficiency of someone who has processed an outcome and is now moving forward from it.

"For now... we need to get Apollo and the others to Drevash before dark," she said. "Two carriages, priority on the unconscious."

"Everyone who can walk helps with loading." She looked at Rex. "Can Apollo be moved safely?"

"Yeah," Rex said.

"Then let’s move," she said.

"That wasn’t an accident...!" Mireya said.

The group paused.

She was still looking at Rex. The words had been spoken at a lower volume than the rest of the conversation, reflecting the specific tone of someone saying something they know they cannot prove.

"The Key..." she said. "That wasn’t an accident!"

"Mireya..." Talyra said.

"Alexander stumbled," Mireya insisted. "He stumbled at precisely the right moment and at the exact angle for the Key to strike the specific stress point that caused it to break!"

"After everything Rex said about not letting it reach the wrong hands." She looked at Elizabeth. "That was not an accident."

Elizabeth looked at Rex.

"Alexander was carrying Veylor and holding the Key in one hand after a full day of physical work," Rex said. "The ground was uneven, and his footing was tired."

"Don’t forget that he ran towards her to try and impress her."

He held Elizabeth’s gaze. "People stumble if they act carelessly."

"They do," Elizabeth acknowledged, her tone reflecting her usual ambivalence. She often spoke in that manner, avoiding any firm stance on the matter.

"He also," Mireya said, "killed Kregg and Virella after they surrendered and gave you a version of events that left that out, and now the Key is broken, and he has the ring and the compact document and the name of the Balance Keeper!"

"And every piece of evidence that might complicate his account is either dead or destroyed." Her voice was controlled, and she was making the argument the way someone makes an argument they know is accurate and are watching not land. "I’m asking someone in this group to hear that."

The group was quiet.

Aisella was looking at the ground. Talyra was looking at Mireya with a careful expression, indicating that she respected the speaker but was neither going to contradict them nor confirm their statements.

Nerith had not moved and had not spoken and she was looking at Rex with the amber leaves in the deep-signal stillness.

’This fucking ice bitch...!’

Alexander said, "Mireya."

"You’ve had a very bad afternoon by taking an electrical discharge to the back."

"You watched things happen in that canyon that I can’t imagine watching." He paused. "I’m not saying you’re wrong."

"I’m saying that you are not in a state right now where your read on a situation will be reliable, and I don’t think you’d disagree with that under normal circumstances."

"I know what I saw!" Mireya said.

"I believe that you believe that," Alexander said. "That’s not the same thing as it being accurate."

Mireya stared at him.

"He saved your life," Alexander said. "He saved Apollo’s Veylor’s life."

"He came into that canyon alone and came out with three people and the Key, and the fact that the Key subsequently broke up with me does not change what he walked in there and did." He paused. "I’m not telling you to stop being suspicious of him."

"I’m telling you that the picture you’re painting right now has a huge piece of evidence pointing the other direction, and the person who can account for that piece of evidence is Rex."

Mireya looked at Rex.

Rex said nothing.

"You don’t have anything to add," she said.

"I gave my account," Rex said. "Adding to it because you’ve asked a second time doesn’t make it more accurate."

Mireya clenched her fists. She looked at Elizabeth, who was watching the exchange with the professional attention she brought to most things and whose face was doing the filing she did when she was storing information she hadn’t finished categorizing.

"I want it on record," Mireya said. "For what I saw...! I want it on record that I said it!"

"It’s on record," Elizabeth said. "I heard you."

Mireya nodded once, tightly. Then she turned and walked toward the nearest carriage and got in, and the door closed behind her with a sound that was not quite a slam but was in that direction.

The group stood in the remaining silence for a moment.

"Right," Alexander said, and his voice had the specific quality of someone choosing to move forward because the alternative was staying in a place that wasn’t going to produce anything useful. "Carriages."

Rex helped load Apollo into the first carriage with the practical, unhurried competence of someone who had nothing to feel guilty about, which he didn’t.

He had the ring in his pocket. He had the document from Kregg’s jacket.

He held the name Celestina Von Starlight in a part of his mind dedicated to high-priority strategic threads. It sat alongside everything he knew about the Von Starlight family structure and the way that information altered his understanding of several goals he had been pursuing.

He had managed the destruction of the Key, attributing it to an accident witnessed by everyone present, which would leave Alexander feeling guilty for a considerable time—an outcome that served as useful collateral.

Additionally, he was dealing with Valentina’s ties to a thirty-year-old organization focused on eliminating reincarnators. This situation would require careful handling and was likely to be the most complex challenge he faced since arriving in Erosyne.

He settled into the carriage beside Mireya, who looked at him once and then looked away, and the carriage began moving toward Drevash and the journey back, and Rex looked out the window at the canyon receding behind them.

Somewhere in the front carriage, Elizabeth was sitting with a fragment of the broken Key in her pocket, and Alexander was sitting beside her trying to find the right thing to say and not finding it.

Rex almost smiled at that. He kept it internal, like he kept most things that mattered.