“I apologize,” Altair says, no doubt reading my expression. “Pointless is the wrong word. For now, this war is necessary. The point is survival, for you and for everyone else on Titan. But I’ve grown weary of war, and as the years go on, I find it more and more difficult to see a way for it to end.” His eyes hold mine captive. “What I’m saying, Corvus, is that I know you want to leave because you think this place is a death sentence. But I’ve seen what you’re capable of—what your heart holds—and I know you’re too good to go running back to your family of criminals. Especially after what your mother did to you.”

The reminder makes me go cold. My words are stuck in my mouth. I didn’t think that Altair knew. I didn’t think that anyone here knew. Momma told me that it would be too dangerous if people realized I wasn’t serving out of choice. That people couldn’t know that I was only here because she left me nowhere else to go.

“There is another option for you,” Altair says, tapping his finger on his desk to punctuate the sentence. “Another life for you, with us. With me. With your team and a future that you will help lead us to.”

A no is ready on my lips, but I pause. Momma, Scorpia, my little siblings, the ship that’s always been my home… I’ve spent so long thinking about returning to them. But is that where I belong? Will I be able to live as a smuggler again, with no honor and no scruples? If I go home now, with everything I’ve done and all the ways I’ve changed, will they accept me? I don’t know what’s happened while I’ve been gone, but I know that nothing will ever be the same between us again. I’m not sure if I can forgive them for leaving me, or if they can forgive me for what I’ve become. I doubt even Scorpia will recognize me, regardless of how inseparable we were in the past.

And maybe this is where I belong now. Maybe I’ve adapted so thoroughly that I might as well stay. Maybe my team and my planet’s people need me more than my family does. If I stay here, I’d be treated as a war hero. I’d be given a position of leadership under a general I respect. And if Altair truly seeks a future free from the war, I wouldn’t have to resign myself to being the monster I had to be over the last few years. I could forge my own path, become who I want to be.

I wrestle with my thoughts quite a lot longer than I ever thought I would.