5 hours ago
By two in the morning, Seraphis had stopped pretending she might sleep. Someone from the Kremlin had moved her and Lucien from the Grand Palace hours ago. The explanation had been practical enough. The Senate building had become one of the principal operational centers for teams moving through Spasskaya Gate, and if she intended to wait for the Luminar, she might as well wait somewhere he would eventually return.
They had shown her and Lucien through secure corridors and underground passages she suspected they were never meant to know existed. They had been escorted the entire way and told, more than once, not to deviate from the route. Normally that would have made the journey interesting. Tonight she barely noticed where they went.
Theron had been outside for eleven hours. By midnight the Senate looked less like the center of an empire than somewhere an empire had emptied its pockets in a hurry. Furniture had been shoved against walls to make room for equipment, food, dry clothing, blankets and whatever first aid supplies had not already been sent forward into the city. Displays showed maps of central Moscow crossed by glowing routes she now understood to be tunnels beneath the snow. Staff moved in and out carrying updates. Every few minutes someone came through the doors, and every time they opened, Seraphis looked up. But none of them were Theron.
However many medical teams there were in the Kremlin had been pushed outward through the tunnels as quickly as the Dominions opened them, taking treatment to people who could not be brought back. Only a small triage presence remained near the Spasskaya gate area for the evacuees who actually reached the Kremlin. Those were the people Seraphis could not stop watching.
Most never came this far. The tunnels connected buildings to safer neighboring structures, and anyone who could remain in place did. Others were moved only far enough to get away from ruptured gas lines, electrical failures, collapsed heating systems, or buildings that had been stabilized but were no longer safe to inhabit. The Kremlin seemed to receive the ones for whom there was nowhere else nearby to go or needed a higher level of care.
The media screens filled in what she could not see from where she waited in the Senate office area. Cameras followed some of the rescue work, but even live footage was rare. Whoever spoke into those cameras explained that the Dominions stabilized walls and roofs, then moved on while conventional teams searched rooms and evacuated whoever could not safely remain. But some buildings had been reached too late. The reports did not linger there, and neither did Seraphis.
One feed showed rescuers carrying a woman through a ragged opening in an apartment wall while something unseen held the ceiling above them. Another showed a line of children wearing matching school uniforms moving hand in hand through one of the tunnels, bundled in coats and blankets while Nikolai’s little white lights stretched above them into the distance. She watched the face of a child look up at the orb of light overhead, and she hoped they found the lights comforting.
Lucien brought her tea. It went cold. Later it was replaced, but that one went cold too. Seraphis tried pacing until one of the security officers began watching her with obvious irritation. She tried sitting. She even attempted to watch a show she liked, only to realize the episodes flipped onward without any awareness of what happened in it, she gave up and watched the doors instead. She was staring at them with burning eyes when they finally opened.
The returning Dominions did not look wounded so much as used up. Their gear was damp in places despite having been dried repeatedly throughout the day. Hair lay flattened or disordered beneath removed caps and hoods. Faces were reddened from the weather, and everyone moved much slower than they had that afternoon. They had worked in rotations for hours, she heard, warming themselves, eating, drinking and resting between deployments, but eleven hours was still eleven hours. The strain showed now that they had finally stopped moving. Then she saw Theron. Everything inside her loosened so suddenly it hurt.
She crossed the room before she had decided to move. Theron barely had time to look toward her before she caught his arm. “You look terrible!”
His face was pale beneath the cold flush, and exhaustion had stripped away nearly all the polish that normally seemed inseparable from him. Even his eyes were blood red. He glanced down at her hand and then back at her.
“You waited eleven hours to tell me that?”
Relief turned instantly into irritation.
“I can find something worse to point out if you'd prefer.”
A weak smile appeared, and Seraphis hated how close she had been to crying until she saw him.
Theron started trying to undo the fastenings of his outer coat, but his fingers shook enough that he missed the first one twice. Seraphis pushed his hands away and did it herself.
“I am capable.”
“Clearly.”
“You become very unpleasant when you're worried.”
She looked up sharply. “I wasn't worried.” Theron was too exhausted to argue, and she dropped it.
