"Are you ready?" Lily asked.

"No," Alarion replied honestly. He was far from ready. Leagues from ready. He desperately wanted to go home.

Instead, they sat together on a bench in a small park across the street from the Ashad Broadcasting Center. Home to the first—and only—simu-radio broadcasting tower in all of Ashad, the six-story rectangular building was a little piece of Vitria built among the more traditional Ashadi architecture that dominated the city. Built of red brick and black tiles, it was entirely at odds with the open-air, white-stone buildings that surrounded it.

But that was the point. As a key piece of Vitrian infrastructure, they wanted it to stand out. As conquerors, the Vitrians were all too happy to utilize local knowledge. But when they brought wonders of their own, they had to flaunt them.

Alarion had fought to the death with nightmarish creatures, and yet somehow a building was intimidating him.

It was silly. They'd been at it for five weeks now, practicing his speaking skills, drilling him with every question Lily thought the interviewer might ask. It was roughly the same amount of preparation that ZEKE and Elena had given him before they threw him to the fiends. But he hadn't been nervous then; he'd been excited.

Why was this so different? It was just another sort of battlefield.

Framing it that way had been Lily's idea. She was good at that—recontextualizing concepts. To hear her tell it, you could convince anyone of anything if you approached it from the right angle. She got her start in public opinion polling, and the lesson she learned was that the public did not matter for the polls. It only matters how you asked the question.

"But you have a skill now," she pointed out, trying to boost his morale.

"Having a skill is not the same thing as being skilled," he said, throwing her own adage back in her face. Of all the lessons she'd taught him, that one had buried the deepest.

Alarion spent most of the last two years surrounded by the Awakened, first on the Trinity Isles and later in the Auxilia. That immersion had skewed his understanding of mundanity. He hadn't even realized it, but Alarion had come to think of the unawakened as lesser, the same way a Vitrian might.

Lily had disabused him of that notion.

Speechcraft [Common]

Description: You have gained the most basic proficiency in persuasion and public speaking that is worthy of recognition. A long road to true mastery lies before you, but your new skills may yet help you carve your way to those unseen heights.

Requirements: None

Type: Passive

Effects: Gain a slight increase in mental processing when speaking in a public setting. Gain a slight increase in mental processing when attempting to convince others of what you believe to be a true fact. Slightly decrease mental discomfort while speaking.

Growths: WIL +4.

He was a rank II Awakened with a skill that quickened his wits and steeled his nerves. Lily had none of that, but every time they clashed with verbal jabs, she beat him like a rented mule. The Awakened had an overwhelming advantage in power when compared to the mundane, but that gap shrank to almost nothing with application.

Skill or no, Alarion was still a novice heading into a lion's den.

"They are waiting for us," Lily urged him.

"I know," Alarion said with finality. Descending into the boil had been easier than this. "Let us go."

A man was waiting for them in the lobby, brimming with fake smiles and draining positivity. He took them straight to a private stairwell and up three floors to an intimate waiting room. The lights were low, spaced mostly around a full-length mirror on the room's far side. Cosmetic palettes lay open on waist-high tables next to the mirror, and Lily took the opportunity to touch up her aesthetic as they waited.

"Remember to bring your mouth close to the microphone when speaking, and to move away from it when you are not. Do not interrupt and do not over-talk. If more than one person is speaking, the audio will become a jumbled mess."

"Like our military simus."

"Similar," she agreed. "My understanding is that the radio is a little less reliable, and purely physical. Apart from the source of the electricity, I suppose."

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"If it is worse, why use it?"

Lily shrugged, dabbing at a slight imperfection on her left cheek. "It is cheaper. Simus that can transmit more than a few hundred yards are expensive to build and maintain. They are brittle, and the really long-distance models need to be built atop a place of power. A radio tower is mostly copper and steel. The future is physical, as the Steelborn say."

Alarion glanced at his wrist, confident that ZEKE would have some quip or comment on the idiom. But there was nothing. ZEKE was still pouting.

It was understandable. [Shared Burden] was an opportunity and a threat to the Vitrians, but it was priceless to the Steelborn. With Aptitudes as low as single digits, the Steelborn would benefit more than any other from Alarion's unique skill. ZEKE would benefit more.

When Alarion had not slammed the confirmation button so hard that it broke his system menus, ZEKE had been upset.

His mentor wasn't stupid; he recognized the danger. He just didn't care. Every minute where Alarion did not accept [Shared Burden] was a minute where [Single-Minded] could take the reins and put the skill out of reach, perhaps forever. They'd fought bitterly. And ever since, ZEKE had kept his opinions to himself, only answering when called upon directly.

