He should have known when she bid him good night that she never meant to sleep. But he had told her he trusted her without question. So he had allowed himself to believe the falsity. When he had fallen asleep, she was still in his room—ostensibly asleep as well.

Evidently not.

Regis woke some hours later. The clock on the far wall—when his eyes finally consented to focus through the dark—read just past three in the morning. Reina was gone.

Though he knew he would not find her in her own bed, he slipped across the hall to check her room. His cane sounded a sharp contrast to bare feet and a sharp pain in his right knee accompanied each step without his knee brace. He ought not have been walking without, but he could think of worse things than pain.

Her room was untouched, her bed unslept in, and her phone was sitting face down on the nightstand. It was difficult to believe she hadn't left it on purpose. Short of calling the Crownsguard down on his own daughter, he could do little save wait for her to return.

The wait was not as long as he feared. Part was consumed by the infuriating task of fitting on his knee brace without an extra pair of hands. Part of it was spent remembering—for the twenty-seventh time that week—why he no longer paced when he was restless.

By the time the lift doors opened he was sitting in an armchair, fully dressed and waiting. Once the relief at seeing her safe and whole faded, every ounce of annoyance and frustration it had been holding back came flooding in.

She had taken Cor with her. Small blessings. But Cor should have had the good sense to tell her to stay put—if nothing else, he might have informed Regis where they had gone. He would deal with Cor later.

"Father." Reina's eyes landed on him nearly as soon as she stepped from the lift. It was difficult to say whether or not she was surprised to find him awake. She was not, however, contrite. "You were meant to be sleeping."

"As were you," Regis said.

"I don't really sleep anymore," she said.

Regis made a sound of frustration, hauling himself to his feet. "You have only been gone for two days!"

Admittedly, the past few weeks in the Citadel had been challenging for everyone. But she had been sleeping before she left Insomnia. He knew. Their last night together, he had lain awake until she had fallen asleep beside him. At the time, the draw of sleep had seemed insignificant compared with the last hours he would ever spend in his daughter's company.

She considered him in silence. Behind Cor—who was applying his perfected art of fading into the decor—the lift doors closed once more.

"The last time I saw you alive was ten years ago," she whispered. Even in the dead silent, Regis wasn't sure he had heard her correctly.

Ten years? She experienced hours in her Dreams when only minutes had passed but anything more than that was unprecedented. He was always at her side moments after the Dream began, easing her into wakefulness. Except—

Except yesterday.

How long had they let it stretch before they called him? That had been after dawn. But her Dreams usually began in the middle of the night.

Ten years.

Ten years she had been trapped in a bleak future because Regis had sent her away from his side.

No wonder she was different. When he looked at her and struggled to see his little girl beneath the cold and steel, it was because she was thirty and a third of her life had never happened.

"Reina—"

"I know you're afraid, Father." She took a step forward, then another and another until she stood before him. "If it helps to be angry with me, then that's alright."

It didn't. It didn't help to know she had lived through a ten-year long nightmare because he hadn't let her stay no matter how she begged him. It didn't help to watch his daughter—who had never in her life disobeyed him or stood against him—casually disregard his instructions.

If it had been Noctis—well. At least he expected Noctis to be difficult.

Regis pulled her into a hug with a sound of regret.

"I can't explain ten years of history in the time we have." Reina held onto his suit, her voice muffled against his chest. "I wouldn't even know where to begin. But I swear—when all this is over, if we make it through—I will try anyway."

That was, so far as he could see, the best they could do. He could not turn back time. He could not erase those memories from her mind. He could not protect her anymore. All he could do was try to understand.

"At least refrain from lying to me," Regis said.

Reina stepped back. "You wouldn't have stayed if you knew I wasn't going to."

Regis opened his mouth to respond, but stopped himself. She was correct, of course. She smiled at that.

"I need your help, Father." She glanced back at Cor, who had fallen into studying the far wall with great interest. The best bodyguard could be trusted to be discreet with personal information because he was too embarrassed to admit he had overheard it at all.

"Of course, my dear."

"You aren't going to like it."

The same could have been said about all of this.

"I need you to give me the ring," she said.

He was too shocked to refuse, for a moment. How could she ask that of him? Even if he had wanted to, he could not have passed it to her without great risk to Insomnia.

"Absolutely not," he said once he had recovered himself.

"The imperials want it; they will come after you if you keep it."

"Better that they pursue you, instead?"

"Yes," Reina said, as if this were the clearest thing in the world.

Regis jammed the point of his cane against the ground, feeling the ache in his knee keenly. "You have sworn to me that you will not sell your life for mine."

"Father, listen to me: you don't have the strength to wield the ring. If they wish to take it from you it will only be too easy."

"I am not impotent, yet," Regis said.

Reina ignored him. "But I can maintain the Wall and still use the ring's full power. The only way they will take it from me is if I hand it to them myself. If we do the switch now, the imperials will be none the wiser. I will attune to the Wall and crystal and we can manage with barely a flicker."

Still, Regis shook his head. "This is too dangerous, Reina."

"It is too dangerous not to, Father. If they take the ring from you—whether they kill you in the process or not—the Wall will fall for good. And if the Wall falls, Insomnia falls. I can protect the ring and myself. I can do this."

The look on her face—fierce and entreating—begged him to trust her.

Regis shut his eyes. He hated that she was right. He hated that he could not even protect his people without placing them in greater danger. He hated passing this burden to his daughter when he had already vowed to end this war—one way or the other—before the ring passed to Noctis. His children should never have borne this weight.

"Very well," Regis said. "Let us go quickly."