He had fared worse than the others. The Dominions looked tired also, but they still carried some reserve beneath their burden. Theron looked as though whatever had kept him upright through the last rotation had been spent on the walk back. Once she got the weight of his coat off him, his shoulders sagged. When she pressed a hot drink into his hands, he wrapped both palms around it and stood there breathing the steam into his nostrils for several seconds.
Seraphis touched his sleeve. “Sit down before you fall down.”
“I am not going to fall down.”
“Then sitting should be very easy.” That earned her another tired look, but he obeyed.
Only once Theron was seated did Seraphis look around properly.
The Dominions were in various stages of removing their winter gear. Staff brought them hot drinks and carried away wet garments and boots to presumably be dried off. It was then that she realized the Ascendancy was still lingering near the exit. He had one hand pressed to the device at his ear while someone spoke to him from elsewhere in the building. Snow had melted into dark patches across his coat. His hair was damp at the temples, and exhaustion had sharpened rather than softened the severe lines of his face.
“Reopen the secondary vent before the accumulation seals it. I want another structural team through before dawn.” She overheard him say, and watched him openly.
Whatever was said in response tightened his jaw. He looked angry. “Leave the southern face packed. Karim marked it for a reason.”
The call ended, and another Kremlin official approached him almost immediately, but one of the Dominions intercepted first. His name was Karim, Seraphis had learned over the hours. He had already removed most of his outer gear and looked tired enough that even his usual composure had gone flat around the edges.
“Three hours.”
Nikolai barely looked at him, shaking his head. “Two.”
Karim's gaze moved across the room instead of arguing, pulling the Ascendancy's gaze along with him. One Dominion had lowered himself onto the floor and was eating without speaking. Another sat forward in a chair with his elbows on his knees, staring into the steam rising from his cup. Theron looked ten times worse than either of them.
Karim looked back at Ascendancy. “They need three.”
Nikolai's answer changed immediately. “Three.”
Then, to someone nearby, she overheard him add, “Wake me in two.”
One of the remaining medics approached him, but Nikolai stopped him with a small shake of the head. “I'm only cold and tired.”
The medic glanced toward his hands, considered arguing, then heard someone calling from the corridor and abandoned the effort. Ascendancy started stripping off the outer layers of his gear. He pulled at one glove, but it did not move. The glove had stiffened from repeated cycles of snow, moisture, cold and drying throughout the day. His fingers did not seem interested in cooperating either. He caught the cuff with the opposite hand and pulled again. Then tried ripping the velcro with his teeth.
Nothing. Watching Ascendancy lose a fight with his own glove was the first thing all night that made Seraphis want to laugh. He tried again, and Seraphis immediately crossed the room. Nikolai was still occupied with the glove when she stopped in front of him.
“Give me your hand.”
His eyes lifted. Only then did Seraphis register exactly how that had sounded. There were probably very few people in the world who gave Nikolai Brandon instructions. She held out her hand anyway, palm up.
“Unless you want to keep fighting with it. I think it's winning.”
He stared at her without smiling. Then he put his hand into hers. The glove was colder than she expected. Seraphis caught his wrist with one hand and worked her fingers beneath the stiffened cuff with the other. It resisted at first, and she had to pull carefully rather than yank it free.
“If your fingers come off with this, I'm shoving the glove back on.”
Nikolai's eyes moved to her face. For one terrible second she wondered whether she had finally found the exact sentence that got people removed from the Kremlin, but something shifted behind his eyes. Not a smile, exactly.
“Reassuring that you have a plan.” Seraphis looked down quickly so he would not see how pleased she was.
“I'm very good in emergencies.”
“Clearly.”
The glove finally loosened. She eased it over his knuckles and pulled it free. His hand startled her.
There was nothing seriously wrong with it. No frostbite and no injury worth pulling one of the few remaining medics away from people coming through Spasskaya. But the cold had worked at his skin all day. His knuckles were raw and dry, crossed by fine cracks with thin lines of red caught in them. When Seraphis adjusted her grip, she felt the faint tremor running through his fingers, and her amusement disappeared.
She thought of the footage from earlier. People filing through tunnels. Rescuers entering damaged buildings. Children walking beneath lines of white light. For all the things Theron had told her about him and all the certainty described in the Codex, the Ascendancy's hand was simply cold. Painfully cold. He had spent the day doing all of that with skin that cracked in winter like anyone else's. Seraphis swallowed and held out her palm again.
