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She shakes her head. “I am playing my part. That is all I can. And that is all you can do.” She shrugs. My uniform is sticking to me from the dampness of her room, uncomfortable, and I shift against the chair.

I laugh without mirth. “And if I play the part of good little princess, I’m damning myself. After the three years, when we are divorced, when the war is over and my use is done, I’ll be thrown away. Pentaris will have what it needs from me.”

“And Pentaris will prosper. Is that not what we both aim for?”

“Yes. It is.”

“You are a war-time Prime Minster, Adriana. But the people will see your sacrifice. We cannot know the whims of them in the future. But we know them with near certainty now. Even the hardest anti-Aurelian nationalists will accept this. It not only gives us more than we could have ever dreamed to ask for. It shows that the royal triad is adapting to our customs, and that Prince Doman, too, is making a sacrifice.”

“What sacrifice?”

Her brows furrow, as if the answer is obvious. “Because, Adriana, you are not his Fated Mate. That is the instinctual goal of Aurelians. That woman is out there, and they have delayed their search for her, for three long years.”

“Three years is nothing for an Aurelian.”

“But it is everything for a human. With the Bond, the lifespan of a human stretches out for centuries, millennia. Those three years they marry you and delay their search cuts off perhaps three hundred years from their Fated Mate’s life that would have been extended had they Bonded her. You will wed the men you hate, and they will wed the woman who cannot complete them.”

“This is my life we’re talking about.”

“We have only one to give,” she says, cryptic, her humanity slipping away as she becomes the representative of Etherion.

I get up and slam my palm with a satisfying, wet thud against the glistening button to open the doors. I beeline to my quarters, and people practically jump to get out of my way when they see the expression on my face.

I get into my cramped quarters, changing into an identical, fresh uniform, like I am going into battle.

It is time to face the voting blocks.

It is time to convince them to deny this plan.

Because sovereignty is more important than prosperity. In ten thousand years, one path leads to our submission and one leads to our self-reliance and independence, as Pentaris has been for our recorded history, as it will be.

It is not my legacy I am worried about.

It is the fate of Pentaris itself.

6

ADRIANA

The door to the meeting room opens to me. The air is stale, like a crypt. Three chairs sit in the cramped room, the maximum number of Administrators allowed out of Pentaris territory, to preserve the government in case of attack.

The room is tight, gray, conserving space in our ship.

I sit heavily in the middle chair as the door shuts behind me. It’s claustrophobic, the walls pressing in, the knowledge that my ship is in the hangar bay of the Aurelian warship Imperator which is at the edge of our borders. I had planned for everything. A shouting match with the Aurelians, a tense, weeklong negotiation, being thrown into irons and put in their cells.

They took me by surprise. Never in a thousand years would it cross my mind they would try to wed me.

I check my smart-watch. I called the meeting to start in two minutes. I let three pass, then join the call, the gray space in front of me shimmering as the holographic projector hums into life.

The representatives of the five planets sit in their ring of chairs, and to my left and right, the twelve Administratorssurround me. Aeris is a projection, shimmering at the edges, entering the meeting from her chambers. The two Administrators on my ship are also projecting themselves from their rooms, too scared to join me in the meeting room.

It’s easier to cast your votes to damn someone when you don’t have to sit next to them.

“I’ve called this meeting to vote on the…”proposal,I think, and reject the painful word. “Trade negotiations between Pentaris and the Aurelian Empire. You have all seen the terms. You have all seen that they are more than generous. But I would ask, of all of you in attendance, to understand who we are dealing with. Aurelians live over a thousand years. Their Empire thinks in terms of millennia, not decades, not centuries. The decisions you all make today will have ripples into the future far after you are gone. Pentaris has been a neutral sector for our known history. In letting Aurelian warships into our territories, we declare war against Obsidian and the Fanatics. We align ourselves against the Toad Kingdom, who have known us as a buffer between their territories and the Aurelian Empire, who will now see us as a direct threat.”

Silence greets me. Finally, Thrain looks around, sees no one else will speak, and grimaces. “Obsidian is finished. He’s being pushed back every damn day.”

“This is true. The planets he conquered in Aurelian Empire territories have been nearly all retaken. Nearly all. There are still bastions. And he still controls hundreds of planets and space stations in Wild Space. He still has a fanatical army who worship him as a God of death and will do anything to put him on the throne. Our sector could be his last stand. If he turns his armies on us, he could drive into our sector, take it, and hold it. Our Shift disruptor technology on Etherion has secured our Independence all these millennia. Obsidian knows their strategic value.”