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Titus lifts his head, slowly, those thick black curls descending his strong cheeks and anvil jaw, his thick, heavy features like those of a Viking king.

“You’ve gone mad, Doman. You’re not bringing my Mate through empty space.

She goes to Pentaris, and she stays there until I’m holding Obsidian’s head!

” His voice reaches a crescendo, roaring out in the med-bay, fury as he stands to his full height, staring down the leader of his triad.

But as he stands, the color drains from his face. He grips the side of the med-bay table for support.

“Get a hold of yourself.” Doman stares down at the bull of a man, gone mad with protective need.

“This changes nothing. He could shift in Reavers to hit us—now he can shift in men. He’s no God.

He’s not omnipresent. He’s found some way of mastering the Rift, but he needs eyes to pinpoint where to send troops.

He doesn’t have those eyes in empty space.

We move in secrecy, and he never knows our route to ambush us. ”

Titus looks over at me, then back at the leader of his triad, and strides out of the med-bay, clutching his weapon. He’s recovered, his gait sturdy, the blood-soaked robes swishing as he leaves.

The automatic doors shut behind him.

“That’s what I thought,” I say. “He was only able to shift in troops because his Reavers got our exact location.”

“Right. So as long as he never finds our route, we’re safe,” says Doman. “Which leads to a problem. Every single person on this ship has been vetted by Interrogators. Everyone but your crew.”

“If you think I’m going to give your Interrogators access to my crew, you’re mad.

That’s not a pleasant thing to go through.

” It’s an understatement. I learned of the process while discussing the spy network with my intelligence agency.

Grueling questioning, which can last hours or weeks, depending on your answers.

No one knows exactly how it works, but if you sit in a room long enough with an Interrogator answering the same questions, over and over again, sooner or later they know if you’re lying or not.

“Then you leave them behind, in Pentaris airspace. I’m not traveling through empty space with them. A single leak of our location could get you killed.”

If I leave my staff behind, I’ll be going alone into the Aurelian Empire. Away from all support systems, from anyone who knew me, surrounded by Doman’s men and the triad itself.

Can I trust them? Only now, after my life was at risk, do I truly see how protective these three are. If Titus hadn’t been reined in by the triad’s leader, it wouldn’t have mattered what I said. He would have set me down on Pentaris and roared into battle without me.

But if I’m going to somehow have a future with these three, I have to trust them. Fully.

“Agreed. I’ll give my staff the choice—stay back on Pentaris or undergo voluntary sessions with the Interrogators that they can end at any time.

” I bite my lip, because I know most, if not all, of my people will choose to stay back.

Going into the Aurelian Empire itself is terrifying, and facing down the vetting process of the Interrogators is grueling, mentally taxing.

I’m giving them an easy way out. Maybe a few from Frosthold will stay on, or a couple of the most loyal from Virelia, but my staff will be decimated.

“There’s one more thing.” I steel myself. When I say this, there’s no going back. I’m putting my full trust in the triad. “I’ve got spies in your royal palace.”

“Impossible,” says Doman, while Gallien’s eyes flick to me in surprise, his normally unreadable face betraying a hint of his emotions.

“Three of them.”

“How?” Gallien says the single word, while Doman is shaking his head in disbelief.

“It takes between six months and a year, and most spies can’t undergo the process successfully.

It’s done on Etherion. Hypnosis and trances used to create a second personality, with a second set of memories, down to a new childhood.

The three spies don’t even know they’re working for us.

When they go out into the city, they meet with our agents, who activate them, and for a brief period, their primary personality comes out again.

They feed reports and re-enter their second identity.

We used to have a fourth spy, but he cracked the first time he was activated.

He couldn’t re-integrate into his second self. ”

The two aliens are stunned by the revelation. There have been human workers on Colossus for all of known history, working in the palace itself, and while they accepted the inevitability of spies on their home planet, none believed that they could be in the royal palace itself.

“If humans found a way to get past the Interrogators’ vetting, the Priests will have as well. Obsidian could have spies in the palace. On this very ship.”

