When it came to allies, I doubted anyone could begin to imagine mine.
Solara’s face went blank, and Heathran’s brow furrowed. “Ceremonies?”
Qole’s eyes flashed. “Nevarian’s official coronation as the true Dracorte king, and the declaration of Alaxak as an independent system.”
Solara raised an eyebrow all too similar to mine. “What a mighty power that shall be. I wish you the best of luck.”
“We don’t need luck.” Qole held out her hand. With an implosion of light and darkness, Shadow flared to life above her palm. Silence fell as we all stared at the tendrils of purple fire licking the air. For once, Solara’s emotion was plain to see—overpowering hunger.
Qole snapped her fist shut, the flame vanished, and the spell was broken. She grinned. “I wish you all the happiness you deserve.”
I didn’t feel I could really add to that, so I smiled, waved, and killed the transmission.
“Childish,” Basra commented.
I shrugged. “What do you expect? She’s my sister.”
We were just off the bridge of the DFS Devrak, in my private chambers, which were fully equipped and ready for almost any royal need. The entire crew of the Kaitan was with me; I had insisted on bringing Qole aboard, knowing full well the rest would be with her. They were a package deal, and I didn’t mind at all. With no regard for my privacy, they had set about ransacking the place and reorganizing the furniture into a more congenial arrangement.
Telu collapsed backward on the armchair that had been intended for me to sit in and look royal during meetings. “Ancestors, is it over then? Give me drones running amok over hours of subsection twelve, paragraph Q on interstellar trade agreements.”
“It was paragraph B,” Basra observed mildly. “Paragraph Q was on industrial lane setbacks.”
Telu looked up at him in horror. “You remember that? How can you remember that? Why would you remember that?”
Arjan wrapped an arm around Basra’s slim shoulders, his face splitting in a grin. “It’s how Basra unwinds. The more boring the facts, the more relaxed he is. It’s like a stiff drink.”
He had forgiven Basra for any deception about his identity, that much was clear. But Arjan wouldn’t tell anyone the details of how he had led the unbelievable assault on Solara’s forces. While he’d always been a phenomenal pilot, everyone knew he had struggled to match his previous heights with one eye, and after the battle, he had remained withdrawn in his quarters for some time. But he did not emerge more sullen; rather, his demeanor had signaled a new change. For the first time in a long time, he had started to joke and laugh again.
I sat down myself, hardly believing the banter I was hearing. Everything had been a blur since leaving Valtai, and now that we had returned to Aaltos, it was finally sinking in that we had all survived. We were okay.
And Qole, especially Qole. The first time I had seen her after the battle, her eyes had been sunken and she had appeared ready to drop. And yet she was calmer than she had been at any point since my parents had arrived outside Alaxak. Possibly calmer than I had ever seen her. Something had lifted. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I had to guess it was related to her disturbing revelation about Shadow and the spectacular destruction of the drones. Another impossible feat, but this one hadn’t put her into a coma. I wanted to ask her, find out how she was feeling, what she was thinking, but there hadn’t been a second to be alone.
Eton appeared over my shoulder, distributing bright orange drinks. “Whoever stocked this place did a good job,” he said. “Good selection, allowed for improvisation.”
Qole experimentally rattled the ice in her glass with a straw. “Probably courtesy of King Makar.” She looked up at me, and the smile on her face did more to ease the aches in my body than all the painkillers in the world. “Did you have someone test your food for surveillance chips or broken glass?”
“No one would ruin ingredients of this quality,” Eton said stuffily, settling himself on a sofa that creaked in protest. He took a sip. “I know the mark of someone with taste when I see it, even if it’s someone like Makar.”
“Yeah, a taste for delicious, delicious blackmail, that ends with him dissolving his own family council and using us as allies against Belarius.” Telu burped, putting down an empty glass. “What’s next?”
What’s next is that I need to talk to Qole. Things were looking better, but I still felt something constrict in my chest every time I thought about her. She and I hadn’t had a proper conversation since we’d left for Valtai, and that hadn’t ended so well.
