“I never should have left her in his grasp.” The voice of Klaren’s droid was quiet, barely audible. “I trusted him once, but after having years to reflect on his behavior... I don’t believe that Darai ever really cared about me, but rather, my power alone. He was weak when I first met him back in Exonia. He was...something strange, a dark sort of being I came across. A Yielded who’d been stripped of his power for a reason he always claimed was unjust.”

“But you somehow found it within yourself to trust him anyway?” Andi asked incredulously. “Even knowing that?”

Klaren bowed her head. “I was young and careless, and I cared more for my own ambitions than the well-being of our people. And now I’m afraid that my children—and this entire galaxy—will pay the price for my youthful mistakes. Unless you help me find a way to stop all this, before it’s too late.”

“Would it be so terrible if the Exonians came here?” Dex asked tentatively. “There are plenty of habitable places in Mirabel that are only sparsely populated. Maybe there’s a way to negotiate with Valen and Nor. If we allowed the Exonians entry, perhaps they could lift the compulsion in exchange? Set the Mirabellians free?”

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “You remember what I told you—that the Exonians don’t have bodies of their own?”

Dread crept up Andi’s spine as she nodded. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like where this was going.

“If the Exonians come through the Void, they will need to...occupy the bodies that are already here,” Klaren said, the droid’s voice slow and deliberate. “Our own world is very different from this one, more compatible to our natural forms. It is a place of water and darkness, but here, in the air and sunlight...we would require a host body in order to survive.”

“So you’re parasites,” Andi spit out.

Klaren flushed. “In a manner of speaking, yes. That’s why Valen and Nor require absolute control over the minds of this galaxy—they need the Mirabellians to serve as willing hosts for the Exonians when they cross over.”

The look of horror on Dex’s face mirrored exactly what Andi was feeling.

“Exactly what kind of monsters are your children?” she cried. “How could they want to do something like this? They’d essentially be wiping out an entire galaxy of people—their own people, no less—to make room for some parasites from another world?”