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My body might be frozen in time, but my heart still feels as though it's pounding in my chest.

“You made a mistake with me,”

he says. “You showed me what you care about. The moment you did that, you gave yourself to me. You gave me power over you. The power to take from you the one thing you love.”

He moves to Alaric, cutting slowly down his arm as if to make a point. Caught in time as he is, the blood does not flow beyond a single line. Alaric cannot cry out in pain, cannot give any sign of the way in which the emperor has hurt him, but still I feel the wound as if it is my own.

I want to beg him not to do this. I want to tell him that Alaric has nothing to do with this, that he knew nothing about it. But even if my mouth were not frozen shut by the emperor's power, I'm not sure it would make any difference to him. At this point, he has won. The rebellious factions within his empires have taken their best shot at him, and the truth is that we have failed. Between his manipulations and his personal power, he has destroyed all of us.

“I suppose I should thank you, Lyra,”

he says. “You have proven very useful over the last few days. Thanks to your efforts we were able to break the spectral covenant, and capture several nobles who were plotting against me. They will die in due course. And now this. You have brought my enemies to me. The festering boil of rebellion is finally to be lanced.”

He says it a calm almost companionable tone, as if I were some loyal servant, but I have seen the emperor's madness, his evil before. He is more than capable of talking calmly while killing. Of lashing out simply because he can.

He moves to me, and in one sense I'm grateful, because at least it means he's taken his attention away from Alaric, for the moment at least.

“I wonder if this is what I saw in my visions,”

he says. “That you would try to kill me and end up saving the city by bringing all of its malcontents to where I can hold them in place for my guards to kill. I wonder how many they have slain now.”

I can see the guards are still moving among the frozen people. They are laughing as they kill them. If they show mercy here and there, it is only because it is someone they have decided they want to toy with further later.

“You have been so powerful,”

the emperor says. “And yet through it all you've always been so weak, as well. So held back by your need to help others, by whatever love you think you feel, by the desire to do the 'right thing.'.' And now it's cost you everything.”

He cuts me now in a single line of agonizing pain along my chest. He lifts the knife when he's done, tasting the blood.

“Somehow I feel as though your blood should taste different, beast whisperer.”

I hope that his power will slip soon. I can see the effort of holding us all in place on his face. He's sweating slightly with the strain of maintaining his power.

He looks back to Alaric. “I don't understand why you of all people would be interested in someone like her. Why you would willingly give up your life to save her. She's pretty enough but, worth dying for?”

He returns to me, and now his lips press into mine, still tasting of blood. I want to recoil from him, to pull back, to hit him for forcing this kiss on me, but of course that's the point: I cannot. This is purely about the power he has over me and the others here.

“No, I don't see it,”

he says. He goes back to stand behind Alaric. “That's at least you got to see me do that before you die.”

He lifts the knife, now raising it to Alaric’s throat. Through the eyes of the birds, I can see the soldiers are still killing outside. And I'm helpless to stop all of it. Wait… I'm seen through the eyes of the birds. Birds that are moving and wheeling above it all. The emperor has stopped time for some of the beasts, all of the ones that are obviously dangerous, but not for every creature. Maybe he doesn't have the power to do that much.

A desperate last ditch idea comes to me, one that seems doomed to failure but I don't have any other options. I reach out with my mind because my power is not contained even if I am. I connect to a single bird out in the garden, and I bring it towards the receiving room.

“I'm sure if Lyra could speak, she would have some poignant last words for you,”

Emperor Tiberius says to Alaric. “Something about how much she loves you, how she would give her life for you. The usual nonsense. Sadly she can't say anything so you're going to have to die without hearing it.”

I push the bird to fly faster, forcing it to its limits. My consciousness is bound up with it as I lend it my strength, the way I have borrowed strength from animals before. It flies faster and faster. Through its eyes I can see the emperor raising his knife for the killing blow…

As the bird, I fly straight into him, slamming into his skull with sickening force. I am thrown into my body as the bird's neck breaks, and the emperor reels back, stumbling.

More importantly, he loses the concentration he needs to keep his grip on time. Alaric moves in a flash, grabbing the emperor's knife arm and turning it back towards him, the point of the dagger set to the emperor's heart. I can see the emperor trying to concentrate, trying to freeze time again, but he's an instant too slow as Alaric pulls him in close, driving the point of the dagger deep into the emperor's chest.

At the same time, I see the rebels in front of the palace return to movement, right at the moment when their attackers thought they had them at their mercy. The soldiers are caught utterly off guard, poised on the verge of executing their victims. The gladiators, the common folk, the beasts, all surge into them, cutting them down now in a wave of renewed violence that sends them running, trying to escape. I send the beasts after them because I don't want to risk any more human lives chasing them away.

“No!”

Lord Darius cries out, charging at us with his swords, but the other gladiators who were frozen are able to move now, and they leap at him together. He brings one down with a thrust but another grabs his left arm, while Rowan uses his shield to block a blow from the right hand blade.

“Surrender, Darius,”

Rowan says. “Your emperor is dead.”

“And you will follow him traitors!”

Lord Darius says. He keeps fighting, but now he has no time to use his powers, and there are too many opponents. He goes down fighting under a pile of them, all of them stabbing him retribution for the cruelty of their training, the harshness of the regime he oversaw at Ironhold. I do not know who strikes the killing blow, but in just seconds they are all stepping away from him and he is staring glassily at the ceiling.

The gladiators turn their attention to Selene Ravenscroft, who is standing by the side of the room with a grave expression of pity on her face. They start to advance on her, but I step into their path.

“No, enough. The arch magistrate helped us. She's the one who brought the barrier down. And… the killing has to stop somewhere.”

“You are wise,”

Selene says. She moves to me and touches my wrist. My dampener falls away completely.

“You're just going to let her go?”

Alaric says. “She's one of them. She has done so much...”

“At the emperor's command,”

Selene says. She steps out into the garden. Light starts to swirl around her. Alaric looks as though he might rush at her, but I catch his arm.

“Let her go,”

I say, as the arch magistrate steps into those swirling lights and vanishes. I pull Alaric to me, kissing him deeply. “We have better things to do.”