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He squeezes my leg. “I am nothing but an echo. I wasn’t born of the Bond, like Doman.

I come from an unbroken line, stretching back to the origins of our species.

Men who share the same mind as me. That’s what I feel in my blood.

Their memories, their stories, men who yearned to find their Fated Mate, who fought, who survived, who brought their aged bodies into the cryo-chamber to create their next iteration.

I know their final thought, because I am them. ”

“What is it?”

“To find her. To find you. And my sons will not be echoes. They will be new songs, heard through the eons.” He runs his fingers over my leg, gently stroking me, making tingles run through my body.

Titus brushes his heavy black hair back, looking every inch of a barbarian god. The ice and snow suits him. “I believe what I see. I believe what is in front of me.”

“Then you are like the Fanatics. They believe in their God of War, a deity incarnate. Obsidian. What do you see, Titus?”

“I see chaos.” He spreads his arms out, gesturing towards the endless ice of the lake through our little refuge.

“Life is a flame that must be tended to. When I look up into the sky, each star is a victory. Every one of them reflects me. A fire in the darkness. That is my purpose, Adriana. And I want to have sons with you. I want to light our flames and defy this endless night.” His voice turns into a growl at the end, filled with rage, filled with a fierce will to fight against the endless horrors of the universe, against the endless cold of empty space.

“And you, Adriana? What do you see?” Doman’s eyes are intense, capturing my gaze in his. I couldn’t pull my eyes from his if I tried.

I swallow, my mouth dry. “I see a hundred billion souls I am responsible for, and who I am damning, because I know breaking Fay free will not end this war. It might be the reason it goes on for centuries, it might plunge the people I am pledged to protect into darkness, but I’m too weak to stand by and let it happen if I have a chance to do something. ”

I want them to comfort me. To tell me we’re doing the right thing, planning to break her out.

No one can say a word.

Because we all know we are doing the just and moral thing, and we all know we’re playing with forces beyond our control.

Queen Jasmine may be a heartless force of nature, but she and her imperial triad saw this war coming.

She planted the seeds, decades ago, creating the Cyborg program in secrecy, working with the Human Alliance, and now those Mark-10s, the union of man, machine and alien, have turned the war.

She let planets declare their Independence, only to allow them back under her fold, turning their economies into production for her war effort.

She forged the Aurelian Empire into something more powerful, something that can stand up to the War-God.

And we’re planning to take her trump card from her. We plan to snatch the War-God's Fated Mate from her grasp. We are the ones who will drive the knife into her back and damn us all.

Doman stands, sweat dripping down his naked body, his cock heavy between his legs. “I want to see the stars.”

The other two of his triad stand, but none of them make a move for their Orb-Armor that keeps their temperatures stable.

“You three are going to freeze.”

“Not at all. We learned, from a young age, to withstand cold.” Doman lifts the heavy white coat. “Do you wish to come or wait for us?”

“I’m coming,” I say, pulling on my boots, and turning, so he can put the coat over me. He bundles it tight around me, his movements precise and gentle, buttoning it up high on my neck. I don’t think I’ll ever quite get used to how big they are, the way they tower over me.

Any room they walk into, they command, and when I am here alone with them, their strength is like a protective aura around me.

Gallien goes first, ducking out of the igloo nude, and Titus follows, growling under his breath, the sharp intake of breath the only outward concession he makes to the biting cold.

“After you,” says Doman, and I walk out of the safe little nook in the icy lake and onto the snows. He follows behind me, and the frigid night air makes me gasp.

Titus’ hands are clenched fists, but Gallien looks perfectly at ease, ignoring the breeze that makes my skin prickle into goosebumps.

My mouth drops as I look up at the sky.

The stars are diamonds, twinkling brighter than I ever seen them before, and Doman wraps his arms around my neck, hugging me tight against his powerful chest and turning me as he points. “Look,” he says, and even his voice is filled with awe as he directs my gaze.

The night sky is painted in brilliant greens and blues of the Frosthold aurora. “Gods,” I gasp, taken by the beauty of it.

“Look left,” says Gallien, his voice soft, a whisper in the silence of the night. “See that little red dot?”