“That’s not a certainty,” I say, ignoring the insult.

“Don’t underestimate humans. The Priests and Obsidian don’t have Etherion.

The people of that planet evolved differently than the rest of us, and they are nothing like Aurelians.

” I raise my finger. “Plus, you’ve got records of your men, from their very birth in the cryo-chambers.

If there was a second personality, you would know.

This is no simple process. It’s the implantation of a complete set of memories, over a long period of time.

If one of your soldiers suddenly started talking about wars that never happened, he’d be outed in a second. ”

“True,” says Doman, and the uncertainty leaves him. “This is a new resource. We use it. When we get to Colossus, I’ll speak with my brother Bruton. It doesn’t sit well with him, Fay being captive. And now we have three more resources to work with to make this escape clean.”

The speed with which he turns a shocking revelation into part of his plan impresses me. His meteoric rise in the Aurelian Empire had nothing to do with nepotism.

“How’s Titus?” I ask, shifting the topic.

Gallien focuses for a moment. “He’s angry. He’s not used to people defying him.”

“You can feel that?”

“Yes. When you’re linked to us, you’ll feel our emotions as well.” He touches the Orb-Ring on his finger unconsciously, twisting it.

“Where did he go?”

“I can feel him aft. In the diplomatic chambers, made for human guests.”

I nod. “I’m going to go see him. I can’t have him at odds with me.”

“Bad idea,” says Doman. “When he gets like this, he needs time to cool down.”

I sigh, running my hands through my hair, trying to tame it. “You don’t become Prime Minister without being able to cool down hotheads. Could you ask some guards to escort me to him?”

“I’ll take you myself,” says Doman.

I shake my head. “No. I want to see him alone.”

“Very well.” The doors open automatically as he walks towards them, and he barks out a command in Aurelian.

Two triads are standing at attention, and they bow their heads as I walk into the hallway.

“They’ll take you right to him, but don’t expect him to be happy to see you,” says Doman in a low voice, just for me.

Then, in a moment of tenderness, the harsh commander of the ship softens for a second.

He reaches up, tracing my jaw. “I can’t lose you,” he whispers.

“You won’t,” I say, sounding more confident than I feel, the memory of that grasping hand appearing in my study out of nothing, blood drenching the walls filling my mind.

A triad of soldiers fall in behind me, another leading the way in pristine white robes. They match their pace to mine, and I walk with my head up, despite the tangles in my hair, the rips in my clothes, the ache in my knee from where I banged it against something in the panic of escape.

I survived an assassination attempt. I just survived my first live military operation, attacked by enemy combatants. This morning, I woke up just a Prime Minister, but now I’ve changed, in a subtle way, gone from a politician removed from the fray to a player in the thick of it.

After ten minutes of walking, updating my mental map in the twisting tunnels of the warship, the two triads stand at attention, lining themselves up against the wall, three on each side in front of a normal-sized door.

As I step forward, the doors, sensing my DNA, open automatically, and I enter a room built for a human.

It’s jarring when I’m used to everything being oversized, as if I have suddenly grown.

I feel like I’m seeing my species through Aurelian eyes.

A small nook with a human-sized couch that looks like you could sink into it with a low coffee table, on top of it a vase with fresh flowers in blue and red hues.

The dark, wooden central table, surrounded by plush, cushioned chairs with curved armrests and high backs.

The floors and walls are jarring, for they are the cold, impersonal marble hue omnipresent in the warship, but there are patterned rugs underfoot and artwork in a mismatch of styles adorning the walls.

I pause as the door closes behind me. They view us as a species that is soft—needing relaxation and comfort, yet, also as one that is highly creative, but whoever put together the décor had no knack for it, placing a long, thin watercolor of a bridge and stream next to a glossy modern style that incorporates holographic images of a universe, as if they went to an art dealer and asked for one of everything.

There’s more life here than anywhere else in the warship, flowers in the nook for sitting back and watching programs on holo-vid, the far wall a live wall of vines and plants.