I turned to her, opening my mouth, but it was Basra who spoke.
“What’s next is that we need to talk about Shadow.”
Judging by the quiet that settled on the room, we had all been avoiding the topic as carefully as the next person. Even Qole.
She regarded us ruefully. “I’m honestly not sure I can explain.”
“Try.” Basra laced his slender fingers together. “You said it was alive. Do you mean the way we’ve always referred to it, as fishing—or something else?”
“Something else. Well, at least I think.” Qole frowned. “It said it was alive, and since it could do that, I’m inclined to believe it.”
I had been wrong. The room hadn’t been quiet before; it had been a noisy bustle of breathing and movement. Now it was truly, deathly still. It said? I had been hoping that perhaps that part of the story had changed since we’d left Valtai.
“Everyone says they hear voices before…before they stop making sense,” Arjan said eventually, staring at the floor. He looked up. “But you seem fine. More than fine, actually. You’re better.”
“I am.” Qole’s face softened. “You seem better, too.” In that moment, the conversation was between brother and sister, and we were the outsiders.
Arjan nodded. “I had to dip down into Shadow real deep for that last run. I don’t know what it’s like for you, but at first, it was pretty swift. I didn’t even need eyes. I just…felt the ships, knew how they were going to move. But when I started fighting…” He trailed off and rubbed his forearms.
Qole winced. “Things started to fall apart.”
“Yeah. I kept it together for a while. Not really sure how, just did. But then after it was all over, I passed out.”
“He was unconscious.” Basra was relaying it as a fact, but there was an edge to his words. “Which is why I’ve asked him not to use it, and to do something about his eye. But he refuses.”
“Sorry, Bas,” Arjan said, sounding sincere. “Thank you for what you’ve offered, but I just…I can’t take you up on it. I would feel like I was betraying myself, to gladly accept what no one else on Alaxak has access to.” He brushed Basra’s arm. “It’s not an insult to you.”
“Just because you do have access to Shadow doesn’t mean it’s the better alternative. What other option do you have, other than to give up piloting when you stop using it? Because you are going to stop, right?”
Arjan winced at the very idea. “I honestly can’t help using it—I couldn’t even before I lost my eye. None of us can, if we have the affinity. It just sort of sneaks in. Telu, I bet it happens to you too, hey?”
The hacker shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. But that’s why you don’t catch me piloting. The less I find myself using Shadow, the longer I’ll live, and the happier I am.” She glanced sideways at Qole. “Nothing to do with you. Whatever you’ve got going on, that’s a whole different thing, I think.”
“But maybe it’s something I can learn too,” Arjan said, also looking at Qole.
She stood and paced to the window, then turned around and paced back.
“Just spit it out,” Telu said, not unkindly. “Talk to us.”
She sat down, leaning forward, her eyes fixed on her brother. “You said it yourself, Arjan; it feels good, right, up until a certain p
oint?” Arjan nodded. “That’s because if you try to bend something out of its nature, it fights back. Blocking the destroyers, I was fine. I felt…all-powerful.” Qole shook her head. “But when I attacked the one, I thought I was going to die, because I was fighting it. It didn’t want me to attack. I know that sounds crazy, and yet it seems so obvious to me now. When it stopped me, kept me from forcing it to do what I wanted, and I just listened…that was when it talked to me.”
“What did it say?” Everyone looked at me, and I spread my hands. “What? That seems to be the interesting part to me.”
“It said it wanted to communicate.” Qole paused, uncertain. “That it doesn’t want me to use it for destruction anymore, and that the hallucinations are a lesson to teach me this. They weren’t always a lesson. Shadow couldn’t always talk, at least not for a long time. It could only scream, accidentally drive humans mad, until apparently I…did something that let me hear it. It says I should keep being…open. That something bad is headed our way, and that we—I—have to stop it.”
“We,” Eton reasserted, stirring to life for the first time. “And what is it? What’s this ‘bad thing’?”
