The Extra's Rise

The second day after is always the one that tries to undo the good work. Tired people. Small mistakes. Pride doing laps in empty halls. We treated it like a stubborn door: steady pressure, no yanking.

I woke before the lights and walked the palace once. Valdris felt like a machine cooling down. The ops wing was already humming. Reika had three short lists labeled "keep," "fix," and "ignore." She slid me the middle one. It was a page long. Good sign.

We spent the morning at Stormgate, not to place anything, just to listen. Kade brought a stethoscope for the earth. He lay on the grass like he was sunbathing and then nodded. "Spine's singing the right note," he said.

Seraphina set two tripods and ran a drift check. The dots she made looked like the dots from placement day. Boring. Beautiful. Rachel adjusted a warder's brace, then made the older woman sit for hot tea and gossip like she was her aunt. Captain Vyr rotated her outer posts without asking anyone's permission. Cecilia reviewed three supply paths and killed the one a noble's cousin was trying to sneak back onto the schedule. Reika stood at the blue-tarp lane and kept it clear even though we didn't need it. Tradition has weight.

From there we warped to the coast. Salt smell. Gull noise. The line along the sea held, and local crews looked five years younger than they had the day before. Thank-yous were short and honest. One man from the ward office insisted we take a box of pastries "for the Saintess." Rachel smiled and took them. I ate one and tried to guess the filling. Seraphina told me it was orange peel and almond before I finished chewing. She's always right about food.

Inland spine last. Hills and wind. Same checks. Same reports. A farmer leaned on a fence and watched us go by, hat tipped, like we were moving furniture for his mother. That felt right.

By late afternoon we were back in the palace for the small formalities that make big things stick. The Viserion throne room was smaller than usual on purpose—no crowd, no cameras. King Marcus wore working clothes with a formal pin. Queen Lyralei wore the calm that keeps a continent steady.

"We won't pretend this made the world safe," the queen said. "But it made it safer. That matters."

Tiamat stood behind them, not as a shadow but as a wall you trust. Lyra stayed to their left, hands folded, eyes steady.

"On behalf of the Southern continent," Marcus said, looking straight at me, "thank you. You kept our ground from breaking."

I didn't give a speech. "We kept it boring," I said. "That's all."

He smiled with his eyes. "That's everything."

He handed me a small velvet case. The Southern medal inside wasn't flashy—dragon and laurel, old gold, simple line across the bottom: Guardian of the Line. I don't wear medals, but I held this one with care. It wasn't about me. It was about the ring of people who made dawn quiet.

The Concord envoy read out two paragraphs that made our trial membership real. No surprises. Signatures. A handshake with rules attached. Cecilia and Rose (back from a call just long enough to sign something that needed her exact handwriting) made sure the clauses said what they looked like they said. When it was done, the queen closed the book and nodded. "Work resumes tomorrow," she said. Everyone in the room liked that sentence.

We stepped out to the side balcony after. Valdris ran under us like light on water. Stella found me first. She'd been with the ward engineers most of the day, asking questions they liked answering. She barreled into my chest and hugged me like I'd been away a month.

"You were boring," she said.

"The most," I said.

"Good." She held up her slate. A problem about convoy time and triangle lanes stared back at me. She'd solved it two ways. I kissed her hair and told her she was perfect. She corrected me: "Almost." That's my girl.

My fiancées collected me one by one like they were making sure I didn't evaporate. Seraphina tapped my wrist with her pencil twice, a quiet checkmark. Rachel leaned her head against my shoulder and didn't move. Cecilia slid a card into my pocket: three bullet points about not letting VIPs near cordons in the next phase. Rose arrived late, tucked a folded paper into my other pocket, and said, "No one sues anyone if we stick to this." I promised to stick to it.

Ian came off a warp with wind in his hair and a grin he tried to hide. "Routes held," he said. "No drama. Lucifer says he'll pretend it was all him."

"He can have the story," I said. "We'll keep the truth."

Lucifer himself drifted by later, stole a slice of orange from a plate like it was a northern tradition again, and asked if Deia and Seol-ah could send a few of their people to help with air corridors up north if we needed a clone of this work there. "They'll keep things calm," he said. "They're better at that than I am." I said yes.

When the balcony thinned out, Lyra found me. Tiamat stood a step behind her, watching the river's silver line like it had old answers in it.

"My brother," Lyra said. No lead-up. Just the thing that mattered.

"We'll help," I said. "When you ask. And when I'm not a liability."

"You're not a liability," she said. Then, after a breath, "You are not enough for where he is yet. But you will be if you keep walking the way you are walking."

"I know," I said. It didn't hurt to admit it. It felt clean.

"Good," Tiamat said softly, which is her version of a hug.

Lyra's mouth tugged into the smallest smile I'd seen from her. "Thank you for today," she said, and I understood she meant the way we all agreed to be small so the world could be steady.

"I'll be here," I told her. "As long as you need the help."

She looked at the river, then back at me. "We'll find him," she said. "We will not break the world doing it."

"That's our rule," I said.

Night fell. The palace lights kept breathing. Crews filed out with tired feet and clean gear. The Guard rotated posts without fanfare. Engineers ate bowls of soup and laughed quietly at jokes they'd earned. Somewhere out there, more work waited. That's fine. We've learned how to do work.

I walked past the med tent. Rachel was packing clips in sets of ten again. She looked up, read my face, and gave me the nod that means sleep. I breathed on fours without thinking. Seraphina held a clock up like a trophy; everything synced to the tenth. Cecilia texted me one word: eat. Reika leaned in a doorway, arms folded, eyes on the hall like she always does when she decides to be a wall.

I found Stella already asleep in a chair with her slate under her cheek and a braid that never stays put. I moved the slate, tucked a blanket, and stood there longer than necessary because standing there felt like part of the job.

The pylons were in. The lines held. The Seven had our name on their list for a year. Lyra would stay. Tiamat would watch. The Viserions would keep their continent stiff-backed and sensible. My team would keep me boring when boring was what saved lives.