The Godstars had seen his sins, and now they were punishing him for them.

“You’ll be executed publicly when this is done,” Darai said to Nor as he stepped back and watched Aclisia work, arms crossed over his chest. “Valen will be launched into the sky, his compulsion sending out the message that I am now king. They will worship me and me alone.”

“Initiating the first sequence,” Aclisia said.

The first needle began to slide into Valen’s skull.

He tried to scream, but no sound came out.

“By then, I will have used Androma to gain control of the weapons network. The Void will be blasted open, creating a hole between the two worlds, and when the Exonians come through...they will be mine. Through Valen, I’ll command them to do my bidding. Little by little, we’ll make our way to other worlds, other galaxies. We’ll take over every living soul we can find. All will bow in fear at the sound of my name, and the very Godstars will quake from their thrones in the sky.”

Valen’s eyes moved to Androma. She stood so quietly, so calmly, amid the ten guards watching her. Their rifles were aimed at her chest, her head. She would not be able to get away from them, not even with her strength.

But she hadn’t even tried.

Her eyes met Valen’s for a moment. There was horror in them, for what she was seeing. Perhaps for how he looked, so weak as his body failed him. Perhaps horror for what he’d done, the secrets he’d kept from her, despite the friendship she’d thought they were building aboard the Marauder, despite the forgiveness he’d said he’d given her, for her hand in Kalee’s death.

But there was something else, too.

The look of a soldier standing before a firing squad. Facing death...but not fearing it.

“You are a monster,” Nor was saying. So strange, to see her wrapped up in the arms of compulsion. To see her standing free, when he knew that on the inside, she was just as trapped as he was.

“And you are going to die,” Darai said, turning to face her as the second needle slipped into Valen’s skull.

He screamed audibly this time, but Darai ignored the sound as he spoke to Nor. “The entire galaxy will hate you, and oh, how they will call for your death. Your head will be mounted above Averia’s doors for all to see.”

No, Valen thought.

Where was his power?

How had it been crushed so quickly, so easily?

He dived back into his mind, seeking it out. Begging it to reveal itself, for a tiny bit of it to have remained, as Darai’s power had when the Godstars ripped it from him.