“Other one.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. She raised her chin, and he gave her the other hand. This glove came free more easily. The knuckles beneath it were much the same, reddened and split with fine traces of blood. Seraphis said nothing. He would only tell her they were fine, and technically he would be right. When she released him, his fingers closed once, slowly, testing their movement.
“Thank you.”
It was such an ordinary thing for him to say that Seraphis almost forgot to answer.
“You're welcome.”
Someone called for Ascendancy from across the room. Nikolai looked toward them, then back at her for one brief moment before turning away.
That was all. Seraphis returned to Theron feeling faintly ridiculous. He was watching her.
“What?” She demanded.
Theron took a slow drink.
“Nothing.”
“You have the same annoying habit as the Pope.”
Theron's eyebrows rose, but he was far too tired to chase that revelation.
The room slowly began to settle. Food disappeared. Cups were emptied and refilled. Equipment was stacked close enough to reach again when everyone woke. Another small group of evacuees came through, and two Dominions who had already sat down got back up without complaint to clear space for them. A mother with a sleeping child received one of the better chairs. Someone found another blanket. The remaining medic moved between them while Kremlin staff worked out where the people could be transferred next.
Nobody made any serious attempt to become comfortable. One Dominion stretched out on the floor using his folded coat beneath his head. Another tilted back in a chair and was asleep almost immediately. Karim found a place against the wall and extended his legs in front of him.
Theron remained stubbornly upright in his chair long after Seraphis could see that staying there was costing him more effort than lying down would have.
“Move.”
One eye opened. “Where?”
Seraphis glanced at the floor beside the wall, where someone had abandoned a folded blanket, and dragged it closer with her foot before lowering herself onto it. The wall was cold through her dress, but after eleven hours of waiting she no longer cared. She patted her thigh, and Theron looked at her.
“Come on, Seraphis.”
“You can either lie down voluntarily or fall asleep sitting up and wake with your neck permanently shaped like that.” He stared at her for several seconds, apparently searching for enough energy to resist. He did not find it. Theron lowered himself onto the blanket beside her and stretched out along the wall. Seraphis guided his head into her lap before he could reconsider. He made a quiet sound of protest with no conviction behind it.
“You are enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
His eyes were already closing.
Seraphis slipped her fingers into his hair near one temple and began working slow circles against his scalp. His hair was still faintly damp from snow and sweat, colder at the ends than at the roots. She moved her fingertips along his hairline, then lightly tapped across his forehead with two fingers in a soft, repetitive rhythm. Theron's breathing deepened almost immediately. The line between his brows softened, his jaw loosened, and his head gradually grew heavier in her lap as the last of the tension left him.
Seraphis felt her own body begin to loosen with his. She had spent the entire evening carrying fear like a backpack, even while pretending to be bored, even while wandering the Kremlin, even while Patricus questioned her in the chapel. She had watched strangers emerge from tunnels and damaged buildings appear on screens and told herself Theron was fine because the reports said he was fine. It was different to feel the weight of him on her lap and know he was fine.
His weight rested against her thighs. She could feel him breathing. He was here, and for the first time since he had walked away with Ascendancy into the storm, she believed he was safe. While Theron dozed, and Seraphis's fingers continued the soft taps on his forehead, she watched the room, unsurprised to find the Ascendancy still awake.
He finished one last conversation with emergency personnel, checked a display, and finally removed the remaining layers of his winter gear. Someone gestured toward the corridor, apparently offering him somewhere better to rest, but he shook his head. He chose a place on the floor near the doors instead.
Seraphis watched him fold part of his coat beneath his head. The most powerful man in the world could presumably have commanded a bed within seconds, yet he lay down within a few meters of his men, close to the route that would take them back toward Spasskaya Gate when the three hours ended. Two, she mentally corrected. Eventually he closed his eyes, and it took surprisingly little time for his breathing to change.
Seraphis watched him for a few seconds longer than she meant to. One hand still rested in Theron's hair. She wondered whether he would actually sleep the full three hours. Theron shifted in his sleep, turning his face slightly against her lap. Seraphis looked down and brushed a few strands of hair away from his forehead.
“You're fine,” she whispered, though she was not entirely sure whether she meant him or herself. Her fingers resumed their slow path through Theron's hair, but the circles grew smaller as exhaustion finally found her too. Her head settled against the wall, her eyes drifted shut, and sometime before she realized she had stopped tapping at his forehead, Seraphis fell asleep with Theron breathing deeply in her lap. It would not last long.
