“And you’ve made sure I never will again.” He said this sadly, inhaling as he did so. “I did like looking upon the world. I truly did. You don’t know how it is not to see but to move your eyes and hear stone grinding inside your head.”

“Before Aliver’s war against Hanish, you claimed to have dreamed he would return. Back when nobody knew if he even lived, you boasted that he spoke to you in your dreams. Is that true, or was it a self-serving lie?”

“I was not boasting,” Barad said, “and it was the truth as I understood it.”

“How do you explain it, then?”

“I don’t.”

“Do you hear his voice now?”

Under a ridged, skeptical forehead, he said, “Aliver is dead, Your Majesty. I’ve never spoken with the dead.”

No, but perhaps you will, she thought. Perhaps very soon. “Tell me, was my brother wise?”

“He was.”

“And were you committed to him completely?”

“Of course. We all were. In the brief span that was Aliver’s war, nobody—not one single person—betrayed him.”

The thought of that almost took Corinn’s words away. She wanted to spit that it could not be true. Somebody, somewhere said ill of him. Some soldier deserted camp at night. Some officer coveted his status. Somebody …

“Your Majesty, I think I understand you better now. What’s wrong with you is that you feel you are alone. Isn’t that it? You are alone, and it frightens you. But you don’t have to—”

“I am not alone! Millions—millions—” She said the number, but was not sure how to complete the thought she began it with. Nor did it matter. A blind fool! “You will use all your gifts of oratory in my service.”

“No,” Barad said. “I will not.”

“You will. You will bring to the people word that in my presence and through long conversation with me you have learned that you were wrong. You maligned me mistakenly. The truth—”

“Is not yours to create.”

“—is that I am the last and only hope for the Known World.”

“No.”

“You know nothing! I have looked across the world and seen the coming enemy in my own mind. In my head!” She gestured savagely at her temple, as if she would jab her finger through it. “I’ve seen them, and they bring beasts and hunger and vengeance—”

“They will pay you back for the Akaran sins.”

Corinn could not help but use her body to express herself. “No, that’s where you’re wrong. The Auldek will kill us all. They want to make our lands theirs. And—and the quota children returning with them hate all of us. Not just me. You, too. Will you explain to them that you are not the villain who sent them away? Do you really think they’ll stop long enough to hear you? The difference between us is nothing—nothing!—if we’re both dead. We will be, unless all the Known World unites behind me as fully as they did behind my brother.”