Day 45:

Four days was, in truth, the longest she had ever been apart from him. The last time Regis had gone so long without seeing his daughter, she hadn't been born yet. Now he stood atop the Citadel steps to welcome her home with a growing feeling of foreboding in his chest.

The car pulled up the long drive from the gates: the same aubergine convertible he had commissioned for her birthday last year. She had driven it only a handful of times before this trip. It looked as if it had been well used now. Cor sat in the driver's seat, Ardyn Izunia in the front passenger seat, and Reina between Ignis and Iris in the back. When the car stopped, they poured out, stretching and groaning.

"I don't see why Ardyn always gets the front seat," Iris said.

"Because, Killer, if you fought me for it, you would lose."

"And do you really want him driving?" Ignis asked.

"For your information, I happen to be a perfectly average driver. But I wouldn't be caught dead in something so flashy as a violet convertible."

"Strange," said Ignis. "Here I thought you were just sitting in one moments ago."

"And here I am dead, Toasty."

"You said wouldn't be caught dead," said Cor.

"It's a figure of speech, Lion. Do keep up."

The familiarity with which they exchanged banter caught Regis off guard. On the surface they appeared much the same as before, but this assessment could hardly have been further from the truth. They were changed. All of them.

Reina stood in the center, quiet but not disengaged. She was watching the conversation like a ball game. And she was smiling. How could he condemn what brought a smile to her face? And yet she was changed most of all. Or was that merely what he knew—suspected—about her that made her now appear a different woman in his eyes?

She caught him watching them. Her smile faltered, but she climbed the steps toward him all the same. Her shoulder was bandaged and there was a fresh cut on her forehead along her hairline.

"Father," she said. "Are you still cross with me?"

"No my dear." He had all but forgotten he was meant to be. "But I have had concerning news in your absence."

Regis glanced over her shoulder at the others following her up the stairs. She caught his gaze.

"Anything you would say to me can be said before my retinue," she said.

Would she change her mind when his mouth opened? Was this a secret she kept from them as well as him—the true nature of something darker lurking beneath her placid features? Or was she content to have them know because they knew already what she had done?

The quiet ease with which they stood together on the steps banished that idea from his mind. They did not know. A change had come over them, yes, but not this change.

"It concerns the deaths of my councillors, some weeks ago," Regis said carefully.

Her face grew more stony in an instant. As if a door had been slammed in his face, she closed out the world and became a beautiful and terrible sculpture of herself. A sliver of his mind had still hoped she would not know of what he spoke. But this left no doubt.

Reina had killed his councillors.