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The triads throw the doors open, and the throne room sprawls before me. I hesitate for a second at the doorways, taking it in, before entering.

This is just a taste of what will be in Colossus, the home planet of the Aurelian Empire. Synonymous with wealth and power, opulence and decadence that goes against everything Obsidian represents. The two triads follow me soundlessly in as I walk up to Doman’s throne, reaching up and pulling myself onto his enormous marble seat.

The triads don’t even blink at me sitting in their commander’s throne. They simply walk around the thrones and stand behind me, guarding me as I sit cross-legged against the cool stone and wait.

A half hour later, and the doors are thrown open, Doman striding in. There is no trace of the fight from earlier, the black eye fixed in the med-bay.

He waves, and the two triads from behind me leave.

“How did you know I’d come here?”

“I just knew,” I say, as he walks towards the throne, stopping ten feet away from me.

“The throne suits you.”

The edges of my lips curl up. “We outlawed monarchy millennia ago. There’s many things that are poison for the long-term survival of a system. Monarchy is near the top.”

“And where do alien threats rank?”

“They’re up there. It was short-sighted of my people to let you cross into our lands. Short-sighted thinking is the greatest risk to any people. All you have to do to destroy a planet, or an Empire, is make people prioritize the now before the future.”

“What else spells death?”

I run my hand over the marble armrest of the throne. “Individuality. If a planet decides that it has a unique identity which is at odds some way with the Pentaris alliance, they become paranoid. They view it as four against one. This kind of nationalism is poisonous. It grows over centuries, not decades, and one day, it results in a split.”

“I know that well. My days in Academy were before the civil war, before a third of our species turned against us. There were whispers, even then. A resentment towards a human queen. The idea that the Empire was losing relevance. Losing power. Planets declaring Independence, more and more Aurelians doing only their minimum hundred years, aged Aurelians long past their prime enjoying the endless summers of their retirements instead of going into the cryo-bays to make room for the new.”

“And yet, it took you by surprise.”

“Yes. Men I trusted. Men I grew up with. They’re against me, now.”

“It didn’t take your mother by surprise. She orchestrated this whole thing. Every one of her policies was designed to hasten the inevitable split. It’s been predicted in Pentaris for centuries now—we ran our models on Etherion. But we projected the Empire would last two thousand more years, and that by then, the Priests and their forces would be powerful enough to takecomplete control, casting out the old loyalists. We didn’t account for your mother.”

“Is that what you think of her? Some omnipotent force, puppeteering the entire universe? She’s a person, just like you and me.”

“It does not take omnipresence to shape the future, Doman. I can only imagine the models she has access to. She changed the harem system—it made no functional difference, to allow women to leave, to give them a lump sum after serving three years. The harems were voluntary by this point. But to the kind of Aurelian who views humanity as property… oh, it rankled, Doman. But her Independence decree, that was the true genius. No one likes paying taxes. That’s why our Administration dresses in drab browns and lives on barebones ships. Tax rebellion is a great threat to a democracy.”

“She wanted what is best for humans.”

“Maybe at first, Doman. Maybe at first. Short-sighted thinking. That’s what she bet on. That democracy could be manipulated, that planet after planet would declare itself Independent. It started with the ones within the epicenter of the Aurelian Empire. They knew they’d get protection without any cost to themselves. Then it spread. One by one, planets declared themselves out of the jurisdiction of your Empire. Then the Priests break off, civil war is declared, and they come crawling back. Only now they’re not paying the original deal. They’re paying so much in tax that each of those human planets has to turn themselves into a factory for your war effort if they want to be able to survive. Because the Aurelian Empire is buying ships, and they are buying missiles, and they are buying parts for the war machine.”

Doman shakes his head, slowly. “This grand conspiracy of yours. Even if it was true, you prefer the alternative? What do you think happens if your two-thousand-year projection wasright and the Priests become so powerful they are in power? You think they let the Pentaris Alliance survive? These people aren’t playing, Adriana. They aren’t going to use diplomatic tricks to get what they want. They come with fire and pain, and you submit, or you are consumed.”

“Better. Worse. It’s just reality. And you need to accept that your parents are doing what they can to keep the Aurelian Empire alive, just like I am working for Pentaris.”

He strides to me, and yet, from the perch of the throne, I am not yet at eye level to him. “I’d let it die to keep you, Adriana. Doesn’t that make me worse than her? Doesn’t that make me worse than Obsidian? The Aurelian Empire is the only thing standing between trillions of people and death, but when you were lost in the Rift, I knew… I knew I’d let it burn.”

“That’s dangerous, Doman.”

“And where doesthatdanger rank? Love?”

“It’s near the top. People do insane things for love. And even more to keep their family safe.”

His jaw clenches. The weight of the world is on his shoulders, but he can bear it. “I need your forgiveness.”

“You can’t think of me as lesser than your soldiers. Those six men that died. You said they knew the risks. I did too. I knew this trip had dangers. I went with you with my eyes wide open.”

“I told you we’d be safe. That he couldn’t find us in the darkness of space.”