“I’m not sure. It’s a substance, sort of like Shadow, but…not. Worse. I couldn’t make sense of it, but it looked like it was related to the collapse of the portals. Maybe what caused the Great Collapse, instead of Shadow. And Rubion was all tied up with it somehow.” Qole and Basra exchanged glances.
“Rubion seemed to think he could open the portals again, using Shadow, and now Shadow is telling you to be open,” Basra mused. “That would be an altogether incredible thing. The systems would unite to see it happen. I can certainly imagine something worse than Shadow causing their collapse in the first place, and someone worse, the Rubions of the systems, wanting to hoard or ransom the secret of their reopening.”
“I’m not sure if that’s it, but I do know that it’s what’s in the drones,” Qole said, meeting my eyes levelly. “That’s how I was able to stop them. Stop it, whatever it is, like Shadow wanted me to.”
We were silent, again, each one of us trying to process everything Qole had just told us. For me, as a ruler, there was a great deal of unsettling thoughts involved. The drones were a very real problem, but anything to do with the portals was near myth at this point. And yet if they did somehow come into play, they might lead to a power struggle not seen since the formation of the Belarius empire—a problem worse even than drones. If Shadow was sentient on top of all that and had an opinion on the matter…then the paradigm for everything changed so much that I wasn’t sure I had the tools to process it. Or that I even wanted to try, in case I uncovered a simpler truth—that Qole was simply, quietly unstable.
But I trusted her and, at the very least, it seemed clear that Qole felt she had reached a true, lasting sort of equilibrium with Shadow, something I barely dared to hope for. The rest we would have to take a step at a time, deal with when we knew more. For now, Qole had spent her entire life under the threat of insanity; the possibility that that might be gone gave me hope I couldn’t quite describe.
Hope for what? The knot in my chest tightened.
I opened my mouth to speak when Basra beat me to it, looking at Arjan in much the same way I was looking at Qole. “A discovery even better than the key to the portals would be a means for everyone to use Shadow safely.” And he meant it. Qole had told me how he’d given up learning the secret of the portals from Rubion simply to rescue Arjan. “And if you can’t use it to fight”—he shrugged—“well then, that would keep you even safer, now wouldn’t it?”
Arjan smiled back at him lopsidedly, the peace back in his expression. I realized Qole must have already spoken to him of the possibilities for them both, while I’d been busy.
My wrist-comm beeped, reminding me I was still too busy. I looked down at the message and sighed. “I’ll need to pick this up with you later. Looks like it’s time to get ready for a coronation.”
* * *
There was no light. I walked in complete darkness, trusting that I would maintain a straight line and not collide with the people I could hear shifting beside me. I counted my steps in the same way I had with Solara the night we ran across a lightless hangar on Luvos, when she was trying to help me save Qole. It interrupted my count for a moment. Not matter how different I thought we were, we kept making choices that led us to the same place.
Maybe the difference between my coronation and hers was knowing I was surrounded by people who wanted to help each other, not themselves.
I found my count again and, at the last step, avoided tripping on the stairs that let me mount the dais. I stood, waiting, silent in the dark.
A gentle light washed down around me. The simple circular crown glowed to incandescent life, and the Priestess of Truth lowered it onto my head slowly. After the darkness, the light of it on my brow almost eclipsed my vision. I blinked, trying to see.
A dozen bows touched their strings, and the notes broke pure and urgent, the light slowly rising with them. A mass of people materialized as the light expanded, the music racing, reaching a crescendo that spread into a fanfare of horns. Light exploded everywhere.
The ballroom in Luvos was designed to show every planet in the Dracorte system. But here, in the chamber of ceremonies on Aaltos, those who had fallen in war were represented in bursts of glory, shooting stars flaring across the space above us. My eyes watered from the blinding light, but I forced myself to watch them, to accept the pain of those I had sent to their deaths and who had sacrificed themselves before me.
Rows of nobility, dignitaries, and commanders stretched to every corner of the grand hall. Makar, our new ally, stood near the front, black-and-platinum suit shining, managing to look simultaneously bored and pleased. Rava and Marsius were resplendent next to him, almost beside themselves with excitement, and I felt a smile crack the edge of my mouth. If we were in a world where Marsius could be happy, despite it all, some things had to be okay.