They had shown her and Lucien through secure corridors and underground passages she suspected they were never meant to know existed. They had been escorted the entire way and told, more than once, not to deviate from the route. Normally that would have made the journey interesting. Tonight she barely noticed where they went.
Theron had been outside for eleven hours. By midnight the Senate looked less like the center of an empire than somewhere an empire had emptied its pockets in a hurry. Furniture had been shoved against walls to make room for equipment, food, dry clothing, blankets and whatever first aid supplies had not already been sent forward into the city. Displays showed maps of central Moscow crossed by glowing routes she now understood to be tunnels beneath the snow. Staff moved in and out carrying updates. Every few minutes someone came through the doors, and every time they opened, Seraphis looked up. But none of them were Theron.
However many medical teams there were in the Kremlin had been pushed outward through the tunnels as quickly as the Dominions opened them, taking treatment to people who could not be brought back. Only a small triage presence remained near the Spasskaya gate area for the evacuees who actually reached the Kremlin. Those were the people Seraphis could not stop watching.
Most never came this far. The tunnels connected buildings to safer neighboring structures, and anyone who could remain in place did. Others were moved only far enough to get away from ruptured gas lines, electrical failures, collapsed heating systems, or buildings that had been stabilized but were no longer safe to inhabit. The Kremlin seemed to receive the ones for whom there was nowhere else nearby to go or needed a higher level of care.
The media screens filled in what she could not see from where she waited in the Senate office area. Cameras followed some of the rescue work, but even live footage was rare. Whoever spoke into those cameras explained that the Dominions stabilized walls and roofs, then moved on while conventional teams searched rooms and evacuated whoever could not safely remain. But some buildings had been reached too late. The reports did not linger there, and neither did Seraphis.
One feed showed rescuers carrying a woman through a ragged opening in an apartment wall while something unseen held the ceiling above them. Another showed a line of children wearing matching school uniforms moving hand in hand through one of the tunnels, bundled in coats and blankets while Nikolai’s little white lights stretched above them into the distance. She watched the face of a child look up at the orb of light overhead, and she hoped they found the lights comforting.
Lucien brought her tea. It went cold. Later it was replaced, but that one went cold too. Seraphis tried pacing until one of the security officers began watching her with obvious irritation. She tried sitting. She even attempted to watch a show she liked, only to realize the episodes flipped onward without any awareness of what happened in it, she gave up and watched the doors instead. She was staring at them with burning eyes when they finally opened.
The returning Dominions did not look wounded so much as used up. Their gear was damp in places despite having been dried repeatedly throughout the day. Hair lay flattened or disordered beneath removed caps and hoods. Faces were reddened from the weather, and everyone moved much slower than they had that afternoon. They had worked in rotations for hours, she heard, warming themselves, eating, drinking and resting between deployments, but eleven hours was still eleven hours. The strain showed now that they had finally stopped moving. Then she saw Theron. Everything inside her loosened so suddenly it hurt.
She crossed the room before she had decided to move. Theron barely had time to look toward her before she caught his arm. “You look terrible!”
His face was pale beneath the cold flush, and exhaustion had stripped away nearly all the polish that normally seemed inseparable from him. Even his eyes were blood red. He glanced down at her hand and then back at her.
“You waited eleven hours to tell me that?”
Relief turned instantly into irritation.
“I can find something worse to point out if you'd prefer.”
A weak smile appeared, and Seraphis hated how close she had been to crying until she saw him.
Theron started trying to undo the fastenings of his outer coat, but his fingers shook enough that he missed the first one twice. Seraphis pushed his hands away and did it herself.
“I am capable.”
“Clearly.”
“You become very unpleasant when you're worried.”
She looked up sharply. “I wasn't worried.” Theron was too exhausted to argue, and she dropped it.
He had fared worse than the others. The Dominions looked tired also, but they still carried some reserve beneath their burden. Theron looked as though whatever had kept him upright through the last rotation had been spent on the walk back. Once she got the weight of his coat off him, his shoulders sagged. When she pressed a hot drink into his hands, he wrapped both palms around it and stood there breathing the steam into his nostrils for several seconds.
