Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(110)

A shadow falls upon my sun.

He is clad in black armor with a high collar, and a long cloak is arrayed around his shoulders, spilling down over the steps below him in a crimson train. His hair is silver-bright, woven into ten braids and draped in long, thick waves over one side of his face. And that face is all I remember and more. Beautiful. Terrible. Radiating a dark majesty. He watches, impassive, as I climb the dais, the power around me thickening, my footsteps ringing hollow in the vast crystal sphere, the gravity of him drawing me in. Drawing me back.

Everything is a cycle. An endless circle.

Everything has led to this.

I stand before him.

“Father,” I say.

“Son,” he replies.

And then, finally, I kneel.





33

TYLER

Kal …

Saedii just stares at me. The revelation about her brother, their father—who and what he is—it’s almost too much for me to wrap my head around. This entire conversation has happened at the speed of thought. It’s maybe been ten minutes since it began. But it feels long as a lifetime.

I thought of Kal as a friend. Someone I could trust. Steady and strong and sure. Even when I’d been torn away from the squad, it was easier to deal with—knowing he’d be there to look after them. But to find out he’s the son of the man who killed my dad, that he was lying to us this whole time …

I will follow you, Brother, he told me.

Some brother …

But I push the hurt, the betrayal aside. Focusing on the problem I can actually do something about. The galaxy is still on the threshold of war. The TDF and the Unbroken could already be tearing each other to pieces. But if everything Saedii just told me is true, if the Weapon the Starslayer used to destroy the Syldrathi sun …

What did you call it again? I ask Saedii.

My father named it Neridaa, she replies.

I shake my head.

My Syldrathi isn’t as polished as Scar’s.

Saedii sneers. Your boots are better polished than your Syldrathi.

I peer mournfully down at the kicks I got from the Emerald City vault. They’re scuffed, beaten, bloodstained. I’d kill for a tin of polish, honestly.

Wow, that’s cold, lady.

Saedii raises one eyebrow ever so slightly. It’s kind of amazing how much she can pack into a simple gesture like that. Amusement. Disdain. Arrogance. Smug superiority. Scar could take lessons from this girl.

Neridaa is a difficult concept to translate into your crude Terran tongue.

Let’s leave my Terran tongue out of this, shall we?

The eyebrow rises higher. The word describes … paradox. A state of beginning and ending. The act of destroying and creating.

And you’re certain this ship is the Eshvaren Weapon?

I feel a tiny sliver of fear, far in the back of her mind.

I am certain of nothing. My father keeps his own counsel. And I was not present when he discovered the first relic.

… What relic? I ask.

A probe of some kind. Three years ago. I was already a Templar by then, serving aboard Andarael. Fighting our war against the traitors on the Council of Syldra. But I was alerted via a panicked transmission from my father’s flagship after they discovered an object drifting in the Fold. Apparently, my father had … dreamed of it. He told his science division that it had called to him. And when they brought it aboard, he touched it and fell unmoving to the deck.

Saedii shakes her head.

I had his science staff all thrown to the drakkan for it. The fools. The object they had found was crystal. Denying all analysis of its structure. My father lay on the deck beside it. Nothing we did could rouse him. I thought it was all about to come undone. After everything we had sacrificed, our Archon had been laid low by a freak encounter with some ancient curio in interdimensional space? It seemed a cruel ending to our song.

But eighteen hours later, my father woke, as if from deepest sleep. Crackling with some new power. I was almost weeping with relief. I asked him what had happened, and he looked at me like I was a stranger. Then he commanded the helm to plot a new course. A rift in the Fold, leading us to a long-dead world. And from there to the Weapon that won our war, ended the treachery of the Syldra council forever, and wrote his name, bloody and beautiful, among the stars.

I look at Saedii, utterly bewildered.

You didn’t ask him about it? None of you wondered how he knew it was there, or raised an eyebrow that a weapon capable of destroying entire star systems had just been left lying around? Didn’t you wonder what it was for?

Saedii sneers.

Of course we wondered. But he was our Archon, Tyler Jones. We his Templars, his Paladins, his adepts. Loyal to the death. The Syldrathi civil war had been raging since the Orion attack. And finally he led us to victory against the curs and cowards who had so shamed us—the Weavers and Watchers and Workers so keen to bend the knee and sign your father’s accursed peace.

I shake my head. Is peace such a horrible thing?

It is through conflict we attain perfection, Tyler Jones. The blade grows dull when it sleeps in its scabbard. Sharp when pressed against the stone.

Saedii glowers at me, eyes flashing. I can see … no, feel the conviction in her. The flame burning in her chest. War is more than a way of life for this girl. It’s a religion. And the awful thing is, I can see a kind of truth in what she says—it is through challenging ourselves that we grow stronger, better, more.