I stood rooted in place with utter shock. Tyrus’s face was earnest, his eyes blazing with total conviction on the vast holographic images of him in the corners of the square. He earnestly seemed to believe in his own words.
“Set the example today for the rest of the galaxy,” Tyrus said. “Hail me as your God—and be rewarded.”
Instead of cheers, his demand was met with confusion, with restive stirring in the crowd. Excess were looking one to the other, and some were heeding their instincts and retreating.
A few—a brave few, filled with conviction—cupped hands over their mouths and jeered.
Tyrus’s cool-eyed gaze fell upon one such fellow, and his lips curved into a remote smile. “Today is the example for all the days to come,” he said, almost softly, gently, his tone eminently reasonable. “Deny that I am your God, then. Reap the consequences.”
Then he raised his hand.
Overhead, a vessel ripped through space and tore a skein of bright white malignant space into the void. The newly declared Divine Emperor stepped to the front of the platform, his arms spread wide. The building-size holographics showed his mad grin and elated face. His arms rose, as though he were embracing the entirety of the screaming crowd, even as they turned and fled. They rushed to escape what could not be escaped: a bright and vivid slash of malignant space tearing across their star system.
I hurled myself down onto my hands and knees beneath the brilliant plume seeming to split open the sky, my blood thundering in my veins, disbelief blazing through me at what he had done. Then Neveni’s voice lashed in my ear, reminding me of where I was, what this was: “You’re in reach. KILL HIM, Nemesis!”
Kill him.
Yes.
Kill him. I was here to kill him. My eyes rose up to look at that figure with his back to me, and beyond him to the holographic projections showing his ecstatic face smiling upon the screaming crowd.… And everything inside me abruptly contracted with horror and the shame of realization that Tyrus had gone insane.
He was insane.
His mind had been broken.
He had lost his mind!
This was the answer. This was the answer to every single question and doubt that had tormented me these last months.… For he had loved me. I knew that was not my imagination. He had loved me and then he had lost himself utterly, and… and it wasn’t his own doing.
Pasus had done this to him.
I had done this to him.
Tyrus’s star-shaped security bots swiveled around, noticing me. They must have flashed a warning straight into his mind, for he whipped about and froze at the sight of me, all expression dropping away from his face.
Yes, even that mad smile.
“Please, Nemesis!” Neveni’s voice was hoarse, frantic. “End this! Kill him!”
It was the look on his face that undid me. A strange sort of unguarded wonder, something I had never expected to see from him again. “Nemesis…?” he said tenderly, in disbelief himself now.
“KILL HIM!” screamed Neveni.
I loved this man. I loved him. And here I was before a ruin of him, because this was not Tyrus. This had never been Tyrus. He had been imprisoned and his mind had been mutilated, destroyed, taken from him. He’d never meant this to happen; he’d had such beautiful dreams and plans once, and now here I was, come like a monster to destroy someone I had reduced to this.…
You’ve been the joy of this sun-scorned existence. Every moment of unhappiness I’ve had, I’d relive a thousand times just for the heartbeats I’ve passed with you. Now by the light of the stars, save yourself!
Those were the last words the true Tyrus had spoken to me, that day on the Tigris when he’d accepted his imminent death and pleaded with me to let it happen. All he’d wished was to escape Pasus with his mind and his soul intact—and I had stolen that choice from him.
We both knew it.
I made my choice, he’d flung at me that final day, with our swords drawn in the ball dome. I would free the woman I most loved and serve those people of my Empire, and it was all I wanted. I trusted you to let me decide, and you knocked me unconscious and left me with them. I chose and you took that from me.
This wasn’t who Tyrus truly was. This wasn’t who he was supposed to be. A thousand moments flashed through my mind in an instant…
His lips meeting mine; his tongue tasting me; his hands firm and clever, drawing me to the heat of his body. I remembered the warmth of his voice as he spoke my name, as he called me “my love.” And then it became “my wife.” Tyrus standing in coronation garb, offering me his hand, for all the galaxy was meaningless without me by his side.…
I suffocated on the sweetness we had lost, and then a flash appeared in the periphery of my vision.
The sniper.
The sniper!
NO!
I threw myself at Tyrus, intent only on shielding him from the lethal ray. The shot blazed past me, sizzling the air, and I… I hurtled right through Tyrus.
For it was not Tyrus.
It was a figment of light.
As I crashed to the platform, winded, I realized that Tyrus had never truly been present. This was the Empire’s most sophisticated holographic technology—so seamlessly real the eye could not pick out its fakery.
I stumbled to my feet and became abruptly aware of a change in the crowd. Even amid the panic of the malignant space aglow overhead, the crowd had seen me, and now they called for me, my name traded from mouth to mouth. “Nemesis. It’s Nemesis!”
But all I saw was that holographic projection of Tyrus, standing before me with his haunted eyes upon mine, and I could not look away from his face. Then reality registered in the form of Neveni’s bitter, poisonous voice in my ear: “I knew you’d save him.”
The Arbiter rose over the buildings in the distance.
“If we can’t use you alive, Nemesis, then at least I know exactly where you’re standing!”
A bloom of light swelled from the Arbiter’s laser cannon.
I realized then that Neveni was going to fire on me. To fire on me, regardless of the massive crowd around me, all the people who would also be torn to shreds by her weaponry. Neveni was going to kill me.
Did Tyrus say something to me, in that last moment? I believed sometimes that he might have, but all I knew then was that there was no escaping this. There was no saving myself—but I could get as far from this crowd as possible. I hurled myself through the air, aiming for the fringes. The explosion blasted my ears as a wall of heat slammed into me.…
That was the last I remembered until Anguish found me.
* * *
The mind had a way of playing cruel tricks, for even now, two years later, as I walked away from the men in that alley, my thoughts sprang back to the look Tyrus sent me just before the blast.…
And I cursed myself for still wondering if that had been fear on his face. For it couldn’t be fear for himself, not when he wasn’t actually there.
Fear for me.
The curse of being involved with Tyrus was his visibility. The galactic Emperor was visible everywhere, reminders were everywhere. As I left the men behind in the alley, I passed a Tributary Image, one of the holographics liberally spread throughout the Empire. The current sovereign always had such depictions everywhere, and this one was a generic image of the Emperor Tyrus in full imperial finery. His hair was set in the halo style of his coronation, his body adorned in liquisilk and crystal.