His heir had taken Asia under her own name. Damien could not follow her there. He had no agent across that ocean who answered to him. If she meant to cut him out, she would do it where he was blind. He needed eyes he could trust. He went to the only place where such a thing could be made. Lumina Dewsparkle stood in a garden behind her cottage. A lavender bush buzzed with bees near her hand. She did not look up when Damien arrived. A frog in a tiny crown sat on a flat stone, watching the bees. "You made my heir too strong," Damien said. "Now she takes what I cannot guard. I need someone in Asia. My own. Loyal to me." Lumina plucked a sprig of lavender. "You already made such a person once. You raised an agent from nothing. He burned a man's estate for you." "He drew hard eyes onto us both," Damien said. "I cannot send him. He is known." "Then you want a new one." She turned to a worn stack of wooden boxes. Pale bees crawled across the tiers, glowing faint in the shade. "Making loyalty takes time you may not have. Your heir moves now." Damien looked at the stacked hive. "How long?" "Longer than she will give you." Lumina set the lavender on a wooden table crowded with honey jars and brushes. "You raise an agent the way you raised her. You give him something he wants. You watch how he takes it. But every agent you make can turn, as she turned. You taught me that yourself." Damien went still. The problem folded back on itself. Any watcher he built in Asia could become another rival. He could spend a century making a loyal man and still make a second heir who cut him out. The hunger he needed could not be chained. "There is no safe watcher," he said. "No," Lumina said. "There never was. You have been trying to hold a fire in your fist." Damien walked past a dark stone beast carved in the garden, a minotaur with red eyes and cracked shoulders. Beyond it stood three women cut from one block, back to back, holding a key, a torch, and a dagger. He stopped before them. The maiden. The mother. The crone. One life, carried forward in three shapes. He understood then. He had wanted an heir to carry his name. He had also wanted to keep his grip on everything he held. The two wishes fought. A true heir does not watch the master. A true heir becomes the master. "I called her a thing I had to guard against," Damien said. "But I did not make a servant. I made a successor." Lumina watched him. "Then stop guarding." Damien made his choice in the garden. He would send no spy. He would place no agent to watch his heir. He would let Asia be hers, under her name, clean. He wrote to her that night. He did not demand reports. He did not name a watcher. He wrote that the holdings were hers to hold or lose, and that he would not reach across the ocean to check her hand. He sealed it and sent it before he could change his mind. Her answer came three nights later. It was short. She wrote that she had expected a spy and had already found three men she would have had to kill. Instead she found nothing. She wrote that she would feed from his wrist when next they met, not because she needed it, but because it made her strong. She signed it under her own name. Damien read it twice. The witch had warned him his heir would surpass him and destroy him. The witch was right about the first part. She was wrong about the second. His heir did not need to destroy him. She had already passed him, and she let him live because he no longer stood in her way. The bond held. Not as a leash. As a line between two who chose to share blood. He had three centuries behind him. She had centuries ahead. His name would cross that ocean in her mouth, spoken as her own, which was the only way a name survives. Damien stood in the garden until dawn. The bees settled into their glowing boxes. The crowned frog blinked on its stone. He had set out to make an heir strong enough to carry his legacy past his unlife. He had made one strong enough to leave him behind entirely. That was the proof it had worked. He let her go, and in letting go, he finally held what he had wanted all along.