“And yet, I have offered your people a choice,” the Queen said. “A chance to surrender, to accept defeat without losing their own lives—which is more than your people have ever offered me. You think me cruel for hunting your children, Grandmother, but your folk have hunted mine, and killed them in tens of thousands. Your folk and mine are the same, in the end. We survive, and we do so at the expense of others who seek nothing more than to do the same.”

Isana was silent for a long moment. Then she asked, very quietly, “Why do you call me that?”

The vord Queen was also quiet for a time. Then she answered, “It seems fitting, as I understand such things.”

“Why?” Isana pressed. “Why would you consider Tavi your father? Do you truly believe yourself his child?”

The vord Queen moved her shoulders in a shrug that did not look as though it came naturally to her. “Not in the sense that you mean. Although, like you, I did not choose those whose blood would merge to create mine.”

“Why would you care?” Isana asked. “Why should it matter to you whether or not you refer to me in a way that is appropriate to Alerans?”

The Queen tilted her head again, her expression abstracted. “It should not matter.” She blinked her eyes several times in rapid succession. “It should not. And yet it does.”

Isana took a deep breath, sensing something vital stirring beneath the vord’s cool, smooth surface. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking to the Queen as she murmured, “Why?”

The vord Queen folded her arms abruptly over her chest and turned away, a motion that appeared quite human. She looked up at the glowing ceiling above her, at the other walls of the room—anywhere but at Isana.

“Why?” Isana asked again. She took a step closer. “Does the answer to the question matter, to you?”

Frustration and a desperate, unfulfilled need flared through the chamber, bright and solid against Isana’s watercrafting senses. “Yes. It matters.”

“And finding the answer is important to you.”

“Yes. It is.”

Isana shook her head. “But if you destroy us, you might never know the answer.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” the vord Queen spat. Her eyes flared wide open as she bared her teeth in a snarl. “Don’t you think I understand? I sense as you do, Grandmother. I feel everything, everything my children feel. I feel their pain and fear. And through them, I feel your people as well. I feel them screaming and dying. I am so filled with it that I could almost split open down the middle.”