Seraphis touched his sleeve. “Sit down before you fall down.”
“I am not going to fall down.”
“Then sitting should be very easy.” That earned her another tired look, but he obeyed.
Only once Theron was seated did Seraphis look around properly.
The Dominions were in various stages of removing their winter gear. Staff brought them hot drinks and carried away wet garments and boots to presumably be dried off. It was then that she realized the Ascendancy was still lingering near the exit. He had one hand pressed to the device at his ear while someone spoke to him from elsewhere in the building. Snow had melted into dark patches across his coat. His hair was damp at the temples, and exhaustion had sharpened rather than softened the severe lines of his face.
“Reopen the secondary vent before the accumulation seals it. I want another structural team through before dawn.” She overheard him say, and watched him openly.
Whatever was said in response tightened his jaw. He looked angry. “Leave the southern face packed. Karim marked it for a reason.”
The call ended, and another Kremlin official approached him almost immediately, but one of the Dominions intercepted first. His name was Karim, Seraphis had learned over the hours. He had already removed most of his outer gear and looked tired enough that even his usual composure had gone flat around the edges.
“Three hours.”
Nikolai barely looked at him, shaking his head. “Two.”
Karim's gaze moved across the room instead of arguing, pulling the Ascendancy's gaze along with him. One Dominion had lowered himself onto the floor and was eating without speaking. Another sat forward in a chair with his elbows on his knees, staring into the steam rising from his cup. Theron looked ten times worse than either of them.
Karim looked back at Ascendancy. “They need three.”
Nikolai's answer changed immediately. “Three.”
Then, to someone nearby, she overheard him add, “Wake me in two.”
One of the remaining medics approached him, but Nikolai stopped him with a small shake of the head. “I'm only cold and tired.”
The medic glanced toward his hands, considered arguing, then heard someone calling from the corridor and abandoned the effort. Ascendancy started stripping off the outer layers of his gear. He pulled at one glove, but it did not move. The glove had stiffened from repeated cycles of snow, moisture, cold and drying throughout the day. His fingers did not seem interested in cooperating either. He caught the cuff with the opposite hand and pulled again. Then tried ripping the velcro with his teeth.
Nothing. Watching Ascendancy lose a fight with his own glove was the first thing all night that made Seraphis want to laugh. He tried again, and Seraphis immediately crossed the room. Nikolai was still occupied with the glove when she stopped in front of him.
“Give me your hand.”
His eyes lifted. Only then did Seraphis register exactly how that had sounded. There were probably very few people in the world who gave Nikolai Brandon instructions. She held out her hand anyway, palm up.
“Unless you want to keep fighting with it. I think it's winning.”
He stared at her without smiling. Then he put his hand into hers. The glove was colder than she expected. Seraphis caught his wrist with one hand and worked her fingers beneath the stiffened cuff with the other. It resisted at first, and she had to pull carefully rather than yank it free.
“If your fingers come off with this, I'm shoving the glove back on.”
Nikolai's eyes moved to her face. For one terrible second she wondered whether she had finally found the exact sentence that got people removed from the Kremlin, but something shifted behind his eyes. Not a smile, exactly.
“Reassuring that you have a plan.” Seraphis looked down quickly so he would not see how pleased she was.
“I'm very good in emergencies.”
“Clearly.”
The glove finally loosened. She eased it over his knuckles and pulled it free. His hand startled her.
There was nothing seriously wrong with it. No frostbite and no injury worth pulling one of the few remaining medics away from people coming through Spasskaya. But the cold had worked at his skin all day. His knuckles were raw and dry, crossed by fine cracks with thin lines of red caught in them. When Seraphis adjusted her grip, she felt the faint tremor running through his fingers, and her amusement disappeared.
She thought of the footage from earlier. People filing through tunnels. Rescuers entering damaged buildings. Children walking beneath lines of white light. For all the things Theron had told her about him and all the certainty described in the Codex, the Ascendancy's hand was simply cold. Painfully cold. He had spent the day doing all of that with skin that cracked in winter like anyone else's. Seraphis swallowed and held out her palm again.
“Other one.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly. She raised her chin, and he gave her the other hand. This glove came free more easily. The knuckles beneath it were much the same, reddened and split with fine traces of blood. Seraphis said nothing. He would only tell her they were fine, and technically he would be right. When she released him, his fingers closed once, slowly, testing their movement.
