The incredulous fury in Gideon's voice brings on another wave of pain; not the kind that sends blood streaming from her nose or leaking out her tear ducts, but something deeper and more central. "Of course I did," Harrow snaps, the barest turn of her head all she can manage for fear of sparking yet another hemorrhage. "You would have been reduced. Consumed. None of us may have spared much affection for him, but we all saw what fucking happened to Tern. And I saw yet more, after."

Even now, she can't pinpoint the exact moment Ianthe's cavalier became just a battery inside her, when whatever remained of him stopped trying to fight. With the creation of her new arm, perhaps, or somewhere shortly after. But it happened, and it was only ever going to happen, and had Harrow remembered then what she'd done to herself, she thinks now that she'd make the choice to do it again.

The firm rebuke in Palamedes' voice quiets her, too, and Harrow tries to breathe as she listens to his explanation, her brow furrowing at the conjecture he draws. "A split timeline? Warden, that is unnecessarily and complexly metaphysical, the energy alone..." She shakes her head. "I assumed it was the River, frankly. Another elaborate projection." Here, she pauses, a shred of the old Harrowhark--or the new, or some conglomeration of both--emerging as the corner of her mouth quirks briefly upwards. "Something of more solid construction than even yours."