After Maric slipped silently through the wall and left.
Only Lorne and Sharron remained in the basement, and an uncanny silence settled over them.
Sharron floated in midair, her lips pressed together and her head lowered. There was no telling what she was thinking.
Lorne did not urge her to speak. In truth, what he had just said had partly been a spur-of-the-moment decision.
Honestly, he had initially considered keeping that Sequence 4 Marionette characteristic in the Blood Ring and Grazing it himself to expand his repertoire of abilities.
But for one thing, during their earlier battle, Zartwin had not displayed any particularly enviable or irreplaceable Beyonder abilities beyond his ability to take a beating.
For another, having an absolutely trustworthy Sequence 4 demigod companion would offer far greater value in the situations ahead than Grazing it himself!
I should've just offered to "sell" the characteristic to Sharron and let her pay in installments with an IOU. She probably wouldn't have felt so uncomfortable, and things wouldn't have gotten this awkward... Lorne inwardly regretted his rather clumsy way of offering it as a gift.
About a dozen seconds passed.
Sharron finally lifted her head slowly and met Lorne's gaze.
Her clear blue eyes held an unprecedented earnestness and honesty.
"My teacher... was the leader of the Temperance Faction."
Sharron's voice was as cool as ever, but it had lost some of its usual ethereal quality and gained a hint of heaviness.
Then Sharron revealed almost everything about the experiences she had kept buried deep in her heart. She told him that she was actually a student of Reinette Tinekerr, the leader of the Temperance Faction, and recounted the tragic events of her teacher's death: she had fallen under the combined assault of the Indulgence Faction's upper ranks while protecting Sharron