"We're friends," Nora responded when James commented on her bringing Pace along for the ride. They were probably more than that, but unlike Lane, Nora was cagey about relationships. Lane also knew that some part of Nora still held on to her dead husband, so as Fiora began to run through what she wanted, she knew at least one part of this so-called request was not going to happen. Though Lane did not know what the "In Between" place was, she could hazard a guess it had something to do with ley lines and the spaces between dimensions, most witches knew that sort of thing.<br/><br/>Fiora ran through her demands and Nora looked to Lane, eyes narrowing, and then back to the queen as she finished her list of demands. James had already let his true feelings show, but Lane did not think arguing with this kind of woman was going to work and she honestly wasn't sure she was truly up for the task. Dishonesty and deals were not exactly in her wheelhouse.<br/><br/>"You can have a night with me, I'll go with you, but the condition is I have to give full consent to anything I'm party to." Lane opened, lifting a hand toward James as if to say that she had this covered, even though she was certain she did not. "Nora remains as she is, a free agent with a deal on the table with the guardian. If Pace is willing, he can take Mia, but you have to agree that she is his or Nora's, that they become the guardians of the child." Lane looked at her cousin and though the dark-haired woman looked tense, she nodded her head. She never pictured Nora as the mothering type, but Nora knew what it was to be an orphan and she had more or less finished raising her younger sister, Sera, after they lost their parents.<br/><br/>"I'll do the occasional job, so long as it fits within my code," Nora added. "But I have other obligations, I can't be tied to the In Between..." Fiora would not pick up on it, but Lane did, that there was a pain in the last part of what Nora said. Her cousin was torn between the life she had lost and the one she now tried to live. Lane could not help but wonder if Pace could hear it? Did he know about William?<br/><br/>"I took the book from James, as you asked, and that was the only stipulation you made for releasing Mia. It has to be someone at his table, so you get to wiggle a bit on that, but that was the deal made with your servant, so she's not yours anymore. James will never touch the book again." Lane chose those words carefully because touching was not the same thing as seeing. The grimoire was still hers and she needed some freedom with it.<br/><br/>"I'd be disappointed to learn that fairies go back on their words. From everything I've heard, your word is bond. Though, perhaps those were fairytales...then again, I thought the Norse gods were the same sort of myth a week ago, and I was proved very wrong." Something filtered through her eyes then, a darkness, echoing the power within her. The darkness of death, because that was part of a Valkyrie's power, wasn't it?  Shifting the sway of a battle to collect the sounds of those that were worthy.