The priestess stepped in front of me, solemn as she raised a hand in benediction. “May you be guided by the Unifier to bring us together, whole, in peace and wisdom.” She repeated this twice more, and then, turning to the assembled multitude, she spread her hands. “Nobles, leaders, friends, family—those without power and those who are mighty—behold, Nevarian Thelarus Axandar Rubion Dracorte, the true Dracorte king.”
I knew what was coming next. Everyone present, who loved me, hated me, or was indifferent, would bow.
But I had spotted Qole, and I could not imagine her bowing to anyone. I wasn’t her king, and I didn’t want her to have one. I didn’t want her to kneel; I didn’t want anyone kneeling. Because I wasn’t a person to be knelt to. I was young man, a child, who was muddling his way through, with the lives of millions in the balance.
So I fell to my knees first.
I could hear the inhalation of breath ripple through the giant space, a movement of uncertainty and confusion.
“I am yours,” I said. I was quiet, but I knew my voice would carry to every corner of the room, to every vid on every media channel that was broadcasting across the systems. It would be recorded, discussed, and dissected. Good.
I raised my head, my eyes searching out those of the people around me. I wanted everyone who could see to understand that my sincerity was absolute.
“I am not here to keep anyone safe by making them my slave. I am here to wield power so that each person can make their own choices, free of fear.” Free of fear. I didn’t know if such a thing was possible. Living in fear of torture, theft, and exploitation was more real, more pervasive than I ever imagined even a few months ago. The very foundations of the power I now wielded were built on fear. Using that power to undo the very things that had created it seemed like twisted logic, a path to chaos. Or just to an attempt on my life. Again.
I didn’t care. I hadn’t passed through fire and br
imstone, sent thousands to their deaths, to start playing it safe. People like Qole and her crew didn’t have that kind of luxury. It might be chaos, or it might be change.
“Our beliefs and traditions, our ability to live up to them, are what set us apart from another megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur.” I clenched my fists. “So let this serve as both encouragement and warning. I am King Nevarian Dracorte, and I serve a centuries-old creed, the impossible belief of my family: that power can, must, be wielded for the betterment of others. I will pursue it at any cost.” I found myself angry. I hadn’t expected it, but I could already see the fight ahead of me. The agonizing bureaucracy that would drag that down. The promises, the compromises required to succeed at anything. The slight chances of me keeping my values when every long-term goal required their short-term debasement.
But I had a secret weapon.
Everyone was cheering their obligatory cheers when I lifted my hand again, raising my voice. “When my ancestor, Velus Dracorte, was crowned our first king, he named his good friend, Belarius the First, heartkin. Family that is adopted after birth. To attack them is to attack us, and their interests are ours. Today, meet my heartkin. Rise, crew of the Kaitan Heritage.”
And so, Qole and her crew walked down the aisle toward me to the voice of a thousand drums, the choir of a thousand chants. They were dressed not in formal wear, in dresses and suits, but the new uniform of the Alaxan navy.
Heartkin was an honor bestowed only upon people who were not part of the Dracorte systems and thus supposedly already part of the family. So as much as this was a ceremony, it was also an announcement to the systems: Alaxak is rising.
This was their grand introduction, and they owned it. There was Eton, a landmass all his own, military training resulting in perfect posture and precision of movement. Basra, crest of curls trimmed to compliment the cut of the uniform, was tranquil but focused on something more distant than us, seeming almost otherworldly. Telu, hair tucked back to reveal the sharp tattoo around her eye, held her chin up, eyes glittering with an intensity bordering on madness. She had to be terrified, but instead she came across as a beam of pure intelligence, ready to dismantle any problem. In front of them was Arjan, the swagger of his walk, the faintest of smiles on his lips—a far cry from the Arjan who had entered the Dracorte palace months ago. His eye boldly swept the room, and he winked at Marsius as he passed by.
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