"I had better work on the additional message to send to Valdemar - hopefully Vanyel will convey its contents before it arrives but I cannot rely entirely on that." 

She nods and hands over the letter so they can be bundled together.

Leareth spends a couple of candlemarks workshopping his message. Checks it through with a few other people, then sends it. Apologetically Gates to the other location again and comes back another few candlemarks later. "...I think that is most of the things that reasonably need my personal attention. I apologize for neglecting you." The latter said with a smile. 

"I understand," she says.

Leareth sits down. "I think we are back to waiting to hear something. How much do you have left of your diplomacy book?" He shows her the bookmark in his, about three-quarters of the way through. "I will trade you when we are both finished." 

She's nearly through with hers, having had more downtime than he has recently. She snuggles up and reads.

Leareth is going to have a hard time catching up, because people keep interrupting him, either in Mindspeech or literally coming to the guest room. When Belrun finishes hers, he sighs and trades. "I will finish it when you are done; I do not want you to be stuck waiting on me when I am likely to have much less reading time." 

"Makes sense." She pecks him on the cheek and starts the second book.

They can read and snuggle until lunch and then head to the cafeteria. 

And they can catch up on other things too, and carefully maintain their sleep schedule so they won't miss Vanyel if he beats a letter.

They don't get a letter the next day. Not the day after that either. However, the border activity in Valdemar seems to have calmed down, and certainly hasn't escalated further. 

The third night lands them back in the dream. 

Tromp tromp tromp tromp. "Hi, Vanyel."

"Belrun. Leareth." Vanyel nods to both of them. He seems substantially calmer, this time, if still rather tense. 

"Update?" Leareth says, levelly. 

"...We got the letter. King Randale did, I mean, but - they're sort of keeping me in the loop again and I'd told him to expect it. Um, he sent my aunt to Petras. Had her Gate there, I guess she'd been before when Elspeth did a state visit decades ago. Which is - pretty extreme, but apparently they're not as alarmed by random Gates as we are since they've got Adept mages all over." 

"It's a large city with good schools and no habit of co-opting all the Gifted for the state."

"They do have a number of mages employed by the state but I think that is somewhat different," Leareth acknowledges. "It is certainly convenient for me that I can do long-range Gates to and from Petras without causing suspicion or alarm." 

Nod. "Anyway. I...think maybe things weren't as bad as I thought? Everyone was just really caught off guard, but I think they were already less, well, panicked about it by the last time we spoke, I just - had no idea what was happening. But when I asked to talk to Randi after the last dream, he admitted he was partly just not wanting to put anything more on me when I was already having a terrible time, and when I said that was doing the opposite of helping, he went off and met with the Senior Circle and they decided it was reasonable to at least keep me up to date even if I'm still locked out of all the meetings." 

"Okay. Does your aunt believe I exist now?"

"Yes. I think Randi was mostly convinced before that, even. There was some debate about whether you're actually lifebonded to Leareth, rather than just having been recruited, but your dean was so shocked about you leaving, and - well, it's not obvious why Leareth would try to recruit a Healer-scholar even if you are extremely talented. Also the bit where you ended up in the dream is weird and no one can really explain it except that apparently lifebonded people share dreams sometimes." 

"Yeah, he didn't like that I left. I hope it helps calm things down. Is there anything it'd be helpful to hear that remains helpful if it doesn't occur to us spontaneously to say it?"

"Hmm. Let me think. ...I'm not sure? I mean, I sort of want to know - what you're hoping for as an outcome, here? I mean you, Belrun, not Leareth. You haven't been lifebonded very long and I can't imagine you were happy about the part where you got lifebonded to someone who's in the middle of planning an invasion and all that." 

"It was not thrilling, no. It's difficult to discuss for information security reasons? But I would be - very disappointed if we couldn't improve on invading even though doing so would be complicated for reasons I can't explain."

"Mmm." Long sigh. "...On the bright side, Yfandes is sort of speaking to me again? As long as I don't bring up literally anything even slightly to do with the, um, thing we had a fight about." 

"I... hope that leaves enough things."