I glance to Caersan, the air thrumming between us. He looks down at his hand, closing it slowly into a fist. And he smiles at me.
I ignore him, turning away, back out into the dark beyond. The space is infinite, too big to wrap my head around. But out there in all that nothing, I realize it’s not completely empty after all. The first time I brush against something, I shy away instinctively, midnight blue flaring around me—then I understand what it is I’ve found. It’s a dead ship, surrounded by a cloud of debris. A minute later, I find another derelict. And another. There’s no life here in the Fold, but this sector of it isn’t empty.
It’s a graveyard.
Is everyone gone? Has everyone in the galaxy been subsumed by the Ra’haam? I can’t imagine the people I’ve met, the places I’ve seen, all destroyed. The bright lights gone dark, the busy streets empty and quiet. Hundreds of worlds, quiet forever.
I let my mind range farther toward the storm, past another ship, this one broken open like someone took it in both hands and ripped it apart to spill the contents out into the Fold and—
I freeze, then jerk back into my body, my eyes snapping open.
“What?” Caersan’s mind is already focusing in the direction I came from, and I feel Kal try to do the same, but he lacks the power. Carefully I join my mind with his and bring him with me as I creep back to take another look.
It’s like one of those puzzles where you have to squint and try to unfocus your eyes, and the moment you stop looking, the image pops out. I quiet my mind, arcing outward, as still and silent as I can be, and there on the very periphery, I sense them again.
One.
Then two.
Then ten.
Then twenty.
There are ships out there at the edge of my range now, just a whisper of them. But they’re converging on us. And these ones aren’t dead. They’re closing in from multiple directions, and even as I watch, their presence becomes firmer, closer, their images coalescing in Caersan’s projection.
“Amna diir,” Kal whispers. “The Ra’haam.”
The ships are of a dozen different styles, built by a dozen different races. They’re huge—battleships all of them, bristling with weapons. But their hulls are overrun with what looks like moss and lichen, a sickly white edged with blue green, and they drag long tendrils behind them, like creeper vines, or maybe roots, searching for new soil to pollute. They remind me of the bones of Octavia, buried underneath the mass of the Ra’haam. There’s a wrongness to them that turns my stomach, makes my blood run cold, like something’s alive inside them but a blanket’s been thrown over it, smothering.
“Those are big ships,” I murmur.
“Capital war vessels,” Caersan replies. “There are more inbound.”
“Can we fight them?” Kal asks.
“We will not fight them. We will destroy them.” Caersan looks at me calmly, his right eye glowing faintly. “You will fire the Weapon, girl. I will shape the pulse toward the enemy. Even damaged, the Neridaa is more than a match for—”
“No,” Kal says.
Caersan tilts his head at his son. “No?”
“You know what it will cost, what it will take, to fire this thing again.” Kal glances at me, those cracks around my eye, before turning back on his father. “You simply do not wish to pay the price yourself.”
I know Kal is right. The pulse wouldn’t have to be anything close to what I’d need to destroy a sun, but fighting that many ships, I’ll be weakened afterward. My skin will keep breaking open, the spiderweb of cracks I see in Caersan will start to spread in me. Still, my fingertips tingle, goose bumps rising on my skin in anticipation… .
“I can do it, Kal,” I tell him.
“Be’shmai, it will hurt you.”
“Will you allow these maggots to destroy us, then?” Caersan asks.
“Will you?” Kal demands.
“We are Warbreed, boy,” he spits. “You know as well as I what that means. From the moment I took the glyf, I accepted death as a friend. I do not fear the Void. To die in battle is a warrior’s fate.”
“You lie, Father,” Kal spits. “It is not in your nature to accept defeat. You will not sit idle and let those things blow us to pieces.”
The Starslayer raises one silver brow, smiling at me.
“Will I not?”
Caersan leans back on his throne, adjusts the line of his cloak, flicks a bothersome speck of dust off his shoulder guard. Steepling his fingers at his lips, he just stares at me. I can feel the Ra’haam battleships drawing closer, more of them coming now—a corrupted swarm, launching fighters, descending on us out of the black.
Caersan does nothing.
The closest warship opens fire; a missile maybe, bursting against our crystal hull. I feel the Weapon shift under us, a psychic sound—almost as if the Neridaa felt the pain. Another blast rocks the Weapon, another, the light around us dimming as violent shudders run the length of the ship.
And still, the Starslayer just stares.
I close my hands into fists, feeling that power surge inside me.
“Be’shmai … ,” Kal whispers.
“‘Be’shmai’ … ,” Caersan sneers at his son. “This is who you name beloved? This weakling who will let you die here in the dark?”
“You will not do that,” Kal spits, rising. “You’ll not use me against her!”
“You allowed yourself to be used, Kaliis. When you bound yourself to a cur such as she. Your sister would never have shamed me so, to lie with a Terran maggot. Saedii would have done her duty. Saedii would have put her people, her honor, her family first.”
“Family?” Kal shouts. “You killed our mother! You tore our family apart, just as you did our sun! What do you know of family?”
Kal seethes at his father, teeth bared, but I’m past the boundaries of simple words. Instead, I close my eyes, heart pounding now as more and more of the enemy ships draw near. I can see the different shapes, some of them sickeningly familiar—Syldrathi and Betraskan and Terran—all of them corrupted by the Ra’haam. The power builds inside me like water against a dam. It’s warm. Inviting. I can feel the depths of it, just like Caersan said. It’s limitless. It’s overwhelming. Maybe even a little …
Blasts rock the ship, Ra’haam vessels pounding our hull. Corrupted fighters scream down the Neridaa’s length, chipping away at her skin with living shots that eat away at her hull. The Weapon is vast, but I can feel her bleeding, cracks spreading across her face. And all the while, Caersan’s eyes are fixed on me. A small smile on his lips. He’s playing a game of chicken with all our lives, and if it were just me at risk here …
But I look to Kal beside me. My lips pressed thin. I can feel the pull of it. The strength of it, waiting to be unleashed. I know if I let it out, I’m just going to want it again. And again. This is what they made me for, after all. But …
“Aurora … do not let him manipulate you like this.”
I can’t lose you again.
And then I draw up every ounce of my mental energy, holding the power within myself until my skin is tingling, until I’m bursting at the seams, current coursing through my veins. I’m consumed for a moment, caught up in the utter, boundless thrill of it. I feel Caersan in my head then, cold and triumphant, channeling the force into a pulse, spherical, like the ones I let loose on Emerald City, on Sempiternity, releasing it in a blinding burst.