Marin could not recall when she had ever walked to this part of the Fox Mansion, but alas, she could not stand being in the other parts.

"Lady Eastheart." Edison answered monotonously, but even he seemed surprised to find one of his father's other wives visiting him.

"Edison." Marin called. "Am I intruding?"

"No. But what brings you here?"

"It is nothing so complicated. I merely detest talking to the rest of the family and how they've now increasingly started to side with Tundra. As if decades and centuries of his absence vanished. Do people really have such short memories?!" Marin vented.

Edison was perhaps the only one she hoped to find an agreeable viewpoint.

"Oh."

"Oh?" Marin looked at Edison. She expected something more than just that. "Don't tell me you've taken your father's side?"

Edison sighed and looked out the window. "I don't."

"And?" Marin countered.

"We rarely talk, Lady Eastheart. I don't think and claim to know what your views of my father are, and at the same time, I don't think you know what I feel about my father. If you've come here to find someone who agrees with you because we have a mutual enemy, then I must ask you to leave."

This made Marin snap. "Ridiculous. I cannot believe it!"

"Cannot?" Edison countered, and yet somehow it prompted Marin into a monologue.

"Yes! It's ridiculous! Yes! He's present. He's helping everyone get stronger! He's giving out pills and things so that everyone moves a bit faster and has more. He's helping our families too!"

Edison blinked. "That sounds like quite a problem?"

"You don't see it! He's trying to paper over his faults with wealth, power and time! It doesn't change that our relationship is a farce! A forced contract created by my parent's weakness! And yet everyone thinks I'm wrong!" Marin groaned.

"Oh."

"Oh?"

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"I think you are right." Edison said, displaying a rare bit of understanding. "My father is terrible."

"Exactly."

"But just like you, Lady Eastheart, I've been thinking a lot about what I would have done in his place."

Marin looked absolutely horrified. "No. No no no! Don't you dare defend him!"

"I'm not. But is there really a better way to treat you? Do you want him to abuse you instead, lock you up in chains like how some barbarians keep their captured trophy wives? Or just let you walk out when there are so many vultures eager to tear you apart? Or just give away a part of the sect and let you have something that you have no chance of holding on to? Or like before, ignore you and let you be?"

Edison stopped. He didn't need to elaborate that all of those outcomes were worse.

"I also wonder what I would do if I were my father. Yes. It would've been different if he was there from the start. But if we are deep in the dumps, at least, we should stop digging. Would I be so heartless to just let my children kill themselves because I've already neglected them? To let them fall further?"

Edison paced the room, and suddenly stopped in front of Marin. "I can see why he chose to do what he did. I can still choose to hate him. You, Lady Eastheart, are also free to continue disliking him for the past that is set in stone. The wounds that were made when you were forced to be a part of this family are carved in the rocks of our hearts. There is no mending it."

"Exactly."

"But you are not just letting the wounds be. You are intentionally trying to force him to make new wounds on you, isn't it?" Edison said.

Marin glared at him. "You're not much different from me. Aren't you doing the same?"

"Yes. I am very much like you. Just saying this out makes me feel strange. Maybe, Lady Eastheart, your idea of getting away from it all might be worthwhile."

The two looked at each other, and they were both confused in different ways.

"I would like to propose that we both leave together. Not permanently, because I must return to my wife Suri and my two children eventually, but I'd like to see... see a different part of the world, and feel for a bit, what it's like to have just a small taste of freedom. Maybe all this while, what I needed is to step out of my father's massive shadow. Literally."

"With you?" Marin's confusion only doubled.

"Yes. I am the furthest thing from my father you can imagine. We can charter a flying ship somewhere far away. Father, who cares what he thinks, no?"

"You don't sound certain."

"I am not. I am not sure if I care. Maybe I do care and I just don't understand myself." Edison sighed. "But I have stayed home for the past months and more and like you, I cannot bear this place any longer."

"I thought of leaving only when-"

"It's not a permanent trip. Just a few months. Or a few years." Edison said. "It's safer, with two of us."

Marin wanted to say no, and yet, Edison had a point. A good one. Just as Tundra could spend months in the Ancient Titans just to learn some new techniques, the two of them are not restricted from traveling far away. The Verdant Snow Sect is not on lockdown.

After moments of thinking, Marin conceded it was a decent idea. "I did not ever imagine you to be a travel partner."

"Then don't. We just happen to be headed in the same direction. And it's just a security arrangement, just so that it is easier to convince father to let us leave."

"Leave."

"No, let's not even call it that. Call it a journey."

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