“You know, your father used to scowl like that too whenever he wore that color,” commented Siege, who was lounging back in one of the cushy red chairs in the room. She had a flute of champagne in one hand, her hair peppery gray and wild, reaching toward the sky. She looked mismatched in Ana’s room, in a worn black coat and trousers, and yet at the same time perfectly at home. She leaned her head on her hand. “Though you look so much like Nicholii I could cry.”

“I do?” she asked, turning back to the mirror. “I don’t feel like royalty.”

“He never did either.”

It was strange how you could be something but not know how. The coat didn’t fit right, and she was afraid that the title Empress wouldn’t fit either. It was more of a birthright, anyway. Something that she had just lucked into—there were other, better leaders out there in the kingdom, and she wanted to make sure they had a voice. She couldn’t do it all on her own. She didn’t know how.

There was a knock on the door and Talle peeked into the room. “Oh, here you are, sunshine. Are you ready to get going?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for the funeral?” Ana asked.

“Ah, I’ve had enough of those,” said the captain, “and it’s as good a time as any to disappear.”

“And you can’t tell me where you’re going?”

Talle and Siege exchanged an unreadable look, and then the captain said, “I’m sorry, darling. We need to hide the heart, and the fewer people who know, the better. The Great Dark is gone—but we don’t know if it’s forever, or if we just destroyed a part of it, or if something else will come after the heart’s power. We’ll come back, though,” she added when Ana started to look a little panicky. “We promise.”

Ana nodded. She guessed that was as good as she was going to get from her captain. She played with the golden toggles on her coat as Siege stood, slowly, one hand on her side, and grabbed the golden-handled cane propped up on the side of the chair. As she turned to leave, Ana blurted, “Captain?”

Siege paused and glanced back over her shoulder. “Yeah, darling?”

Are you really the Goddess? Is the Great Dark really gone? Will you be back? She had so many questions to ask her, but none of them seemed as important as: “I love you.”

Siege smiled, and the ends of her hair glowed faintly, reminding Ana of how once her hair had lit an entire room. She came up to Ana, and they were close to the same height now, but she thought she would always feel infinitely smaller against Siege—a shadow to rise up to. Her captain kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “To the ends of the galaxy, my darling.”

Then her mothers were gone.

Pursing her lips, she blinked the wetness out of her eyes because she had cried too many times over the last week and slipped on the coat. The metal shoulders and the accolades on her lapel made the coat cumbersome, and it buttoned in this ridiculous way that must have been very fashionable a hundred year ago.