“Euryphel, you must not tell anyone of your scar. Do you understand?”

The prince nodded earnestly, eyes alight with curiosity. “Why?”

His mother pulled him in close, holding him to her chest. “Words have power, sweetness. I’ve told you so before, haven’t I?”

Euryphel wriggled in her grasp. “You tell me every day!” he exclaimed.

She smiled, eyes creasing tenderly. “And whose words have the most power in this kingdom?”

“Mama’s!”

She stroked his locks, soft, blonde hair curling gently between her fingertips.

The scene shifted.

“I need to know what you prophesied,” Euryphel said, glowering, the expression almost comical given his diminutive height and girlish features.

His mother turned from the window and set down her book, her eyes squinting against the bright light of the sun. “Why disturb me now?”

“I deserve to know why Father won’t let me go on the trip to Ziggura Cove. I’m old enough to keep a secret.”

She beckoned him over to the window. The only sound was that of her parakeets and the lapping of a small fountain.

“Sweetness, you were born with a sister. It was prophesied that you would need each other, that your fates were to be bound together.”

Euryphel frowned. “But I don’t have a sister.”

“You do have a scar.”

Euryphel froze, suddenly gripped by dread. “Mama...why are you crying?”

She turned to the window, the sunlight illuminating tears streaking down her cheek.

—

Euryphel woke up panting, his forehead and back covered in a sheen of sweat. He leaned forward and planted an arm in support, his hair draping over his shoulder.

He realized he was clenching his teeth and relaxed his jaw, taking in a deep breath. He glanced at the time on his glossY and noted that he’d woken up twenty minutes earlier than his alarm.

Later than usual, he thought with a self-deprecating sneer. He hadn’t been woken by his alarm the past week and a half; his ever-evolving nightmares rendered an alarm unnecessary.

Knowing that trying to go back to sleep was fruitless, Euryphel got up and went to his private baths, slinking into steaming water. His hair floated around his shoulders as he let the hot water work on his muscles.

Euryphel focused on the fate arrows around him, his eyes scanning their shafts before alighting on a familiar arrow bearing the golden chains of an oath of service. He traced the arrow to its origin beyond the walls, noting that it was moving around.

“Urstes, do you have any updates for me?” Euryphel asked, sending his voice out over the wind toward the man’s position.

“None,” Urstes muttered; Euryphel picked up on the movement of his lips rather than the sound itself. “Nothing happened overnight.”

Euryphel sighed and nodded. No news wasn’t good news, but it wasn’t bad news. He’d been switching off sleep shifts with Urstes, the guardian sleeping at eight in the evening while Euryphel slept at one in the morning when the guardian roused from slumber. Neither of them getting more than five hours of sleep per night was inadvisable, but they made do with vitality infusions provided by Life practitioners.

At this point, Euryphel was starting to think they’d already received all the bad news the world had to offer.

He knew that all of this was his fault. After his mother’s death, he was the strongest End practitioner the SPU had. He was responsible for dealing with the Eldemari...but he was found wanting. He could barely keep the region around Zukal’iss free of the Eldemari’s influence. If not for the arrays placed around Ichormai by the militant founders of the SPU, Euryphel knew he wouldn’t be able to keep even his bedchamber safe.

He had known how powerful Maria was. He knew that she was more powerful by an order of magnitude, that she kept an entire continent under her fist...but he really thought that they’d be able to win. The universe seemed to be sending him a message, placing Ian and the descendant in his sights.

The reality of the situation was that the SPU had been growing weaker for years, its number of practitioners and the potency of their affinities lessening. It was to the point that they’d started outreach programs like the Officer Training Camp to identify non-nobles with decent talent and elevate them to a higher level.

Euryphel’s father had seen the trend and acted proactively to negotiate peace. Unfortunately, peace wasn’t an absolute: If Selejo and its allies decided to break the terms, the SPU would be helpless.

Ian and the descendant were a packaged opportunity to reverse the SPU’s fate. Euryphel had seen it. The other princes had seen it. The politicians in the Congress had seen it. While some expressed doubt about Ian and his ascension, even going so far as to suggest offering up Ian to the Eldemari as a token to prolong the peace...most saw the writing on the wall.

Even though people in positions of power knew that defeating Selejo and its allies was a nearly impossible task, there was a collective, unspoken consensus that if they didn’t act now, they’d be throwing away their only chance at freedom.

Euryphel didn’t have any regrets other than his lack of power. If only he could live up to the legacy of his parents, he’d maybe be able to make the difference in the war.

Instead...he could hope that the descendant would make an imminent arrival.

—

Ko’la shook his head and crossed his arms, his dark features contrasting with the blue of his SPU uniform. “The Selejans have already captured Yuruv’a; we can’t count on the Deathseeds there, nor can we even relocate them without risking our soldiers falling into enemy hands.”

Euryphel felt like tearing out his hair. The high war council was currently going over every province, assessing its status and the path forward. As over seventy-percent were already under Selejo’s thumb, the exercise was demoralizing.

Suddenly, a flashing notification transposed itself over the holographic projection of the SPU’s topography. Euryphel felt all eyes on him; taking in a shallow breath, he leaned forward and gestured to accept the incoming message.

“It’s over,” Shivin’i murmured with a frown, his eyes wide.

Diana, meanwhile, looked indignant, her eyes alight with fury. “What a ridiculous ultimatum. This...it’s unconscionable.”

Euryphel felt like laughing. The Eldemari’s ultimatum was simple: surrender, or die. Euryphel began to read the ultimatum off, his voice catching on the first sentence:

“Princes and Officials of the Selejo Prince’s Union (otherwise known as the SPU), the nation state of Selejo demands your unconditional surrender on behalf of your state. The expectation is that all soldiers will standby, all Deathseeds will be disarmed, and that the SPU will enter martial law under the dominion of Selejo and the Eldemari.

