I felt the tension when I wasn't even through the door.
The room vibrated with leftover magic disordered, untrained, filled with feeling. The sort that only a sorceress losing her grip could produce. And the smell smoldering incense, ozone, and something metallic, like smoldering anger.
"do you think showing yourself to him every time he takes a breath makes you special?" Raven's voice, deep but slicing. "He's not a trophy to be won, Zatanna."
"And you think hiding in the shadows, sulking in the corners, makes you closer to him?" Zatanna retorted. "You've hardly said a word to him since the Abyss, but now you're suddenly possessive?"
I walked in.
Both women turned. Their gazes Raven's seething with fury barely contained, Zatanna's blazing with fire magic fixed on me, then back on each other. This wasn't an argument. This was years of coiled tension bubbling over.
"Stop," I said.
Neither did.
I inserted myself between them. "Now."
Raven's cloak billowed, darkness hovering at the ends of her presence. "She's irresponsible. She keeps secrets even from you.
Zatanna didn't deny it. Her jaw clenched. "And she's afraid. Of her power. Of what she feels. So she pushes everyone away including you."
"That's enough."
My voice boomed not loud, but weighted. Cosmic resonance slid into the syllables, not by intention, but instinct. The magic in the room froze, held mid-air like suspended blades.
They backed off.
But the damage was done.
I glared from one to the other. "This has nothing to do with Ner'Valun. Or the cult. Or the League. This is about me."
Zatanna's expression softened. "Yes."
Raven crossed her arms. "We've been lying too long."
"And now you think now is the moment for this?" I demanded. "When a god of forgetting is clawing at the veil? When the cults ring louder every night? When I still don't know what I'm becoming?"
"I don't care," Zatanna replied. "I care about you."
Raven moved closer. "And I won't let you destroy yourself trying to save everything on your own."
I took a deep breath.
This was not a battlefield, but it might as well have been. And worse there was no monster to vanquish here. No foe to punch. Only emotions. Exposure. And the truth I'd worked so hard to deny for much too long.
I turned to Zatanna first. "You've risked everything to stand with me. Even your soul. You didn't have to."
"I wanted to," she breathed.
Then I turned to Raven. "And you… you never ask for anything. But I see it. In the way you look at me. In the way you pause, every time our hands touch."
She didn't say no.
I glanced between them.
"I care for you both."
Zatanna turned away. Raven didn't change expression, but the light in her eyes faded.
"I don't know what's next," I went on. "I don't know what kind of power I'm becoming. But if I let what I feel dictate. if I pick one of you, it changes everything."
Zatanna stepped forward. "Then let it."
Raven trailed behind. "Because if we're going to be dealing with gods, demons, and cosmic insanity, you want people who feel. Who fight for you."
I swallowed.
Then I nodded softly.
"No lies," I said.
"No more," Zatanna said in agreement.
Raven's voice was barely above a whisper. "We begin now."
The tension didn't dissipate. It moved like the quiet before a storm. But it was sour.
The emotions weren't disappearing.
And neither were they.