Slouched at the base of his father’s memorial bier was the vord Queen.

She was bleeding from more wounds than Tavi could count, and the water around her, instead of being crystalline, was stained the dark green of a living pond. She slumped in absolute exhaustion. One eye was missing, that side of her once-beautiful face slashed to ribbons by the windmanes’ claws.

The other eye, still glittering black, focused upon Tavi. The vord Queen rose, her sword in her hand.

Tavi stopped at the edge of the pool and waited, settling his grip on his own blade.

The two faced one another and said nothing. The silence and stillness stretched. Outside, the storm’s wrath was a distant thing, impotent. Light flickered through the crystalline walls.

“I was right,” the Queen said, her voice heavy and rough. “There is a strength in the bonds between you.”

“Yes,” Tavi said simply.

“My daughter who lives in far Canea... she will never understand that.”

“No.”

“Is it not strange, that though I know her failure to see it is a weakness, though I know that she would kill me upon sight, that I want her to live? To prosper?”

“Not so strange,” Tavi said.

The Queen closed her eye and nodded. She opened it again, and there was a tear tracking down her face. “I tried to be what I was meant to be, Father. It was never personal.”

“We’re beyond that now,” Tavi said. “It ends here, and now. You know that.”

She was still for a moment, before asking, very quietly, “Will you make me suffer?”

“No,” he said, as gently as he could.

“I know how a vord queen dies,” she whispered. She lifted her chin, a ghostly shadow of pride falling across her. “I am ready.”

He inclined his head to her, very slightly.

Her rush sent out a spray of water, and she came at him with every ounce of speed and power left in her broken body. Even so badly battered, she was faster than any Aleran, stronger than a grass lion.

Gaius Octavian’s blade met that of the vord Queen in a single, chiming tone. Her sword shattered amidst a rain of blue and scarlet sparks.

He made a single smooth, lightning-swift cut.

And the Vord War was over.

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 57

The wind had picked up so sharply that the Knights Aeris Fidelias had borrowed began to run out of work. The conditions were simply too harsh for the vordknights to stay aloft, especially when a mix of cold rain and sleet began sluicing down. The changing conditions had ripped the Canim’s sorcerous mist apart even earlier than that, and Fidelias, from his vantage point on the barn’s roof, had gotten an excellent view of the size of the force attacking them.

There weren’t thirty thousand vord. There were more like fifty thousand.