They were mere centimeters apart when a pounding on the Emperor’s door made them both jump.
The Emperor leaped up.
“What?!” He demanded as a guard burst into the room.
He stormed over to the guard. “I should have your head!”
“Forgive me, Emperor Bron.”
“I will not! I will—”
“The Empress is dead!”
Everything went still.
Bianca couldn’t even breathe.
Surely, she had not heard that.
The guard must have spoken wrong.
She took a step forward. Opened her mouth to say something, but the words had vanished.
“You lie,” the Emperor said, drawing a blade from his hip. One Bianca didn’t realize he wore.
“I have the confirmation,” the shaking guard said, holding out a data card. “There was an explosion. The Empress took the brunt of the blast. Killed her.”
Bianca shook her head.
No.
No, this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
She wasn’t supposed to die.
She was supposed to be free.
She took a few more steps toward the Emperor.
He held out the data card.
An image appeared, and there, in the clarity of the hologram, they watched the explosion. How the bulkheads fell. Where Fallon was, and how they crushed her.
The only sound Bianca could make was a gasp.
The Emperor merely stood there.
Bianca crossed to him, and he wrapped his arm around her.
She clung to him.
He dropped the data card, and they stood there, holding one another.
It felt like both moments and years they stood there together, embracing.
“The babies,” Bianca said. “Where are the babies? The girls?”
The Emperor glanced at the guard. “Where are my daughters? Dead as well?”
