"It's time we visit your father."
Lucille's eyes went bright.
The exhaustion of a rite that had just put her through extreme agony left her body in a single breath, and what replaced it was a smile that had been waiting a very long time.
Her back straightened and her chin lifted, and the caramel-haired woman asked one word with her whole chest behind it.
"Really?"
Quinlan's silence was all the answer she received, but that was all the confirmation she needed for her heart to begin beating a thousand times a second.
On the moss behind them, heads lifted through the agony.
"You're LEAVING?!" Kitsara's voice cracked off the greenery at a pitch that should not have been achievable from a woman mid-restructuring. Her three tails were rigid with indignation. "While we're DYING here?!"
"Taking the first girl who finished on a date," Sera complained from beneath her mother.
"Hmph!! Hmph!!!" A certain Hexwitch refused to even put her complaints into proper words.
