“Kal, no,” she pleads, trying to stop me as I rise. “You need to rest. He almost killed you, do you understand? He shattered your mind into a thousand pieces. And if he tries again, I don’t know if I’m strong enough to stop him.”
“I am not frightened of him, Aurora.”
“But I’m frightened for you. I can’t lose you again, I can’t!”
I gather her into my arms, and she hugs me fiercely, and for a moment, all of the hurt, the pain, the grief fades away. With her in my embrace, I am complete again. With her beside me, there is nothing I cannot do.
“You will not lose me,” I vow. “I am yours forever. When the fire of the last sun fails, my love for you will still burn.”
I kiss her brow.
“But I must speak with him, Aurora. Help me. Please.”
She stares at me a moment longer, uncertain. Fighting with the fear of what he may do to me. My heart aches to see the hurt that has been done to her. The strength she has given to fight this far. But at last, she squares her jaw, and putting my arm around her shoulder, she helps me stand.
I still feel fragile—as if I am a tapestry of a million threads held together by a single knot of will and warmth. But she is beside me again, and that is all that matters. Holding on to each other, Aurora and I limp through the glittering corridors, crystal singing rainbows all around us, discordant and grating.
My father named this vessel Neridaa—a Syldrathi concept that describes the process of simultaneously destroying and creating. Making and unmaking. But I know the lie of it. This is the weapon he used to destroy Syldra’s sun. Our world. Ten billion lives extinguished by his hand, my mother among them. And I know my father creates nothing but death.
Sai’nuit.
Starslayer.
My heart stills as I lay eyes upon him. He sits atop the crystal spire in the chamber’s heart, like an emperor upon his bloody throne. The floor is scattered with corpses, shattered fragments; the air reeks of death. He is still clad in armor—black, high-collared, a long cloak of crimson spilling over the steps below. Ten silver braids draped over the scarred side of his face. But I see his eye aglow behind them, burning with the same pale luminance as Aurora’s when they fought for the fate of her world.
Before him, I see a vast projection—a stretch of black dotted by tiny stars. We are in the Fold, I realize, approaching a gate. I wonder why the colorscape inside the Weapon is not muted to black and white, as would normally happen in the Fold. I wonder what other properties this vessel possesses. Is it the crystal? The Eshvaren? Him?
“Father,” I say.
He does not hear me. Does not look up. The Neridaa is drawing closer to the gate—tear-shaped, crystalline, Syldrathi in design.
“Father!” I roar.
He glances at me, then away just as swift, eye burning like a tiny sun.
“Kaliis. You live.”
“Disappointed?”
“Impressed.” That burning gaze flickers to Aurora, then back to the black before him. “But then, you always were your father’s son.”
Refusing to rise to his bait, I step forward with Aurora beside me. “What is happening? Where is the Unbroken fleet? The Terrans and Betraskans? How is it Earth was consumed by the enemy so swiftly?”
He licks at his lip, curled almost into a snarl. “The enemy,” he repeats.
“The enemy you were supposed to stop!” Aurora growls beside me.
His gaze flickers her way. The snarl grows a fraction wider. “You are a fool, girl. I can see why my fool son dotes upon you.”
She steps forward, fingers curling to fists. “You sonofabit—”
“Wait …” I take her hand, squeeze as I watch the projection floating before my father. We are crossing through the FoldGate now, into realspace. But this close, I see the gate looks … wrong. Old. Scored by quantum lightning strikes. Half the guidance lights are nonfunctional. It appears as if it has not seen maintenance in decades.
“… Where are we?” Aurora asks.
My father scoffs, brushing a stray braid back over his shoulder. “Ever and always, you seek answers to the wrong questions, girl.”
Looking to the system, I recognize the star from my childhood—brilliant blue, like a sapphire shining in an ocean of darkness. “That is Taalos, be’shmai. There is a Syldrathi colony on Taalos IV, a starport, claimed by the Unbroken after they withdrew from the Inner Council of Syldra.”
“He … came here for reinforcements?”
“I came here for confirmation, girl.”
Aurora grits her teeth, her right eye flaring like a lightning strike. The light pulses beneath her skin, leaking out through the cracks in her cheek. For a moment, the air around us feels greasy and charged with current. Her lips part in a snarl. “Listen, I don’t care how hurt I am, and I don’t care what it costs me. You call me girl again, and you and I are gonna finish that—”
“Silence,” he says.
Aurora blinks. “Okay, maybe I’m being unclear here, but you don’t talk to me that way. You don’t call me girl, you don’t demand silence, you don’t treat me like something you stepped in by mistake. I am a Trigger of the Eshvaren, and unlike you, I was brave enough to step up and—”
“No.”
My father rises, a small scowl on his brow, and he looks at the star system projected before him.
“Listen,” he nods. “Out there.”
I look to Aurora, and she meets my eyes, pressing her lips thin. I feel her mind swell and stretch at the edges of my own. She lifts her hand, as if reaching toward that distant star. That pale glow illuminates her iris, seeps through the splits in her skin.
“I can’t … I can’t hear anything.”
He nods. “Silence.”
My father looks out on the Taalos star, his face a cold mask.
“A colony of almost half a million people orbited this sun. Unbroken all. Loyal unto death.” He laces his fingers together and breathes deep. “The death that has now claimed them. Each and every one.”
“How?” I breathe.
“The Ra’haam,” Aurora whispers. “I can … I can feel it.”
She looks at me with tears in her eyes.
“It’s taken over the colony, Kal. It’s taken over their entire world.”
“But how?” I demand, my frustration rising. “How is this possible? The Ra’haam has not even bloomed yet! Its intent was to drive the galaxy into war while it slumbered on its nursery worlds, waiting to hatch! But now it has taken Earth? Taalos? How can this be?”
“This is your fault,” Aurora says, stepping forward. “All of this. The Eshvaren entrusted you to defeat the Ra’haam, Caersan, and you used their Weapon to fight your own petty war! And where did it get you?”
He looks at her then, and the imperious mask he wears begins to slip. It starts small, just a glimmer of amusement in his eye, a faint curl of his lip. But soon he is smiling, and that smile stretches and splits to his eyeteeth, and of all things, he begins laughing. Laughing, as if my beloved has said the most amusing thing he has ever heard.
All this death. All this darkness. And he finds it amusing. And I see it then, sure as I see this girl beside me, sure as I saw the wreckage of our world, the ruin he has made of our people.