Premier’s brother who I’d first seen in Cardinia. He says something in Karenese, and the Premier considers me as the man talks. When he finishes, he nods at me. “I’m told you’re one of the best in Mara’s forces,” he says. “Your Firstblade tended to put you on the warfront, and I can see why.”
Aramin. Did he survive the massacre? What about Jeran, and Adena?
What about Red?
The Premier strides in a slow circle around me as I continue to tremble from my pain. “I heard you took down more of my Ghosts on your own than anyone else out there on the field. Your Firstblade must have seen a great deal of potential in you.”
I hate that, in spite of everything, my heart jumps at his words. A great deal of potential. Not because Corian had taken pity on me, had spoken for me. Is it a cruel irony that the respect I’ve ached for comes from my worst enemy?
He stops before me again, the rings on his hand clinking as he holds his hand out. “Given your resemblance,” he says, “I’m assuming the woman chained behind me is your mother. Yes?”
A surge of strength jolts through me, and I lunge at him before I can stop myself. The chains holding me back pull taut, sending fresh pain lancing through my arms. Around the chamber, all the soldiers immediately lift their guns at me in a unity of clicks.
The Premier doesn’t flinch at my movement at all, nor does he smile. “It’s up to you,” he continues, “whether or not your mother lives.”
I don’t know if he can see the hatred burning in my gaze. My hands are trembling so hard behind my back that my chains rattle.
He looks grave now. “I know how hard everything must be for you,” he says. “How difficult it must always have been. You never had a chance to know your homeland of Basea, and when you and your mother fled into the borders of Mara, you ended up in a country that both sheltered you and insulted you.”
The manipulation in this man’s words. How would you know? I want to say to him, the thought barbed with rage. How could you begin to care about the pain that you have inflicted on this world?
Constantine smiles grimly at me, as if he can guess what’s going through my mind. “I know you see me as the source of your pain, that I take from you and your people without mercy. But the truth is that I am here to build a better country for Mara. Do you know, Talin, what ended the Early Ones’ civilization?”
In spite of myself, I lean forward, suddenly curious to hear his answer. No one knows, I thought. It’s the mystery of their disappearance that’s always added a near-spiritual element to their ruins.
“I know. We found evidence of it in the ruins in our territory. They had built such a powerful society, had been poised to leave this world and travel to the stars. But they were careless too, in the way they lived and created. And when a weapon they built escaped from their control, they paid the price with their lives.”
I listen, my heart in my throat.
“This weapon caused a sickness. They tried to stop it, built massive walls around their cities to contain it.” His eyes stay unwaveringly on me as he speaks. “Their best and brightest scientists raced to find a cure. It didn’t matter. Nature has a way of moving faster than any of us. By the end, the few survivors fought one another in bloody wars for the scraps of what remained. They turned on one another and tore one another apart. You would be surprised at how quickly a society can fall and forget itself, how they can regress from a period of enlightenment into one of darkness. Thousands of years of progress lost, after they made a simple mistake: They couldn’t control what they had built. That was their fatal flaw, Talin, and one I don’t intend to make.”
The Premier then pointed out beyond the chamber and in the direction of our prison.
“Before Karensa, wars erupted frequently between every country on this land. Everyone knows this. It’s the way of our kind, war. But I believe in rebuilding a unified, advanced society. We can rise to the former glory of our ancestors by bringing all of our fractured nations under a single rule. And a single rule—absolute control—brings peace. Each of us