50
TYRUS CUT OFF all the transmitters with a curse, but it was too late, it was too late—the words were out there, and he whirled on me with crazed horror, shouted, “What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Take it back. Say it was a joke. Say it!” His voice was ferocious, and I waited until he was convinced I’d obey. He turned the transmitters back on.
I said: “I slit the Interdict’s throat and rammed the Hera into—”
“ENOUGH!” roared Tyrus as the transmitters cut off again. “You’ve gone mad. What in the hell are you thinking?”
“I know exactly what I’m doing.”
He looked like he wanted to hit me. To combust. He soared to me, seized my arms, and drew my face toward his. “You told the galaxy you killed the Interdict! They’ll believe you!”
“I know. That’s why I said it.”
“Black hole devour you—to what end?”
“I’m setting,” I told him, my eyes boring into his, “my own terms for how we move forward. Now you have them.”
He shouted out in frustration, threw me from him, and I drifted with the momentum, still watching him as he scraped his hands through his hair, clearly trying to think of a way to salvage this. The Empire was in his hands. All the technology in this sector obeyed him. But he couldn’t erase what I’d done.
And he knew it.
Then, “Why?” His voice was a deathly whisper, but I could make it out.
I neared the far wall, so I shoved off it to float back toward him. The audience in the ball dome was watching us, rapt. Gladdic was holding on to the edge of a box, heaving himself into it, desperate for his escape.
“Surely you realize . . . ,” Tyrus began.
“That I’ve condemned myself? Yes. That’s the point.” I caught his arm. Very gently, I pressed the hilt of my sword into his palm. “You could use this. The honor of an Empress’s death must surely go to her husband. It will be your duty to carry this out.”
He stared at the sword blankly, then looked at me. His momentum kept him with me as I listed to the side. I was only half-aware of every screen in the boxes all about us going opaque as Tyrus blocked us from their view.
“I don’t understand you,” he said.
“You should. I am the same as I have always been. Yours. And desperately in love with you. I won’t sit here and watch you become what you hate. I thought perhaps I could influence you, but I clearly can’t. I can’t be your conscience. You hoped I would learn to live with turning a blind eye, but I won’t. Even if I were capable of that, I could never do you such a cruelty. So here is your new set of choices, Tyrus.”
“Choices?” he said between his teeth. “There are no choices anymore. You’ve made sure of that! You’ve eliminated every choice but the single one I cannot make! You mean me to kill you.”
“On the contrary, there are two choices: you may choose me, or you may choose power.” The cold certainty of the words registered in my mind. “Your grandmother once said there is a single choice for a Domitrian. Are you a Domitrian? Or are you Tyrus, the one I love—the one who will choose me?”
He just stared at me. I was aware of several Grandiloquy who’d managed to force their screens back to translucence. . . . Tyrus was too focused on me to shield us from them again.
I cupped his hot, dry cheeks in my hand, stared into those bewildered eyes. “The Emperor of this galaxy has a duty to avenge the Interdict. Emperor Tyrus has to kill me. But Tyrus, my husband, the love of my life—he can decide otherwise. He can save me.”
“How,” he rasped, “can I possibly save you from this?”
“You’ll take me away from here. I wanted to save you, but it’s not in my power now. So you’ll save me instead. We’ll aim for the black hole. We’ll emerge in a time when no one knows us. How easily you and I might disappear if we wanted to, and they may even think we flew right into malignant space . . . or something else. We can take any of these ships and jump into hyperspace until we are so far away, the Empire is a distant memory.”
He gave a crazed, hopeless laugh. “The idea is ludicrous. You’ve now confessed to killing the Interdict,” he said, “and I have decimated much of the Grandiloquy. I am not invulnerable, Nemesis. I am only now learning how to control these machines. Do you truly think we will get that far?”
“We will run fast. If we are cornered, we will fight hard. No force in this galaxy can stop us.”
“And this Empire?”
“Leave it behind! Tyrus, your family is deemed royal, but they don’t rule this place. They have been chained to it for thousands of years. You can break those chains. You’ve ended the line, so free yourself from it. Escape with me, my love.”
Tyrus’s eyes glinted. “You’ve never called me that.”
“Have I not?” I murmered, my heart pierced not just by the realization I hadn’t—but by the fact that he’d noticed. “My love.” I pressed a kiss to his lips. “My true love. Love of my life.”
He gathered me closer, heedless of how this had to look after my confession. “Why do you keep doing this to me?” His voice was thick like he’d caught back a sob.
“Helios help me, that Venalox wasn’t strong enough. It didn’t do enough. I would gladly poison every fiber of my heart that beats for you if I could be free of you. You are the only one who can hurt me.”
“I don’t want to,” I said. “Tyrus, I can’t imagine myself without you.”
He looked at me with a torture in his eyes I hadn’t seen in the worst torments of withdrawal. “No. But . . . I can.”
Then he buried his sword in my chest.