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The huge doors to my warship are open, and I bring her inside, setting her down as the ship rumbles to life and the doors seal behind us. The moment we are alone, she steps away from me, smoothing her dress where my hands rumpled the fine material.

“Prince Doman,” she says, with a curt nod, and leaves, through the hallways back to her ship.

I squeeze my hand tight, trying to feel a shred of pain from the cut, to feel something. Yesterday’s conversation is fresh in my mind, darkening my mood.

I would do anything to end this war. I have seen so many lives lost already. Lukas’ battle-brothers, Calien and Tiber, were close friends, and yet in the sea of losses, I can barely remember them. I’ve seen so many of my soldiers ripped to shreds by missiles, turned to dust and meat, bloodlines ended forever.

But that precious, innocent life under our palace on Colossus… Fay and her babe did not choose a warrior’s life.

I am not naïve. I understand collateral damage. I know the cost of this war on the planets where it rages. We no longer fight,Orb-Blade and against Orb-Blade, Aurelian triads cut down while the buildings stand. Total war. Now Reavers lace down fire, and apartment buildings are crumbled by stray missiles, cowering human inhabitants crushed under rubble.

I had thought I would do anything to end the bloodshed, but there is one thing I cannot do.

Fay is alone, trapped under the palace where I spent my childhood. She is caged beneath the marble parapets where the white flag of hope proudly flies.

She will be let free when the war is done. She will be.

I stomp through my warship as it takes off, the low hum of the Orb that powers my ship more felt than heard. My triad is in our chambers. I went alone down to Terosa, to speed up the ritual, every second with a cost in blood.

I rejoin them. Our chambers are deep inside the Imperator, protected by thousands of feet of metal of the ship on either side. Vast and high-ceilinged, flawless marble floors without veins, three huge beds in the center of the main room. Titus and Gallien are waiting for me, sitting at the wooden table.

I let my weight down heavily on my center bed. I feel like the entire ship is pressing down on my back.

Their auras are pregnant.

“Well. Speak then,” I say, scanning my battle-brothers.

“The ritual went well?” asks Gallien, and I raise my hand in answer, showing the thin line of the cut.

Then I sit, in silence, for them to broach the real topic.

“You know the Queen better than us. We were not born of the Bond,” states Titus, watching me carefully. It irks me, but it shouldn’t. I am leader of this triad, and final decisions rest on me, and me alone.

I run my hand through my hair, throwing it back from my eyes. I long for the battlefield, for my Orb-Blade humming in my hand, for my enemies clear in front of me.

“I don’t want to believe that my fathers and my mother would… would consider it.”

Gallien stands from the table. “The unborn life in Fay’s womb. We do not know what Obsidian will spawn. In hundreds of years, that boy will become a man. He will threaten the Aurelian Empire.”

I pull myself to my feet, staring him down. “How can you do these calculations?”

He shakes his head. “Because she can. Because she will. A threat to the Aurelian Empire is a threat to her family.”

I run my tongue over my teeth, deep in thought. My mother changed since the war broke out.

Or perhaps she did not change, but her molten core was revealed. She is not ice and snow, no matter how carefully she keeps her composure, her visage a mask. She loves me. She loves me and every one of my younger brothers.

“You saw her face when she thought Bruton was dead,” states Titus, uneasy, shifting in his seat.

I clench my fist, hard, until a drop of blood drips down the marble white of my forearm. “The Planet-Killers. We have one in our deepest ship bay, and the other is in stealth. Is this demonstration truly to ward off the Toad Kingdom’s advances… or does she plan to use them against Obsidian?”

Gallien’s eyes narrow. “Even that, she would not do. The planets under his control have billions of human lives,” he says, unable to even consider the possibility. “But Fay and her unborn son… they are a threat to all she holds dear, a threat that will grow.”

“I will not be part of that. I cannot be.”

Titus’ lips curl back. “If we let it happen, we are part of it.”

I stomp back and forth in my chambers, needing to move. “What would you have me do? Go against my fathers? Call an election, fracture us when we need to be whole? The Elites wouldnot vote for me. This is treason. My royal protection would save our heads, but we would be thrown into a jail cell, until the threat of Obsidian was done. Until… until every threat was gone,” I say, my voice darkening.