The owner's seal rose from the base of the Crown.
The white circle fit in my palm. Within it lay the right to rewrite any contract in the city.
The System showed me what I could do before making the final decision.
Cancel the debts.
Restore the beasts' former bodies.
Restore the memories lost through the bond with Styx.
I saw Brutus's face. The Crown assembled it from the imprint of his death, Arden's memories and the archive records. Then came the door of a room in the slums, blue, with a crack beside the handle. The sky appeared again over my first hunt.
Then the System offered to bring back my parents.
Not resurrect them. Create exact copies from laboratory records, traces of the contract and my own memory. They would know my name, remember the egg and speak in voices I had barely heard as a child.
I did not dismiss the offer.
Styx lay beside the seal. The white light showed her future forms: the Queen of Scarlet Wings, a united swarm, new clutches, a body that would no longer fit inside any cage.
She reached towards the image.
"Do you want your wings back?"
An image of flight came to me.
"Your voice?"
My name in her old voice.
"The swarm?"
Thousands of answers at once. Not a command but a presence she now lacked.
I wanted my memories back too. I wanted to hear my mother without interference and remember the colour of the eyes of the man we had killed in the alley. I wanted to keep at least the System's threat assessments, so no one would ever die again because a decision came too slowly.
Kane lay beside the throne, pressing a hand to his wound.
"Keep the seal until morning," he said. "Listen to the city. They'll ask for it themselves."
Kane was right.
The shared channel was already full of pleas to keep the dome in place, sustain the hospitals and finish allocating the water. The people did not know the seal could be destroyed. They saw light after a long night and were afraid of being left in darkness again.
Lily came onto the channel.
"What do you see?"
"A way to keep everything working."
"And the price?"
"That too."
She did not say the city would cope. She could not promise that.
"The decision is still yours," Lily said. "The Crown has already made that a fact. All I can do is ask you not to mistake fear for consent."
The seal issued a warning:
"Destruction of ownership rights is irreversible. Accumulated skills, restored data and higher forms will be lost. Stability of the city network will decrease."
Styx touched the image of her wings, then looked at my hand.
I opened my palm.
She could have stayed beside the seal. She could have shown me that she did not agree to lose herself for the city again.
Styx slowly crawled over to me.
Not because she no longer wanted her wings.
She brought that desire with her.
I placed my thumb on the white circle. Styx drove her stinger into the opposite edge.
Kane raised himself.
"At the first attack, they'll build another Crown."
"Maybe."
"Then why?"
I looked at the hands of the people beyond the white wall. Leon supported the dragon. Cole bandaged the fighter at the gates. Mira counted the remaining medicine by hand. They were all working more slowly than the Crown could.
"So your next command doesn't become mine."
We pressed down.
The seal cracked.
The Crown tried to preserve at least the System prompts. It offered assessments, the names of forms, my memories of my parents and safe control limited to times of crisis.
I kept pressing.
Styx did not withdraw her stinger.
The white circle split apart.
The lights went out throughout the tower.
The System vanished without a final message.
With it went the hearts of others that had rested in my palm a second before. I could no longer feel the city, the captains, the dragon or Kane.
The bond with Styx broke last.
Her tiny feet still rested on my skin.
I no longer knew what she was feeling.
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