"You were right. I would have." She looked at the table. "Here's what I need to tell you, Luna. Aldric is working with a model with seven people. Seven people whose constitution qualifies, distributed evenly. That distribution is the thing that brings the cost from fatal to survivable."
"Yes. I know that."
"But the distribution isn't even if one of the seven is Cassius, performing his portion remotely from inside the Realm. The resonance transfer across that distance introduces a gap. A frequency differential." She said this with the flatness of someone who has spent the past three days teaching herself enough magical theory to understand something specific. "Aldric hasn't told you this because he hasn't decided it matters yet. But it does."
I went very still.
"How do you know this?" I
