For Thrana, for Numeen, for Bayan, for all the ones who’d died and suffered.

I shook my head, my bones thrumming. “Because even if I am the Emperor, I am still one of them.”

He lifted the water at his feet into a wave, casting it at me, hoping to wash me down the hill and into the approaching constructs. But I could feel that water, the same way I could feel the drops of sweat at my brow. I dug a knee into Thrana’s ribs and she leapt aside.

Thrana growled, her body humming along with mine. Together we charged at Ragan.

He’d not been ready for me to fight back and was too slow to dodge. I kicked out at him with all the strength of the cloudtree berry and my Alanga magic, sending him tumbling a little way down the side of the hill. He grabbed a bush to slow his momentum. I swung from my perch on Thrana’s back, needing to feel the earth beneath my shoes. “My people are on the brink of being overrun, you come to me offering to help and then you attack me?” I wasn’t just angry at Ragan, it was Jovis too. It was the governors who saw me as no more than an extension of my father.

I was not him, and not even his memories could make it so. I softened my words. I might have been more like him if not for Numeen and his family. I’d have become Emperor without any thought for the consequences for the people I ruled. “You could help us. You could protect Gaelung from the constructs. You could have a permanent place at my side; I am not ungracious. But what gives you the right to treat others even more poorly than your masters treated you?”

A flicker crossed his face; one I recognized – a deep and abiding loneliness, a yearning for love and acceptance in any form. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

“You could tell me.”

He laughed bitterly, holding up a finger. “You try to give me pretty speeches, to inspire me, to manipulate me. I’ve had to claw my way into what I have, and you think what you’re offering is appealing at all? I don’t care about these people or what they think of me.” He spat out the words. “I am one of the Alanga. I am above them.”

He stuffed more berries into his mouth and slammed a hand into the ground.

The world shook. The palace rumbled, pieces of it breaking off and hitting the ground. Shouts went up from the soldiers, screams from servants somewhere inside. Thrana’s head thrust beneath my arm, stopping me from falling down the slope after Ragan. I grabbed a nearby rock to steady myself.