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“Daorydamned Raa!”

My heart breaks watching her spin helplessly about, as if she were a drowning woman the rest of us could not help I’m as lost myself

“Dido…” Romulus says from behind her “Please” She turns to him still in denial, but slowly as she looks into his eyes, she knows that there is no going back and all at once a shiver goes through her that I can see from forty meters back, as her reality, her fa

“Tell the,” she whispers “Tell them you had suspicions but didn’t know”

“But I knew,” Romulus says “I knew because the holodrop you sent Seraphina to collect was offered to me first”

“What?”

He looks up at the council as if he’s already parted from the world

“It was offered to es were sent I invited the brokers to the Rim, where they met around Enceladus I relied upon inal copy there I took out a k and killed them all and burned their ship Of course, as you have seen, there was a copy”

“You did this by yourself?” Helios asks, looking at Pandora

“I aht ask yourself why I did this Why I tell you this nohen it will cost me my own life All my days I have lived as honorably as aAnd, as my father would ask, what is honor without truth? Honor is not what you say Honor is what you do”

A cold stone settles in my throat as I watch Seraphina’s heart break Tears leak down her cheeks

“We live by a code I broke that code, even ifto you all I lied because I kne what the Slave King did to the docks, ould have no choice but to declare the peace void and sail for war

“I believe that ill destroy us All of us, Riether All we have protected The legacy of the Society will vanish Not because our arms are weak Not because our coainst a religion whose god still lives

“At this moment, he is mortal He strains under the burden of rule, and the seams of their alliances fray But if we sail on Mars or Luna, the Colors will unite They will becoain, their god of war And if he falls, another will rise, and another, and another We are too few We are too honorable We will lose this war just as surely as I will now lose my life

“I urge you to feel my death To let it be the last casualty, and not the first of this war that claihter, my son, and now me”