We gave Skyfall City one hour.
Kane called it blackmail. He promised to restore the light and the defences if the residents handed over me, Styx and Leon.
People in several districts agreed.
A crowd gathered at the academy gates. They were not fighters from the Li family. Ordinary residents demanded that we stop risking the city for a principle that would not feed their children or keep the beasts beyond the walls.
I went out to them without the swarm.
A man wearing a medical armband pointed to his daughter.
"A healing beast keeps her heart beating. If the bond disappears, she'll die."
I had nothing I could promise him.
"We will preserve voluntary bonds," Mira said.
"And if the beast leaves?"
She said nothing.
Lily did not cut the broadcast. The city saw this conversation too.
Kane was waiting for me to call other people's fear cowardice.
"You have the right to refuse," I said. "Styx will put the question to each of you separately. No one has to give the answer I want."
"Then what is all this for?"
I looked at the closed gates, beyond which beasts were breaking their own bodies at the Crown's command.
"So that the answer belongs to you at all."
The crowd did not disperse. But neither did they storm the gates.
For the next hour, the city prepared for the bonds to be broken.
Lenny assigned students to the hospitals. Freed transport beasts were given open routes out of the city. The dyers connected hand pumps. Cole sent soldiers to the outer wall. Leon gave the codes to the family storehouses to the districts the Li family had kept in debt for years.
Even the people who wanted to hand me over began storing water.
When the hour was over, Styx settled on my palm.
Mira warned us once more:
"The full question will pass through your memories. The Crown will use everything you are afraid to lose."
Below, I saw Lily, Leon, Cole and people whose names I did not know.
"Begin."
Styx opened the bond.
And Kane let us in first.
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