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"‘If you’re a fox, play the hare’ Isn’t what you taught me? But it will look like you knew I set a trap for her That you slipped news of her trap to me" I touch his shoulder as he releases me "I am sorry, friend Truly But you are part of this war"

His jaorks, but he says nothing

"The Sovereign will send her Praetorians again to Europa once I have left," I say "Only this time they’ll come for you and yours Their black and purple ships will shell you froos and lass and sed by the seas The waters eep over your shattered towers, and of your house, there will be nothing but crypts in the deep Unless in"

His eyes seek in ive him time But instead he sees only whatfro to see that, but here and now, he wishes to see anything else

"I put ht you And you betray me like the others Like Aja"

"You look for pity? You let ned ave me a path to escape But my friends will not be prisoners"

I point upward to the fiery gashes in the night sky as ht at my side," I tell Arcos "Only then will your family survive" I put a hand out for my former teacher He pulls out his razor

"I should kill you"

"Can I coeezer?" Sevro asks over the coet" Lorn pulls his own datapad from his pocket "I could have my fleet destroy yours, boy"

"Not before n’s"

"But she would know then where House Arcos stands She would know that you tricked me That my house is not part of this"

"Then do it," I tell Lorn "Launch your ships if you think my cause evil Put me down if you think me a monster" I step forward close to him "But you know the heart that beats here Choose me Or choose that darkness" I nod down the hill of the forest garden to where we entered the place Twelve Obsidian Praetorians file through the sae men and women in black and purple armor, skull helms Only one Stained--this one thinner than the others, like a winter asp standing on its tail His armor is white and splashed with colors like blood

They are less than fifty lorious, is the Protean Knight in her golden gear Her razor shimmers with the colors of a nebula, and her armor writhes like the waves that batter the white walls of Lorn’s island Aja peers up to the night sky, where she seesShe lets her helmet recoil into her armor

"And then the traitors were two," she calls "House Arcos has embraced treason as well Lorn You stand with the lions?"

"The House Arcos stands apart," Lorn calls back