Lorgar stood in the Contemplation Hall aboard the Emperor's Golden Dream, overlooking the sea of stars. Transparent walls threaded with faint streams of data surrounded him, reflecting the boundless darkness outside and the distant pinpricks of starlight.
Before him, the Emperor's towering body was wrapped in a simple white robe. Golden psychic energy flowed slowly around him like breathing, but those eyes that always seemed to hold endless wisdom and entire galaxies now looked rather blank, even faintly "confused."
Lorgar did not look at the Emperor. His gaze passed beyond him to the observation window on one side of the Contemplation Hall.
There, while Corax was unconscious, the Adeptus Custodes had changed him into simple gray clothes, though his frame remained gaunt and pale.
Corax now lay quietly on a hovering chair.
Lorgar watched for a few seconds, then withdrew his gaze and turned back to the Emperor.
His voice was calm, but every word was an ice pick.
"So..."
"...you were in orbit at the time. Watching everything happening down there. Watching that girl... Bella, walk into the laboratory for his sake, then get dragged away, and finally..."
Lorgar glanced again at Corax beside the window and the figure in his arms.
"...why didn't you save her?"
The Emperor tilted his head slightly, as though Lorgar had asked a question as elementary as "why does one plus one equal two," yet imbued with some emotion he could not understand.
His golden eyes met Lorgar's calmly as he explained clearly and objectively in that grand, detached, utterly unruffled voice:
"Because she could not be saved."
"Her soul did not match the body that housed it."
"Her very existence may have been an elaborate lure and trap aimed at Corax."
"Interfering with her 'death' could have triggered an unpredictable chain reaction."