“What is it?” There’s a reddish glimmer of a planet, all on its own.

“That is the planet we are going to take from existence,” growls Titus, his voice steel.

“Don’t worry,” says Doman. “No life on it. Not even a single-celled organism. Cal was adamant about it. There have been recent scans taken. It’s a dead rock, but it’s roughly the same size as the home planet of the Toads.

Their King will think twice after we make it disappear.

” His voice has a strange tinge to it, something I can’t place.

“And what happens, when mortals play as Gods?” I whisper, and the brilliant diamonds that seemed to glitter for me a moment ago are now cold and unfeeling, a tapestry that I have no right to alter.

“We already know.” Doman’s voice is deep, and he pulls me tighter against his body. “Men follow a God, until he is proven to be mortal, like the rest of us. This ends soon.”

“You don’t… you don’t have to do this, this test. Putting Aurelian forces in the neutral territory would be enough to stop them from even thinking about trying anything…”

“You know this must be done. Your system borders the Toad Kingdom. You’ve had citizens snatched before. During our own hundred years, we freed Pentarians from their slavers. Toads are cowards, but when they smell weakness, they strike. This must be done, for your people and for my Empire.”

I pull myself from Doman’s arms, turning to Titus.

The moonlight bathes his form, the stars glittering against his marble skin.

His biceps are flexed, his hands tight fists as he overcomes the cold, unwilling to let it win over him.

He was made for a land of ice, and if this had been Old Earth, the people of this planet would have followed him into battle without question.

They would have seen him as a God of the hunt, a God of war and death, and he could have commanded an army with his being alone. He is clad in only his belt, the hilt of his blade at his waist.

“Titus…” Fog surges with every one of his breaths. “You told me every star is a victory. That planet… it’s only reflecting light, not creating its own… but it’s there, Titus, it exists. And you’re going to change it to a nothing less than darkness.”

He may be able to fight off the cold, but his slate-gray eyes betray how my words affect him.

“It must be done,” says Gallien. “There will be more terrible things done before this war is over.”

Titus turns, drawing his blade, and storms away, the blue-black blade igniting into life. He gets down on one knee, and drives it into the snow, melting it as it slides through the thick ice with a hiss of steam.

“What are you doing now? Come, let’s go back into the shelter,” I say, and I feel like my voice is being swallowed up by the silence of the snow.

Titus turns his head over his shoulder, his thick black mane framing that powerful jaw of his, the neck thicker than my thighs, the sheer brutality of his nature. “When we were but whelps, they trained us in baths of ice. It is a pure invigoration, to go from flows of icy water to the heat.”

“Didn’t you get enough of it catching that pike?” Changing the topic calms me a little.

Gallien smiles at me, seemingly completely unaffected by the cold, but goosebumps have formed over his flesh. “No one wanted to be the first out of the waters in Academy. We were but boys, but we had pride. I still haven’t taken a dunk tonight.”

“And what happened to the first to leave? Mocked mercilessly, no doubt? Were you among those who tormented him?”

Gallien shakes his head. “No. I was the second out. First was Agmon—too proud to leave the waters, even as his body failed him. He passed out, and I dragged him out. I got the second lowest marks of that test.”

“Where’s Agmon now?”

A cloud passes over Gallien’s stoic visage. “Gone. Two years ago, in a battle against Fanatics.”

Titus extends his Orb-blade, the beam of energy growing thinner and longer as he drags it in a circle. He stands and kicks his bare foot downward, his leg flexing as he pushes the ice down, disappearing into the flows of the lake, the underwater currents that move with a life of their own.

“I want to feel it too,” I say, the snow compressing the snow beneath me as I peer into the abyss.

His blade liquefied the ice into a smooth, circular chasm.

A gateway to oblivion, chilling waters that would consume me without thought, my warmth fading, my life-blood chilling until I am as the waters themselves.

Titus studies me, tilting his head. “Are you sure? Your constitution is not that of an Aurelian.”

“I’m sure,” I stammer, my teeth chattering.

He glances over at his battle-brothers, then nods. “You go last, with Doman.”