Milaro let himself fall back onto the couch, heaving out a massive sigh. Full Council meetings always took it out of him. He much preferred the smaller crisis council they'd convened when the Library couldn't find any compatible affinity signatures.

The members of the latter were people he trusted infinitely.

Mostly…

Even if he was second guessing himself about everyone right now.

"You realize," Harish said, butting into the King's thoughts, "you probably could have handled that a little better."

Milaro shrugged. "You know, I really don’t care. It was eye-opening, realizing that Daskin may not be the ally we always thought he was. He's always been a bit of a loner, never overly friendly to any of us. But this, this is just some food for thought. I don't think I have doubts about any of the others, to be honest. You know, we're going to have to analyze everyone, suspect everyone, and hope we're wrong in 90% of the cases."

Harish chuckled.

Milaro raised an eyebrow. "Where'd your better half go?"

"She's gone back to the Library. She was running some tests with Cadre." Harish shook his head. "Frankly, she didn't even want to leave there to come for the council meeting, but I convinced her to do so."

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet... you know she'll get something out of you."

Milaro did, in fact, know that. But the fact still brought a smile to his face.

There was a light knock on the door. Milaro sat up so that it didn't look like he had just fallen into the couch, even though he felt like it and wanted to. Nishpa opened the door and poked her head around. She was very similar in coloring to her niece. The golden hue of her hair was lighter, more like a smattering of early morning sunlight than the deep golden hair that Geneva had. Her skin also had a polished hue to it, more golden pearl-like than faintly gold like the precious metal. She didn't choose to wear red like Geneva either. Instead, she wore a bright indigo, a striking blue-purple that offset everything.

She had more of a mezzo-soprano voice too when she spoke too. Melodic in a lulling way. "Milaro, how long are you going to pretend that you're absolutely okay?"

Milaro raised an eyebrow and chuckled. "I can never pull one over on you, can I?" he said, conscious of the relief he could hear in his own voice.

"No, and I don't know why you’d want to." Nishpa hovered into the room and positioned herself on the coffee table to look him directly in the eye as he sat. "You do understand that you hold a lot of the council's responsibilities in the palm of your hand. Not to mention you have your own lands to worry about. You must take care of your health. And right now, well, you're a bit of a wreck, aren't you?"

Milaro grumbled slightly, even though he was secretly grateful for the fact that somebody called him on his own bullshit. Lissenia had done so for thousands of years. He felt a pang of loss at her memory. He missed his wife.

"Seriously," Nishpa said, settling down and brushing off her outfit as if there were specks of dust on it. "You know I'm supposed to take care of you. I promised her I would."

"Well, you've been doing a pretty crappy job of it, haven't you?" Milaro muttered only half serious.

Nishpa chuckled. It was like a silvery bell went off in the room. "Oh, I'm so glad to see you still have that same sense of humor I warned her away from. You're no fun."

"No, you're no fun." Milaro sighed.

But the Fae Firionas grew serious. "Okay, so what's all this about? Why are you..." She narrowed her eyes. They did the same thing that Lynx did when he connected to other parts of the system while multitasking.

Only Milaro knew that Nishpa wasn't looking up information. Instead, she was basically giving him a brain scan. She paused and blinked. "You've really messed some stuff up in there."

Milaro sighed. He was completely and utterly aware that he had been somewhat complacent when assisting Quinn at first. While he'd originally suspected her to be their experiment, he hadn't been completely sure. Given the passage of time, and the pure improbabilities... Her having such similar abilities to him, despite being unsure of how their experiment applied the distilled essences... it took him quite by surprise.

"So how did you do that? Tell me before I get angry and just read your mind." Nishpa was becoming irritated.

Milaro raised an eyebrow at her. "You know, you can't get in beyond my defenses."

"Are you kidding me?" Nishpa said. "Have you seen the tatters of your defenses lately?"

"What do you mean?" Milaro paused. "Damn it," he said. "I didn't... Is this... Oh, no."

"What is it this time, Milaro?" Harish said, as if this times were a regular occurrence.

"It's just... Kajaro's mind bomb for Quinn, for want of a better word, was well placed. We had to contain it to an extent where when it exploded in on itself, it didn't take her entire mind with it. I didn't realize it had nicked my defenses as well. Did it let him in?" Milaro muttered to himself, suddenly a hint of panic in his voice.

