“But he did choose someone,” Nor insisted. “The fail-safe demands that there be a leader, and according to the system, there is one. But it’s not me.” Her body was tensing up again, that chill returning as she thought of all the weapons on the capital planets that were just waiting for her to use them. To blast through the Void and reach Exonia.

And yet she could not use them.

Even when Nexus was completed, she still wouldn’t be able to use them.

To be so close, yet doomed to fail... The thought made Nor sick.

Valen yawned—not from boredom, but from that pure exhaustion Nor was so used to seeing in him these days. “I could look into the minds of everyone beneath my compulsion. Perhaps I’ll find this new general, and I can command him or her to hand over the access.”

Nor felt her spirits lifting at the possibility. “Yes, see what you can find.” Then her heart sank again as another thought occurred to her. “But if they’re Unaffected, we’ll be out of luck. And we’ll never reach Exonia.”

“So close,” Valen said, echoing her earlier thoughts. “And yet so far.”

“Thank you for the reminder, little brother,” Nor retorted. “We’ll work day and night. We’ll search every corner of this damned galaxy until we find the usurper. Until we force them to give me full control of my rightful reign.”

“And then we’ll finally see our true home,” Valen said quietly, staring into the fireplace as if he were gazing through the Void to Exonia.

Darai had grown up there. He’d spent his earliest days wandering that strange, formless place. He’d often told her about a great sea of color, the swirling abyss that had allowed him and her mother passage to Mirabel.

Nor had seen only a glimpse of it—a memory that was not her own. Her mother, with her own gift of compulsion, had found a way to send Nor that flash of memory before her death.

Nor had never seen anything like it. So other, so blessed by the light of the Godstars.

She’d tear open that space between worlds, soon enough. Darai had promised her, all these years, that it could be done. No thanks to your own power, Nor thought with a fleeting sense of sadness. Because her power, her blood, wasn’t strong enough. But Valen’s was.

That was Nor’s own demon to battle—the constant disappointment in herself, for not commanding enough of their mother’s power. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, that uneven passing of Klaren’s ability. She was the firstborn, and she’d expected, as her mother and Darai had, that most of it would have gone to her.

But Nor knew better than most that looking upon the past and wishing for a different outcome was futile.