"You are not of my Taking."

Sloane squared her shoulders against the weight of the voice that spoke to her. It wasn't a surprise. Every time she visited Eris's throne world now, that lone and baleful eye seemed to follow her.

Didn't mean she had to like it. Or talk to him. It.

"But what are you, then?" he mused aloud, as if her response or lack thereof was wholly immaterial. "I am told the Taken changed hands many times. Who was it that Took you?"

"No one," Sloane said before she could think better of it. "I said no."

"Did you?"

There was an awful heaviness to the Echo's attention, a fizz of sterile neutrinos and the prickling awareness of danger down her spine. But Sloane was nothing if she was not herself, and so she stood tall, chin up, and did not falter. "I don't need that power."

"Whomever made that offer, it will not vanish," the Echo said softly. "You may not need it now. But are you so sure of the future?"

"Yes," said Sloane, willing it to be true as she said it. "What do you want?"

"To understand," said Oryx, and the simplicity of it was as sharp as a knife. Whatever needed to be twisted or prized loose or broken to understand it—he would. That was all there was.

"Then understand this: I am resolute." Arc light crackled in her hands as Sloane closed them into fists. "And I am complete in myself. I need no other power." She knew it for not-quite-truth even as she said it: she was in Síocháin and Ahsa, the Traveler's Light and the Vanguard, even as they were in her. But she certainly didn't need the Taken.

"Aiat," the Echo said thoughtfully, and nothing further.

Sloane did not retreat. She turned that word over and over again in her mind. Aiat. It had a meaning it hadn't quite before, sounding almost like her own voice saying, "I am complete in myself" back to her.

Hours and hours later, long after she'd left Eris's throne world, still it echoed. And still she wondered about its truth.