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ADRIANA

I rush back to my ship, my pace at the verge of indignity as I stride back to the hangar bay, two sets of Aurelian guards keeping up easily with their long-legged gait when I hear the prince’s roar.

I know that scream of conquest and rage is his, and his alone, and not his battle-brothers’.

Some instinct tells me. It is the roar of a beast, his true nature that he disguises in robes and crowns, and it makes me quicken my pace to a jog, a frisson running down my spine as the hairs on the back of my neck stand.

My ship seems out of place in the hangar bay, filled with pure white, predatory Reavers.

My own ship is a bland, dull gray that matches my uniform, the neutrality of the Administrators who are supposed to give up all ties to their home planets when they are elected to serve.

I go up the ramp, and when the doors close behind me, I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

I’m not safe in my ship—any one of the Reavers could cut through our shields and armor with their Orb-Beams—but having a few more feet of metal between me and the royal triad is a relief.

I brush off the two Administrators who hail me.

The look in their eyes is like I have become a stranger.

It tells me that they have gotten the news—that the details of the wedding proposal were sent to them to vote on, and now, instead of their Prime Minister, I am a pawn.

I ignore their calls, stalking straight to Aeris’ quarters, knocking heavily at the door.

“Come in.” Her voice is gentle as the tide slowly creeping up on you as you sleep on the beach, until your feet are soaked, and you never saw it coming.

I press the button that makes the doors hiss open, wishing it was a wooden door that I could throw open and slam and storm in.

The humidity hits me in a wave, cool and wet as she sits at her small desk.

She waves her hand, and I see the translucent webbing between her fingers.

The holographic display she was looking at disappears.

Even filled with anger, I take note of that fact—she could have turned off the holographic projection before I walked into her room. She wanted me to see just a glimpse of it.

The door hisses shut behind me, and I glower down at her through the fine mist in her quarters.

“You saw this coming. You saw this coming and you didn’t warn me. Vote against the wedding,” I snarl.

“I will vote for the best interests of my planet,” she says, her voice flat, her bright blue eyes blinking with that reptilian second set of eyelids as she looks straight forward.

“You’d throw me to the wolves?” I pull out the chair, sitting in front of her so she has to look at the woman she is damning.

“I would throw myself to the wolves to save Pentaris. To save consciousness. As the crown prince’s wife, you will have a rare influence on him. Convince him not to use the Planet-Killers.”

“Is that all you care about? You said it yourself. Your visions aren’t clear. You have no idea what causes the… threads to go flat,” I say, unfamiliar with the terminology. “If that was even a real vision. You could lie and say anything for your own designs. You’re capable of it.”

If she’s offended, she says nothing, her face a mask.

Her head cocks sideways as she looks at me, in the same way the two Administrators did. Not as her Prime Minister, not even as a human. As a piece of a puzzle.

“It is a great shame you are not his Fated Mate. For she alone will truly have his ear. Be strong, Adriana. That will be your comfort. They have felt her out there, somewhere in the universe, and she is their only obsession. This union between the triad and you will be in name only. Three years, and you will secure not only the future for Pentaris, but your guidance may save all life itself.”

“I am not. Going. To marry. Those three .” My voice is ice. “I will resign as Prime Minister. Vote against the proposal, or else I will be stripped of my position and another will take my place. You know I am the only one capable of leading Pentaris out through this war intact.”

She raises a single eyebrow, and there is a gentleness to her. “Adriana, if you are the one meant to lead us, then you will marry them. Look at the deal.” She presses her smart-watch, and the holographic projection she was looking at appears between us.

It is the terms of the deal.

“That can’t be right,” I say, scanning through it. In return for a marriage lasting a minimum of three years, and for Aurelian Empire troops to have free access to Pentaris, they have given us the universe.

I flick my fingers, and the deal continues.

In addition to everything the triad promised in the throne room, there are seventy med-bays, one of the technologies kept closest to the Aurelian Empire’s chest, licensed out to great profits.

Sick men and women of Pentaris will be able to go into the bays, terminal illnesses eradicated from their bodies, scars erased, arteries cleared, cancers obliterated.

My eyes widen as I scroll. Genetically modified grains that could grow even on the deserts of Terosa.

Thirty Reavers, the predatory attack ships of the Aurelian Empire, never before granted to humanity, given freely, and in perpetuity, to bolster the Frosthold fleets.

An end to the heavy royalty payments on the current alien technology we have licensed from them, which will free every facet of our economy.

My mind reels, and while my hope for Pentaris blooms, my own hopes die. This is twice as much as would have convinced the hardest nationalist on Frosthold, the most canny merchant on Terosa.

I wave my hand, violent, shutting the holographic feed off. “Tell me, Aeris. Tell me every vision you have had that concerns me and them.” My voice is a tense rasp as my mind races for a way to get out of this.

She shakes her head, slowly. “I’m sorry, Adriana. I cannot tell the future for an individual. We are shown glimpses, yes, but on a grand scale.”

“You’re lying to me.” I stare straight through her, my jaw clenched. “You owe me the truth. On that, at least.”

Her eyes flash in affront—and it confirms my suspicion. Before, when I accused her of lying about her vision, it did not affect her. Now, she’s wounded, because of guilt. She’s hiding something from me, and I will get it out of her.

“Knowing the future can change it, Adriana.”

“I have free will, do I not? Would you rob that from me?”

“Very well. I saw a glimpse, only for a moment, of a woman who may have been you. You had a crown on your head. I did not think for a moment it was the crown of the Aurelian Empire. When I shared my vision with the seers of my planet, they feared that you may turn Pentaris into a monarchy. They counseled me to vote against you for Prime Minister.”

“But you voted for me. I had your vote, why?”

“Because the threads that spread out from that vision…” She bites her lip, nervous, and for all the little differences between us, her huge lungs and barrel chest, the fine webs between her fingers that go up to her knuckles, the second set of eyelids, she is still human.

“Not all the threads spreading out from that vision led to flat, blank death. That is why I voted for you, Adriana.”

“You are playing as a God, Aeris.”

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.