Ysira reached Ged first. She took him by the shoulder, pulling him toward her as if she meant to embrace him. He faced her—just as she plunged her knife up between his ribs.
No one tried to stop her. Teheda and Saraida were preoccupied with Seth. Nines lay wounded behind them. And Neri . . . Neri was still on his knees, staring in silent shock.
Ged grasped at the knife’s hilt with bloody fingers. Now the look on his face was one of betrayal.
“You don’t get to see this victory,” Ysira said to Ged as she held him close, driving the knife deeper. “We both failed him. I can at least do this. I don’t know how he’ll live after today, but it won’t be in your shadow.”
Had Ysira known what Ged would do? Could she have stopped him? Had she tried? Was this vengeance for all he had done, as she twisted the knife in his heart? Or was it to ensure that he alone took the blame as the truth died with him?
She let Ged go. Hardly anyone was left to witness, and those who were barely blinked. He would not be mourned by anyone present.
Ged fell in a pool of his own blood. His chest rose with gasping agonal breaths. Ysira watched, listless, dead behind the eyes as Neri scrambled to his father’s side. He leaned in, shoulders heaving, listening to words choked out against a throat full of blood.
“Why?” Jacen’s voice came out a croak. “Why?”
Ged might have been too far gone to hear him, anyway. Blood trickled from his mouth as he tried to speak. “Couldn’t . . . without me.” He coughed. “Sacrifice . . . everything.”
What had Jacen hoped to hear? What could explain such an act, let alone reverse its consequences? Maybe it would have helped to find Ged possessed, mind held in thrall to an alien intelligence like his brother’s, but Jacen looked and looked and found only the man. Only anger, tinged with grim satisfaction and the fading echo of a thought:You can’t win this without—without?—
It was futile. Jacen wrenched himself away before he could feel Ged die.
He looked to Ysira, speechless. She said nothing. Her face showed no triumph. Jacen followed her gaze as it traveled toward Neri, still on his knees.
The boy held his head in his hands, shaking it back and forth as though arguing with someone—something—no one else could see.
“We will wipe every green place from the face of this world,” Turil declared, in Seth’s voice. “Alendal, Lun, Kasoa . . . Our Empire has thousands of planets; this makes no difference to us. But you only have the one. Pity you squandered it.”
It was exactly as Akkani had warned him. Their entire civilization was about to pay the price for Jacen’s sins. All that remained for him to do—the last sacrifice he could make, however pathetically inadequate—was to go out fighting.
He took a long, shuddering breath, held it in for a few moments, then released it. He turned toward Seth and ordered Teheda and Saraida, “Let him up.”
The two backed away. Teheda kept an eye on Nines, placing himself between her and Seth.
“Come out, you worm,” Jacen said through gritted teeth. He switched to extradimensional speech. “Face me and fight.”
Seth grinned. “Before we return you to the dust you are, you will live to rue this day. We will begin with Zivora.”
Then Neri spoke. “You won’t.”
At first, Jacen thought he’d imagined it. Neri knelt alone, unmoving, eyes closed. Tear tracks stained his face. He winced as though in pain, or from a loud noise no one else could hear.
With the slow heaviness of one who carried the weight of centuries, he got to his feet. He wiped his eyes. He looked at Seth, then at Jacen, then Ysira. At Nines, Teheda, and Saraida, and the bodies all around them.
“We tried.” Neri seemed to be trying to put on a brave face but only looked exhausted. “It was always going to be this way, wasn’t it.” He squinted up at the eclipse. Jacen felt Neri’s fear leach away, replaced by a glacial calm. He’d been pushed pasthis limit of grief and terror, and all that remained was awful, inevitable destiny.
Ysira still had that dead look on her face. She asked, very quiet, “Are you sure?”
“Only I can end this.” Neri lifted his shoulders and drew a ragged breath. “And now there’s only one way.”
Jacen’s mind brushed Neri’s and found depthless power brimming beneath its surface. He felt him reach toward impossible awareness, a thousand generations before him whispering their knowledge, their desires, their rage, their hate?—
Jacen had to retreat inside himself, blocking it out. His heart pounded. “How—” He cleared his throat. He’d spoken aloud without meaning to.Do you know how?
You showed me, remember?Neri smiled sadly.At the Gate. It’s just . . . opening a door. I let them in. I become part of the whole and their power becomes mine.
And then?
I’m going to destroy the station.
