“We are Warbreed, boy,” he spits. “You know as well as I what that means. From the moment I took the glyf, I accepted death as a friend. I do not fear the Void. To die in battle is a warrior’s fate.”
“You lie, Father,” Kal spits. “It is not in your nature to accept defeat. You will not sit idle and let those things blow us to pieces.”
The Starslayer raises one silver brow, smiling at me.
“Will I not?”
Caersan leans back on his throne, adjusts the line of his cloak, flicks a bothersome speck of dust off his shoulder guard. Steepling his fingers at his lips, he just stares at me. I can feel the Ra’haam battleships drawing closer, more of them coming now—a corrupted swarm, launching fighters, descending on us out of the black.
Caersan does nothing.
The closest warship opens fire; a missile maybe, bursting against our crystal hull. I feel the Weapon shift under us, a psychic sound—almost as if the Neridaa felt the pain. Another blast rocks the Weapon, another, the light around us dimming as violent shudders run the length of the ship.
And still, the Starslayer just stares.
I close my hands into fists, feeling that power surge inside me.
“Be’shmai … ,” Kal whispers.
“‘Be’shmai’ … ,” Caersan sneers at his son. “This is who you name beloved? This weakling who will let you die here in the dark?”
“You will not do that,” Kal spits, rising. “You’ll not use me against her!”
“You allowed yourself to be used, Kaliis. When you bound yourself to a cur such as she. Your sister would never have shamed me so, to lie with a Terran maggot. Saedii would have done her duty. Saedii would have put her people, her honor, her family first.”
“Family?” Kal shouts. “You killed our mother! You tore our family apart, just as you did our sun! What do you know of family?”
Kal seethes at his father, teeth bared, but I’m past the boundaries of simple words. Instead, I close my eyes, heart pounding now as more and more of the enemy ships draw near. I can see the different shapes, some of them sickeningly familiar—Syldrathi and Betraskan and Terran—all of them corrupted by the Ra’haam. The power builds inside me like water against a dam. It’s warm. Inviting. I can feel the depths of it, just like Caersan said. It’s limitless. It’s overwhelming. Maybe even a little …
Blasts rock the ship, Ra’haam vessels pounding our hull. Corrupted fighters scream down the Neridaa’s length, chipping away at her skin with living shots that eat away at her hull. The Weapon is vast, but I can feel her bleeding, cracks spreading across her face. And all the while, Caersan’s eyes are fixed on me. A small smile on his lips. He’s playing a game of chicken with all our lives, and if it were just me at risk here …
But I look to Kal beside me. My lips pressed thin. I can feel the pull of it. The strength of it, waiting to be unleashed. I know if I let it out, I’m just going to want it again. And again. This is what they made me for, after all. But …
“Aurora … do not let him manipulate you like this.”
I can’t lose you again.
And then I draw up every ounce of my mental energy, holding the power within myself until my skin is tingling, until I’m bursting at the seams, current coursing through my veins. I’m consumed for a moment, caught up in the utter, boundless thrill of it. I feel Caersan in my head then, cold and triumphant, channeling the force into a pulse, spherical, like the ones I let loose on Emerald City, on Sempiternity, releasing it in a blinding burst.
It balloons outward, thousands of kilometers into the Fold, striking a dozen Ra’haam ships and ripping them to bleeding splinters. A stab of pain rockets through my head in response, and I grit my teeth, blood spilling from my nose as I heave for breath.
“Again,” Caersan says.
“Aurora … ,” Kal whispers.
“Again!”
“You cannot do this!” Kal roars. “She’s hurting herself!”
“Mercy is the province of cowards, Kaliis.”
I fire again, another pulse, blossoming outward and annihilating the enemy ships beyond. I feel like a giant, smashing children’s toys. I feel ten thousand feet tall. But I can already sense more at the edges of my range, homing in on us, like we’re a beacon in the dark.
Kal stands beside me. Squeezing my hand, looking into my eyes. I can feel his strength adding to mine, but the Ra’haam ships are still swarming in, another blast rocking us now, crystal splinters raining from the roof and shattering on the ground around us—