“Thank you.”
It was such an ordinary thing for him to say that Seraphis almost forgot to answer.
“You're welcome.”
Someone called for Ascendancy from across the room. Nikolai looked toward them, then back at her for one brief moment before turning away.
That was all. Seraphis returned to Theron feeling faintly ridiculous. He was watching her.
“What?” She demanded.
Theron took a slow drink.
“Nothing.”
“You have the same annoying habit as the Pope.”
Theron's eyebrows rose, but he was far too tired to chase that revelation.
The room slowly began to settle. Food disappeared. Cups were emptied and refilled. Equipment was stacked close enough to reach again when everyone woke. Another small group of evacuees came through, and two Dominions who had already sat down got back up without complaint to clear space for them. A mother with a sleeping child received one of the better chairs. Someone found another blanket. The remaining medic moved between them while Kremlin staff worked out where the people could be transferred next.
Nobody made any serious attempt to become comfortable. One Dominion stretched out on the floor using his folded coat beneath his head. Another tilted back in a chair and was asleep almost immediately. Karim found a place against the wall and extended his legs in front of him.
Theron remained stubbornly upright in his chair long after Seraphis could see that staying there was costing him more effort than lying down would have.
“Move.”
One eye opened. “Where?”
Seraphis glanced at the floor beside the wall, where someone had abandoned a folded blanket, and dragged it closer with her foot before lowering herself onto it. The wall was cold through her dress, but after eleven hours of waiting she no longer cared. She patted her thigh, and Theron looked at her.
“Come on, Seraphis.”
“You can either lie down voluntarily or fall asleep sitting up and wake with your neck permanently shaped like that.” He stared at her for several seconds, apparently searching for enough energy to resist. He did not find it. Theron lowered himself onto the blanket beside her and stretched out along the wall. Seraphis guided his head into her lap before he could reconsider. He made a quiet sound of protest with no conviction behind it.
“You are enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
His eyes were already closing.
Seraphis slipped her fingers into his hair near one temple and began working slow circles against his scalp. His hair was still faintly damp from snow and sweat, colder at the ends than at the roots. She moved her fingertips along his hairline, then lightly tapped across his forehead with two fingers in a soft, repetitive rhythm. Theron's breathing deepened almost immediately. The line between his brows softened, his jaw loosened, and his head gradually grew heavier in her lap as the last of the tension left him.
Seraphis felt her own body begin to loosen with his. She had spent the entire evening carrying fear like a backpack, even while pretending to be bored, even while wandering the Kremlin, even while Patricus questioned her in the chapel. She had watched strangers emerge from tunnels and damaged buildings appear on screens and told herself Theron was fine because the reports said he was fine. It was different to feel the weight of him on her lap and know he was fine.
His weight rested against her thighs. She could feel him breathing. He was here, and for the first time since he had walked away with Ascendancy into the storm, she believed he was safe. While Theron dozed, and Seraphis's fingers continued the soft taps on his forehead, she watched the room, unsurprised to find the Ascendancy still awake.
He finished one last conversation with emergency personnel, checked a display, and finally removed the remaining layers of his winter gear. Someone gestured toward the corridor, apparently offering him somewhere better to rest, but he shook his head. He chose a place on the floor near the doors instead.
Seraphis watched him fold part of his coat beneath his head. The most powerful man in the world could presumably have commanded a bed within seconds, yet he lay down within a few meters of his men, close to the route that would take them back toward Spasskaya Gate when the three hours ended. Two, she mentally corrected. Eventually he closed his eyes, and it took surprisingly little time for his breathing to change.
Seraphis watched him for a few seconds longer than she meant to. One hand still rested in Theron's hair. She wondered whether he would actually sleep the full three hours. Theron shifted in his sleep, turning his face slightly against her lap. Seraphis looked down and brushed a few strands of hair away from his forehead.
“You're fine,” she whispered, though she was not entirely sure whether she meant him or herself. Her fingers resumed their slow path through Theron's hair, but the circles grew smaller as exhaustion finally found her too. Her head settled against the wall, her eyes drifted shut, and sometime before she realized she had stopped tapping at his forehead, Seraphis fell asleep with Theron breathing deeply in her lap. It would not last long.