William's face was calm and unbothered. He didn't even look toward the gates.
"There is no need to act like a babysitter, Bernard," William said quietly. "I've trained them well.
They are grown up enough to know that if they meet a problem they cannot handle, they can easily send a messenger back through the gate to ask for help. Until that happens, we trust them. We have our own work to finish here."
William didn't forget how his friends and the girls looked back when he first met them—fragile, uncertain, and bound by the limitations of their narrow world. They had grown up.
They were no longer the saplings he had to shelter; they were the towering trees of a forest he had planted. He knew he could rest assured and depend on them from now on, trusting that his vision was in capable hands.