He took a second to center himself, only just realizing how tired he'd become. His energy reserves, magic reserves, and hell -- his mental reserves were all running low. If he didn't take the time to recuperate, he was going to put a lot more than just himself in danger.

"I have to check," Milaro said. He raised his legs up and crossed them and sat, eyes closed, taking in deep breaths while he focused his attention inward to himself and all of his defenses. The thing was, Milaro's mental defenses didn't only encompass his own mind. They were directly linked to the entire Areiltháhnish defenses. It was simply the way the Areiltháhnish king approached everything. A familial bond with basic mind magic superpowers that made sure that the entire society remained protected.

And, where possible, extended out to protect anyone and everyone he could.

He was shocked to find the crack. A crack that Nishpa saw while he himself remained oblivious. While it raised concern that he hadn't noticed it himself, he did realize that Nishpa was one of the foremost experts in mind medicine. Still, he opened his mind with a sigh and began to repair the crack. It didn't try to resist him. There was no residue around it. There was no hint that anything had escaped into his mind. Simply that there was a blemish there to begin with was worrisome enough.

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One that got past his usually meticulous maintenance too.

He paused and opened one eye, looking directly at Nishpa. "I don't suppose you'd fancy a look in just to double check with me that I haven't accidentally allowed anybody leeway?"

"I thought you'd never ask. I was going to do it anyway." She smiled gently at him, not voicing the danger implied in Milaro's request.

He took both of her tiny hands in one of his, the connection solidifying when she peered into his mind.

Her presence felt less like a runaway freight train, which was a very accurate description of Quinn’s, and more like a gentle summer breeze with pale golden lights trickling through. It soothed everywhere it touched, and he was grateful he hadn't realized quite how stressed he'd become since the Library reopened, since he'd discovered the potential conspiracy behind why the Library had closed in the first place, and since he'd realized that if they couldn't protect Quinn until she came into her own powers properly, everything in the universe was still doomed, and the experiment meant nothing.

After all, they didn't have the time to do it again.

Careful, Nishpa's voice spoke into his mind. You're walking the edge pretty finely here, my friend. You can't take everything on your shoulders. Haven't we discussed this before?

"There's just suddenly so much to do. I wasn't expecting this to blow up to this extent." Milaro felt whiny, but it also released an unbelievable pressure in his mind to simply tell someone else the extent of things.

On the bright side, we have the Library back and you should be patting yourself on the back for that accomplishment, because without your tenacity we wouldn't have it back. So just take it easy. Your grandson's depending on you.

Milaro let out a soft, low sigh. Well, so is my other son, but he's neither here nor there right now. I just...

Hasn't he come back? I mean, it's been a decade. He's technically in line for the throne.

Technically, I'd prefer to give it to Malakai right now.

Nishpa tsked under her breath. Ah, never mind. I am going to ignore that for now and you need to be quiet. I've almost got this.

Milaro went silent again, letting his thoughts simply flow. But they kept returning to the Library and who the hell partnered with the Serpensiril? He had suspicions, especially based on the new map information he'd received from Lynx. He didn't like any of it. People who'd been their allies for hundreds of thousands of years. Had they ever really been allies? He couldn't be sure anymore. Finally, he felt Nishpa's presence wane and disappear.

He finished patching up the crack in his mind, refreshed his entire network of mental protections and finally opened his eyes again.

"Oh, that's much better," Nishpa said, scanning him once again. "Now you look almost like the Milaro I know, except for the obvious preoccupation. Stop letting it get to you, we'll figure it out."

"But we didn't, Nishpa. We let it get to a stage, without even realizing it, that the Library had to shut down. We had no solution, no other way to perform the filtration the universe literally needs. To top it off, now it seems as though, well, look at it," he gestured around vaguely. "People we'd never have suspected in a million years may have been pretending for a million years to be our allies. This is not a good thing."

"Milaro, you need to stop jumping to conclusions," Nishpa said. Harish grunted his approval.

"I'm calm, I'm just frustrated. This isn't how it was supposed to go."

"Well, how was it supposed to go, Milaro?" she asked, crossing her arms. "You tell me. How was this world supposed to go?"

