Inside Wise Sovereign's Hall.
The one-eyed youth looked at Angel with a smile. "I hadn't expected you to have such nerve, daring to speak to her like that."
Angel said, "Wise Sovereign doesn't look like someone who hadn't expected it."
Wise Sovereign said, "Showing nothing is the greatest show of all. Otherwise, you'd call me pretentious."
Angel thought about it. That was true. If Wise Sovereign had shown surprise or astonishment, that would have been strange.
Wise Sovereign rose from the velvet carpet, smoothed the slight wrinkles in his robe, and then said to everyone, "Come. Let's go somewhere 'quiet' and have a proper talk."
Wise Sovereign had deliberately emphasized "quiet," while his gaze drifted, intentionally or not, toward the bronze mirror above the fireplace. The implication could not have been clearer.
"Even in Wise Sovereign's territory, she can come and go as she pleases?" Dox asked curiously.
Wise Sovereign said, "Whether she can come and go as she pleases depends on whether the owner here wants to hang mirrors."
"When acting in a human body, one has to manage one's appearance. So mirrors cannot be entirely absent, but neither are they needed everywhere."
Dox muttered under his breath, "After all that beating around the bush, doesn't it just mean you left her a window to let air through?"
"A window is a window, but whether air can pass through it is another matter." Angel took up the conversation, then gave the bronze mirror a meaningful look.
Wherever there was a mirror, Adanis truly could come and go freely. But whether she could—or dared to—descend from the mirror into the material world was another question entirely.
Wise Sovereign turned to look at Angel. "So you judged that she wouldn't dare descend, which is why you took such a hard stance."