remain silent. They bay has no doors—no way to keep the cold and the vacuum out. But the warriors march me down to the shuttle’s airlock and, without hesitation, cycle it open.
We do not freeze. We do not suffocate.
The Paladin commander fixes me in a gray stare.
“We can go no farther, I’na Sai’nuit,” he tells me.
I step out into the bay, the surface humming beneath my feet. I cannot say how, and yet … I know the way. Drawn like a needle to north, I walk up winding paths of singing crystal, whispering, thrumming with power.
I feel … strange. All the emotions within me seem louder. I see an image of Aurora standing with her hand raised aboard the Zero’s bridge, her power striking me in the chest as she commanded me to stop. I hear the venom in Scarlett’s voice as she cursed me, blamed me, hit me. I feel Finian’s bewildered pain, Zila’s silent acquiescence as they cast me out. I who have fought for them. Bled for them. Risked my all to keep them safe. None of them could understand what it was for me to join the Legion, how much I have given, how much I have suffered, how it feels to be utterly alone, even in a crowded room.
Ever since my mother fled back to Syldra, I have never known a moment’s peace. Outcast among my own people for the Warbreed glyf at my brow, the blood in my veins. Outcast among the academy cadets as the former enemy, the pixieboy, the freak: Remember Orion, remember Orion. Among the members of Squad 312, I thought I had found a home. A place to belong. Something worth fighting for.
But I was a fool.
I should have known that the shadow of the past would forever come between us. We cannot deny who and what we truly are.
And Aurora …
“Aurora.” I whisper the name, as if it is poison on my lips. Pushing thoughts of her aside, the memory of our time in the Echo, the things we shared, locking her and them away in a room inside my head and casting away the key.
I am no one now.
I am only this.
What I have always been.
There is not a soul in these vast and glittering halls. Not a single soldier or scientist or servant. The entire ship is empty, save for this power, familiar and unknowable all at once. As I walk farther down the crystal way, I feel catatonia, vertigo, perfect clarity. My pulse is rushing, asynchronous, like a drumbeat out of time. My mouth tastes like rust.
This ship is huge. These corridors seem endless. But eventually, the pathways converge, opening out into a vast, spherical chamber.
Power drips from the air, red and thrumming on my skin. The walls are lost in shadow, and my eyes are drawn to the light, the concentric spires of crystal in the center of the room, aglow and radiant. An ever-ascending dais, rising off the floor, crowned with an enormous glittering throne. Branches of crystal reach out toward it from the ceiling, the walls, like the roots of a tree straining toward water. Squinting, putting my hand up against the rainbow light, I see a figure upon it.
A shadow falls upon my sun.
He is clad in black armor with a high collar, and a long cloak is arrayed around his shoulders, spilling down over the steps below him in a crimson train. His hair is silver-bright, woven into ten braids and draped in long, thick waves over one side of his face. And that face is all I remember and more. Beautiful. Terrible. Radiating a dark majesty. He watches, impassive, as I climb the dais, the power around me thickening, my footsteps ringing hollow in the vast crystal sphere, the gravity of him drawing me in. Drawing me back.
Everything is a cycle. An endless circle.
Everything has led to this.
I stand before him.
“Father,” I say.
“Son,” he replies.
And then, finally, I kneel.
33
TYLER
Kal …
Saedii just stares at me. The revelation about her brother, their father—who and what he is—it’s almost too much for me to wrap my head around. This entire conversation has happened at the speed of thought. It’s maybe been ten minutes since it began. But it feels long as a lifetime.
I thought of Kal as a friend. Someone I could trust. Steady and strong and sure. Even when I’d been torn away from the squad, it was easier to deal with—knowing he’d be there to look after them. But to find