"Well, everybody was supposed to just want to learn magic and do good with it, and like sunshine and lollipops." He bit off his sarcasm and continued softly. "But this is so much bigger than that."

"It is. But you know, I've already dispatched some, shall we say, observers. It's okay. Daskin won't get away with anything if he's one of them."

"But won't he notice?"

"No, he won't notice what I've done. He rarely notices anything not integrally tied to rock formations." Nishpa winked at Milaro.

"Then I look forward to your report. Or not. I'm hoping it eliminates him as a threat."

"Either way, there'll be some elimination." This time she grinned, and it held a positively sinister air.

"You know, Nishpa, I try to take you seriously all the time, but that line coming from you is just adorable."

"How many times have I told you not to call me adorable?" She stomped her foot on the table for emphasis.

"A lot," he said and smiled. "Thank you, my friend, for checking up on me and making me feel better."

"Do you think, Milaro, that this Librarian would be eager to see me? We did so much work to bring her here." She smiled a little sadly.

"What do you think Daskin would do if he knew what we had done to bring a Librarian to the Library?" Milaro asked suddenly.

Nishpa paused, giving her answer some real thought. "I’m not sure. After all, it was only a few of us who did it."

"Yeah, it was only a few of us who did it. Nobody ever likes to go and speak with the Core. It has a way of looking into your soul and that medicine is hard on your body. I guess we'd have found out sooner if he was an ally or a traitor. I'm not wrong, right?" Milaro said. "I mean, it was pretty weird the way he acted in today's meeting."

"Oh, no, you definitely weren't wrong," Harish said. "Even Siliqua noticed it. Sometimes she can be oblivious, especially when she's thinking about new ways to apply specific technologies."

Milaro stood and began pacing around his antechamber. "Okay, well, I'm going to need some help. I can't expect the Librarian to do everything. She's new. She's got what -- 13,000 or 14,000 books that have been overdue for 500 years and need to be returned. She has, I think, five more branches to open. She has to figure out what to do with a Serpensiril hostage they've got. Not to mention, she needs to learn more books, get more magic, gain more power." He paused in frustration at the list. "I can't give her more to do. The list is huge. You don't even understand. Plus, she's got to go see my daughter-in-law."

"Oh, wow. She's got to go and see Arnekai?" Nispha asked, her voice trembling ever so slightly. "That is, oh, are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Well, it has to be a good idea. Malakai's going with her, luckily."

"Are you sure that's luckily?" Nishpa asked incredulously. "He gets on with his mother about as well as dry grass and a spark."

"Well, I mean, you're not wrong,"Milaro said, feeling somewhat defeated right now. "Look, there's nothing I can do. She has her heart set on solving 5,000 problems. The thing is, I don't want her to know that there's 5,010, so how about we just take the 10 off her?"

"Okay, what's your plan," Nishpa said, "and I promise I won't let Geneva know. She’s currently not in a good state. The discovery of the Esposians and the subsequent inability to make their ailments magically disappear has thrown her for a loop. She’s been tending to them in their homeland for weeks now. They've been infected for what I believe is centuries. That particular settlement was practically wiped out, or controlled. We can't allow this to happen again. So what do you propose, Milaro? You have our full backing." Her words had lost their playfulness. She was serious now.

"Quinn will need to speak to the Esposians at some stage, likely soon. I'd like to have that organized for her so that she has to do as little of the work as possible."

"And what should we do? Not everybody is aware of the Council. Most people think it's a myth." Nishpa said.

Milaro shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, but you're also one of the elders of the Firionas Fae, and so I would think you should be able to pull some rank there. Plus, I mean, it's not like you can't drop my name too. "

"Very well. I'll start looking into it and applying a bit more pressure than I have been. I'm extremely concerned because even with my healing abilities, it's taking these Esposians a lot longer to recover than I would have thought." Nispha sounded worried. "Their torment runs deeper and we will make someone pay for it as soon as I know who to target."

Milaro nodded solemnly. "But for now, let's not let her know that either."

"Very well." Nishpa inclined her head and launched into the air. "I'll be in touch."

Milaro watched one of his oldest friends leave, his mind overrun with the sheer magnitude of work they had to do. He was grateful to have her in his life, and yet concerned that he somehow hadn't detected the crack in his mental defenses before she did.