...Did Selene's personality also retain Lily's former attachment to her mother? After all, Lily had not received much maternal love, so it was only natural for her to have an unconscious yearning for it. At the same time, maternal love happened to be one of the core narratives of the Path of Love...
But...
In the form of "Fourteen," Iver subconsciously looked toward Lily.
This time, Lily did not lose consciousness outright.
Her reactions had merely become somewhat sluggish—and whenever Selene raised her hand or spoke, Lily's body would also move subconsciously, trying to raise its hand or open its mouth. But before she could actually carry out those actions, she would immediately come to her senses and suppress the impulse. As a result, her movements looked almost like twitches.
It was like a pair of telepathic twins, except their relationship was even more intimate—either one of them could control both bodies, though Lily, as the dominant personality, had slightly greater authority.
Iver thought of an exceptionally apt analogy: Lily and Selene were like someone drawing a circle with their left hand and a square with their right.
When their attention was focused on the left hand, the right hand might stop or veer off course; and vice versa. Lily's control was simply stronger, to the point that she would only make the circle somewhat less round. When Selene took control, however, the other hand would basically stop moving altogether.
This did not count as splitting one personality into two and putting each half into a different body—it was creating another body jointly controlled by both personalities! Their connection had not been severed completely... Only now did Iver understand why Selene had just said that "the ritual might have failed."
Perhaps the ritual had not failed. Perhaps it had succeeded.