She froze when she saw the person whom Jaegar was holding.
Her expression cycled rapidly through emotions, confusion, relief, shock, and then a deeper shock that threatened to overwhelm everything else.
"Augusta," she breathed, the name escaping her lips like a prayer.
"You're alive. My child—"
"Mother," Augusta said weakly, reaching out to her own mother with a trembling hand.
But the moment of reunion was shattered by a voice that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
"Ah, what have you done, dear son?"
Angus materialized before them, stepping out of thin air as if he had never truly left. His expression was one of theatrical disappointment mixed with genuine frustration. His robes swirled around him as he regarded Jaegar with the gaze of someone observing a disappointing chess move.
"It would have been over in just a couple of minutes," he continued, his tone carrying the weight of someone whose plans had been minutely disrupted.
