Nyx fought her memories, her programming, her upbringing. When she looked at Cato, she knew he felt the same. Cato had deeper programming, and he wasn’t as resistant. His eyes were closed, his expression relaxed. Nyx remembered this. In the communal room with her cohort, they played this song and they all closed their eyes in prayer. Some pressed their hands to their hearts.

“Cato.” She gripped his arm, leaned into him. “Listen to my voice.”

“I hear you.” His voice was faint.

Rhea and Ariadne might have deprogrammed him, but the lure was still there. The drug-like comfort of not questioning, not rebelling, of letting everything be decided. So easy.

The Evoli drums quickened.

The Tholosian anthem grew louder.

Cato’s eyes fluttered shut.

Nyx sank her fingernails into his arm, relieved to see him wince.

“Eris,” Nyx gritted. “She might need our help. If you can’t handle this, I’m leaving your ass right here.”

“Eris?” He sounded dazed.

Before Nyx could respond, the drums and the anthem stopped. The dais at the far end of the room was lit in a blazing light that cast the Evoli Ascendant and the Archon in the different colors of a nebula. Projected stars scattered across their features, a symbol in both empires of hope and peace.

The Evoli Ascendant and the Tholosian Archon rose to stand next to each other as they addressed the crowd. Her long robes were deceptively simple compared to the Archon in his full military dress. She wore a headdress that was as delicate as lace, in contrast to the heavy crown slanted across his brow. A goddess, a god—both of them able to change the course of the future with this one meeting.

The room was quiet, rapt.

“Welcome, All Souls,” the Ascendant said, using the formal address for Evoli citizens. Even with her words artificially projected, she sounded quiet, her voice ringing lovely as a chime.

“And loyal Tholosians,” the Archon added with a single, stern nod.

There was a hunched line to his shoulders and a weariness in his voice. Nyx had always heard that when the Archon finally aged, it caught up all at once.

The Ascendant lifted her chin. “For the last five hundred years, our great empires have been at war. Each victory has been overshadowed by devastating loss, and we agree the cost of this has become too great. It cannot continue.”

The Archon added his voice to hers: “We acknowledge this newfound accord will not come easily to some. A declaration cannot undo our pasts, but my hope is that it will clear a peaceful path going forward. A future that will be ensured and continued by my son and Heir, General Damocles.”

The Archon nodded to a door off to the side, and Nyx dug her fingers into Cato’s arm as the general strode forward to join his father on the dais.

Eris wasn’t with him.

“Shit,” Nyx muttered.