"Do you want some?" Lily asked, holding up a finger glistening with concealer. "Cover up some of those faults."

Alarion made a face.

"Boys and their pride," she rolled her eyes.

"No one will see me anyway," Alarion said defensively. "And what faults?"

"Mm, here and here," she tapped his face twice in quick succession before he flinched away.

"Hey!"

"Stop," she commanded, swatting his hands away as she stepped close. Her fingers were gentle this time as she massaged the liquid onto cheeks that grew redder by the moment. "Hmm. Shade is a little off."

He didn't even bother to fight her as she returned to the palette and found something to match his darker skin tone.

"You know, you are almost cute when you blush," she told him. "See, like that."

"Enough," he complained, pacing away from her just as the door opened.

"They are ready for you," the smiling man said.

They ascended two more floors and followed their guide to a set of swinging double doors at the end of a long tiled hallway. The room beyond was dark, save for a spotlight focused on a curious arrangement.

To his left, two armchairs sat side by side, their soft leather still unmarked, the cushions plump and inviting. To his right, a sturdy wooden desk commanded attention. Despite being just as new as the chairs, the desk was covered with a mess of pens and papers, with books and personal memorabilia. Or rather, it looked like it was. All the papers were blank; the photo frames empty.

A picture window lay behind all of it, displaying the nighttime scenery of Ashad-Vitri. Stars glittered in the sky, and the lights of the city matched them from below in a display that took Alarion's breath away for all the wrong reasons.

The sheer audacity of the fake skyline was impressive.

There was no window, nor anything beyond it. The entire set was a fake, a three-walled facsimile of a real room built inside a much larger one for some purpose Alarion had yet to divine. Whatever it was, it required a small army of men and women bustling about. Some were checking wires, while others were manipulating the lights or adjusting settings on unfamiliar machines.

"No," Lily groaned like a wounded animal.

"What is all this?" Alarion asked. "What is going on?"

Before Lily could respond, the source of her distress made itself known.

"Lilith!" a woman shouted from the far end of the room.

Lily turned to the side and swore under her breath. It was the first time he'd ever heard her curse, and the sheer vulgarity struck Alarion, though he was even more shocked as Lily turned back toward the advancing woman, a bright smile on her lips. "Mother!"

The two women met in a tight embrace that lasted just long enough to provide Alarion with an existential crisis.

Lily, or rather Lilith's, mother was every bit as gorgeous as her daughter, albeit as a polar opposite. Where the younger Hart girl bucked cultural trends in search of a style all her own, her mother embraced everything Vitrian. She dressed stylishly, but conservatively, with a knee-length pencil skirt and a matching blouse and blazer all in vibrant teal. She wore the same sort of short gloves Elena had favored and kept her hair in a tight bun pierced through with a thin spike.

She was also young. Very young.

Alarion had struggled to place Lily's age, but her mother was no older than forty. Less, if he had to guess.

"Oh, I have missed you!" the older Hart declared as she plucked her daughter and spun her around.

"Mom," Lily hissed.

"Right! I am sorry, you are working, no?" She set her daughter down and beamed at her one last time before turning on her heel to face Alarion. "And this must be the Orphan, yes? It is a delight to meet you. I am Ellaphane Hart, though Ella, please."

"A… pleasure," Alarion said.

"Come, come. We must get some powder on you for the cameras before we can get started."

Ella turned and bustled through the crowd as if she owned the place, which Alarion suspected she did. They started after her, but not before Alarion turned to Lily and whispered, "Mother?"

"Do not," Lily's composure cracked; her smile tightened, and her eyes flicked away.

"I apologize if everything is a bit creaky," Ella said as they joined her on set. "One of my producers wanted to recreate our usual set as much as possible but didn't stop to think about how loud fresh leather could really be."

A stranger bustled Alarion into one of the chairs as Ella continued to speak, bulldozing over questions and concerns. "You are a little later than I would like, but I completely understand stage fright. That still leaves us a few hours to record before we get things out to editing for broadcast."

"A few hours?" Alarion asked, the rest of his complaint smothered as another woman took a powdered brush to his face, momentarily blinding him.

"This is not what he agreed to," Lily protested.

"No, no, it is much better," Ella agreed, ignoring her daughter's meaning. "They will still broadcast the audio if that is what you are worried about?"

"Mother-"

"Madam Hart came at my invitation," Williams said as he stepped in beneath the floodlights. "I trust this will not be an issue?"

"You do not have the right to just spring this on him. Especially without talking to me first."

"He does not-"

"What is going on?!"

All eyes turned to Alarion, but it was Ella who answered him.

"We are going to make you a film star, darling."

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