I manage a small smile. “Better too.”
The lamp gutters. He turns the wick down, all business again. “Cyra … at the Conclave, the healing sessions will have to be more clinical. Witnessed by others, probably. No privacy like this.”
The thought makes my stomach drop. “Witnessed?”
“The Cardinals will want to observe, to ensure no unfair advantages.” His expression grows apologetic. “It won’t be comfortable. And if they see how much you need it, how the withdrawal affects you … people could use that as leverage.”
Letting strangers watch me work is one thing. Letting them watch what it does to me is another.
“Then I’ll hide it better.”
“Can you? For however long the trials last?” He pulls his shirt on. “I’m not trying to discourage you. I just need you to understand what you’re walking into.”
“I understand.” I meet his eyes. “I’m still coming. Not just because I need the magic, but because I believe you might actually win this. And I want to be there when you do.”
The creases around his eyes soften. “Even knowing what it will cost me?”
“Especially knowing that.” My voice is steady now. “Because someone who doesn’t want power but accepts it anyway for the right reasons … that’s exactly who should be Solar Sovereign.”
We stand there for a moment, neither of us speaking, both aware that tomorrow everything changes.
Another bell chimes in the corridor – eleven hours to departure.
“We should sleep,” he says finally. “It’s a long day ahead.”
He moves toward the door, then pauses with his hand on the handle. “Cyra?”
“Yes, Your Grace?”
He pauses, the creases by his eyes softening. “Please … I think I’d like you to simply address me as ‘Zevran’ from now on.” He holds my gaze. “And … whatever happens in those trials … you have my trust. Completely.”
The words should comfort me, but instead they make the guilt worse. How can I accept his trust when it’s built on such fundamental lies about who I am?
“You have mine too, Zevran,” I say, and at least that part is true.
He nods and slips out.
I change into my nightclothes and settle onto the bed, pulling the covers around me. The lamp flickers lower, casting long shadows across the packed bag, the empty doorway.
Tomorrow we’ll walk into the Conclave together – him with an illness he can’t cure, me with an addiction I can’t control and a bloodline I didn’t choose. One slip, and it’s over.
Not just for me. For him. For everyone depending on Mars’s stability.
During the Conclave, servants will gossip. The advisors will scrutinize. The House leaders will probe for weakness. We can’t make any mistakes. And somewhere in that crowd might be someone who knew my mother…
Outside, another shuttle engine spools up. The sound vibrates through the walls, a reminder that time is running out.
I close my eyes and try to breathe through the fear.
Tonight, for these last few hours, I can hold onto the warmth of knowing that whatever’s growing between Zevran and I is real, even if it’s too fragile and dangerous to fully explore.
Even if it might not survive what’s coming.
The shuttle descends toward the arena, and I press closer to the window.
Talis hangs below us – a pale moon in neutral territory – carved hollow and rebuilt from the inside out. The surface is pockmarked with controlled detonation sites from when they first excavated the interior, dark craters now repurposed as landing zones. The orbital arena rises from its surface like a crown of obsidian and crystal, its outer walls studded with observation decks that catch starlight and throw it back in fractured patterns. Massive spires twist upward, each one housing a different House’s delegation, connected by transparent bridges reinforced with energy fields. I can see robed figures moving between towers, their colours marking allegiances – amber for Venus, ocean blue for Neptune, the deep green of Jupiter.
As we circle for landing approach, I spot docking bays opening in the base like mouths, their interiors lit with the harsh white of decontamination fields. Beyond the arena, Talis’s handful of cities cluster around resource nodes – water extraction plants and atmosphere generators that keep this dead rock breathable.
