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There’s a tension in the way he’s holding me. He doesn’t ask me about the package.

“What is it?” I whisper, as Gallien murmurs the command to kill the lights.

Doman pauses an instant before answering.

“My father has called me into the palace tomorrow. He sounded… serious.”

40

PRINCE DOMAN

Iwalk through the familiar halls of my palace. Places from childhood are frozen in time in the mind, and every little change sticks out—an embroidered rug against marble that’s been swapped out for another, worn down by combat boots, a triad of Mark-10 cyborgs, with dull, granite skin standing at attention where once there would have been Aurelian guards.

Men salute me as I stride through the halls to the stairwell, taking the stairs up to the tower three at a time. I used to race up and down these steps with my brothers, until Cal tripped and ended up in the med-bay with a broken nose.

At the top of the stairs, the doors to the study are open. My father is sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair, peering over a yellowed scroll of parchment with the fine script of High Aurelian. He’s in his battle-robes, the white toga that bares the side of his muscular chest. He fought a thousand battles before I was born, and now he bears the full weight of the war, commanding the fleets and choosing the battle lines to hold, to retreat, to push. He was never a gentle man, but the decades have changed him. Grey flecks his jet-black hair, and new linesare chiseled on his hard face. He’s a towering specimen of an Aurelian, but I am taller.

I was born of the Bond, he of the cryo-bay.

“Father. You wished to see me.”

“Come in,” he waves. I close the door behind me, and he scrutinizes me, his hard eyes peering through me. Solid gold irises, like molten fire, the mark of my mother on him. “I was hard on you, boy. But I had to be. We sensed the storm coming, even in the years of peace.”

I can remember those golden eyes watching me as Baldur clutched a burning brand, the smell of seared flesh assaulting my nostrils. The pride that flashes in those molten orbs when I worked up the courage to do the same, forcing the pain down. I went straight to the med-bay to heal the scars before they could form, and my fathers clapped me on the back, applauding my bravery.

“The past is the past,” I say, walking to tall, thin windows. The city stretches out below me, pristine marble bathed in the glow of the morning sun, then the rolling hills, stretching out as far as the eye can see. I pick out Bruton’s estate, far off in the distance, focusing on the very room that Adriana is in right now.

For some reason, Gallien’s aura has moved into the city itself—Iexpected him to stay in the manor. I consider sending a telepathic message, but I can’t split my focus. My father knows me better than anyone not sharing my mind, and any slip of the tongue will put me in the glare of his suspicion.

Raegan. My father, our emperor. He pours coffee from a carafe, motioning for me to sit across from him in the rigid wooden chairs. Even in his study, he does not allow the comfort of even a pillow. I thank him, taking my first sip.

“Is it? I grow less certain by the day. Cal brings me ancient reports and books from the archives,” he says, motioning to the desk that is constructed of wood against the side of the circularroom. It makes me think of Adriana’s home on Virelia. “Planets that are not where they should be, knocked out of gravity wells and spinning off into nothing. Suns that have… aged. Names, dates, small things that do not match up. Scholars have never understood why the records of our species are so vague pre-contact with humanity.”

“Cal is deep into the theoretical. What do these reports matter to the war?”

My father takes a long sip of coffee from the stone mug. “You speak like Bruton. Do not discount information, Doman. These inaccuracies are most apparent during the Galactic War, when Toad Planet-Killers wiped out entire planets, and yes, when we did the same to theirs. And now, they are happening again, when the weapons are being tested. This issue of Orb-Shifts. We have reports of men lost in the Rift during the Galactic war, and from long, long ago, in the first civil war.”

I lean in. “We have a war to win, Father. When Obsidian is ground to dust, we can address this.” I push out the dire warnings of Aeris of Etherion, the visions she had of endless nothingness. “If Obsidian is not stopped, he will wipe out every human and Aurelian who does not bow to him. He will take Colossus, kill every one of us, and continue spreading like the cancer he is.”

“And that is why I brought you here. We have reports of mass movement. Obsidian’s fleets are mobilizing. He is going to strike us on Colossus.”

My heart pounds in anticipation.

I knew this was coming, from the first moment when I watched a third of our species leaving Colossus to follow the Old Ways. The thought of Orb-Beams lancing out over the skies of our capital sears in my mind, of hand-to-hand combat with branded foes, of driving my Orb-Blade into the War-God's heart.“Gods,” I whisper, and my eyes widen in a mixture of dread and expectation.

This is what I was born for. My destiny beckons to me.

“Obsidian is right about many things,” snarls my father, contempt in his words, the most emotion I’ve seen him show in years. “You saw out the window. Our Empire is dying. You saw the empty estates, the city that once brimmed with life. I will not have my heir be king of a rotting corpse. When we kill Obsidian, we usher in a new age. Our soldiers will throw off their rings and find their Fated Mate. The empty homes will be filled once more. Obsidian, curse him, was necessary, just as the prophecies proclaimed. We needed him to forge us anew.”

“And what of the rest of the prophecies?”

His lips curl back. “Of a darkness that will end all sentient life if Obsidian does not take the throne?” He shakes his head. “These prophecies did not come from the Gods, my son. They came from the minds of men. In the early ages of our Empire, Aurelians conferred with Orbs. This man we are up against is no God. He is a seer. There used to be many of them. We are not so pure as we like to think, Doman, and perhaps this is why the records are gone. Someone may have destroyed them. Forced breedings, to create monstrosities with black in their veins, to create things that could speak with the Orbs and see possible futures. But there is no one future that is determined. No certain end, no fate forcing our hand. We have our own destiny.”

“There is something in the Rift, Father. I felt it. A presence. Something that knows we exist.”

“Did you see it?”

“No. But Bruton’s triad did. You know this.”