“All SPU denizens will accept the standard End bindings of Selejan citizens; officials in positions of political power and soldiers involved in the war effort will accept more restrictive bindings with SPU citizens held as direct collateral for breaking the terms of oath bindings or attempting to break the oaths themselves. Information about the location of the Skai’aren will be provided upon acceptance of surrender, and all support to the Skai’aren will cease.

“If the SPU refuses the terms of surrender, Selejo will commence systematic culling of the populations of captured cities, alphabetically in ascending order. For every day that the terms are not accepted, a single city with a population in excess of fifty-thousand or multiple cities with a combined population of no less than fifty-thousand will be culled.

“The daily deadline to accept the terms of surrender is five o’clock in the evening, Selejan Standard Time.”

Euryphel sighed. “Those are the full terms of surrender. If anyone has any thoughts, please share them.” As for himself, the prince wished he could pretend the ultimatum never happened. He wished he could travel back in time to before he even met Ian, to a simpler time, a time when he had been less happy but also less scared, less of a failure.

How would he ever be able to face the memory of his parents?

Euryphel spun himself into a scenario. He knew himself well enough to know he needed to separate himself from reality to react. If he could control one thing, it was how he presented himself in public.

He let the room fall away with singular focus. He dealt with his mental pain by drenching himself in physical pain, a storm of wind erupting around him. He didn’t care if people retaliated by attacking him; they’d only be helping. After a few seconds someone either killed him or knocked him unconscious, sending him back to the present. He entered several more scenarios in quick succession; by the end of the eighth, he calmed down enough to stop self-harm.

In the ninth scenario he began to grieve, ignoring the room around him as he released his pent up emotions. It was horrible and messy; he wished he could be alone in his room, but the privacy of a scenario would have to suffice.

He didn’t feel better by the end of the scenario; while he was good at tuning people out, he wasn’t fully ignorant of the high war council’s concern and embarrassment on his behalf.

In the twelfth scenario, he began to think about his next steps. The SPU couldn’t afford to say no to the ultimatum, the terms were too...persuasive. Even as Diana and some of the others expressed their indignation at the audacity and callousness of the terms, Euryphel knew that it was just posturing. What Selejo was doing was no different than the strategy they’d used against Godora, forcing Corvid to capitulate lest they forfeit the lives of their regular citizens.

The strategy was dirty, but effective, and the SPU had no right to complain.

The one thing the ultimatum lacked was a clause regarding Ian. There was nothing in the terms that required Ian’s head in return for the safety of citizens. Euryphel could understand why the terms didn’t include such a clause, however: At the end of the day, Ian wasn’t a denizen of the SPU. He’d been in the country for just over two months of his life; moreover, he wasn’t bound by any actual oaths of servitude to Euryphel himself or the state.

For all that the Council of Princes had harangued Euryphel for taking on a personal retainer without any binding oaths ensuring his loyalty...it was for that reason that the Eldemari had nothing she could legally use to force Ian’s return as part of the terms of surrender.

Of course nobody could prevent Selejo from including a clause regarding Ian’s return, but it could be contested for being unreasonable or impossible. How could Selejo hold SPU citizens ransom because of someone not from the SPU, someone with no formal ties to the SPU aside from a non-binding personal retainer relationship with the Crowned Prime?

They couldn’t.

The more Euryphel thought about it, the more he thought that they maybe still had a chance to win.

—

Zilverna and Judith shared a toast of sparkling white wine at a high-end bar in Zhuravia, the capital of Datcha and seat of the Night Queen.

“Cheers to victory,” he said, clinking his glass against hers.

Judith smiled and shook her head, lowering her glass. Her lips were painted scarlet and her hair was pinned up in an artistic bun over her head. “They just received the terms; they haven’t accepted anything yet.”

Zilverna chuckled. “And yet you’re smiling along with me all the same. I guarantee that by the time we wake in the morning, it’ll all be over.” Zilverna liked it when Judith was in a good mood: She temporarily stopped bullying him.

Judith snorted. “While exciting to consider, their surrender doesn’t mean anything if we can’t capture the Skai’aren.”

“Once we receive the location of his hiding place, we’ll be able to start tracking him. Even if he’s already been tipped off and is making a get-away, we’ll be able to trace his steps.

Judith swished her glass. “And once we locate him, we’ll be able to call in reinforcements.”

“I still think that capturing his mother would be sufficient to get him to return,” Zilverna muttered as he sipped from his glass, tugging at one of his cufflinks.

Judith made a face. “All our intelligence says that they have a bad relationship. His mother was emotionally abusive for most of his childhood. The real shame is that he had the foresight to move his sister; your mother has confirmed that she’s no longer in Ichormai.”

Zilverna was quiet as he considered how to explain. “Sometimes love is irrational,” he began, frowning. “When I was in the Infinity Loop training against him, I didn’t try to attack his mother in the beginning. But as I spent more time trying to devise a way to achieve victory, I tried getting to him by killing his mother. All I can say is that I learned quickly that doing so was a terrible mistake; he isn’t someone inclined to torture, but when I killed his mother...I didn’t die easily.”

Judith’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “While interesting, Maria would never bet victory on something so volatile as familial love. We’ll continue our mission.”

Zilvena nodded. “Of course, Judith.”

Judith sniffed and looked out of the window of the high rise. Zilverna followed her gaze, his eyes taking in the thousands of buildings lighting up the dark and overshadowing the moon and stars.

Judith sighed and gave him a suspiciously-genuine laugh. “At least for now...I think we can enjoy the view.”