“The day is lost,” I say to the thin Imperator. But you can still save lives. Tell your fleet to stand down.”

He shakes his head.

“You’re in a corner, Poet,” Victra says. “There’s no getting out. Time to do the right thing. I know it’s been a while.”

“And destroy what’s left of my honor?” he asks quietly as a group of twenty men in starShells penetrate the rear hangar of a nearby destroyer. “I think not.”

“Honor?” Victra sneers. “What honor do you think you have? We were your friends and you gave us up. Not just to be killed. But to be put in boxes. To be electrocuted. Burned. Tortured night and day for a year.” Here in armor, it’s hard to imagine the blond warrior to have ever been a victim. But in her eyes there’s that special sadness that comes from seeing the void. From feeling cut away from the rest of humanity. Her voice is thick with emotion. “We were your friends.”

“I swore an oath to protect the Society, Victra. The same oath you both swore the day we stood before our betters and took the scar upon our faces. To protect the civilization that brought order to man. Look upon what you’ve done instead.” He eyes the Valkyrie behind us in disgust.

“You don’t live in a bedtime story, whimpering little sod,” she snaps. “You think any of them care about you? Antonia? The Jackal? The Sovereign?”

“No,” he says quietly. “I have no such illusions. But it’s not about them. It’s not about me. Not every life is meant to be warm. Sometimes the cold is our duty. Even if it pulls us from those we love.” He looks pityingly at her. “You’ll never be what Darrow wants. You have to know that.”

“You think I’m here for him?” she asks.

Roque frowns. “Then it’s revenge?”

“No,” she says angrily. “It’s more than that.”

“Who are you trying to fool?” Roque asks, jerking his head toward me. “Him or yourself?” The question catches Victra off guard.

“Roque, think of your men,” I say. “How many more have to die?”

“If you care so much for life, tell yours to stop firing,” Roque replies. “Tell them to fall in line and understand that life isn’t free. It isn’t without sacrifice. If all take what they want, how long will it be till there’s nothing left?”

It breaks me to hear him say those words.

My friend has always had his own way of things. His own tides that come in and out. It is not in his nature to hate. Nor was it in mine. Our worlds made us what we are, and all this pain we suffer is to fix the folly of those who came before, who shaped the world in their image and left us the ruin of their feast. Ships detonate in his irises. Washing his pale face with furious light.

“All this…,” he whispers, feeling the end coming. “Was she so lovely?”

“Yes. She was like you,” I say. “A dreamer.” He’s too young to look so old. Were it not for the lines on his face and the world between us, it would seem only yesterday that he crouched before me as I shivered on the floor of the Mars Castle after killing Julian and he told me that when you’re thrown in the deep, there’s only one choice. Keep swimming or drown. I should have loved him more. I would have done anything to keep him at my side and show him the love he deserves.

But life is the present and the future, not the past.

It’s as if we look at each other from distant shores and the river between widens and roars and darkens till our faces are pale shards of the moon in the deep night. More ideas of the boys we were than the men we are. I see the resolve forming in his face. The determination pulling him away from this life.

“You don’t have to die.”

“I have lost the invincible armada,” he says, stepping back, his hand tightening on his razor. Behind him, the display shows Sevro’s trap ruining the main body of his fleet. “How can I go on? How can I bear this shame?”

“I know shame. I watched my wife die,” I say. “Then I killed myself. Let them hang me to end it all. To escape the pain. I’ve felt that guilt every day since. This is not the way out.”

“My heart breaks for who you were,” he says. “For that boy who watched his wife die. My heart broke in that garden. It breaks now knowing all you suffered. But the only solace was my duty, and now that has been robbed from me. All the remittance I’ve attempted to make…gone. I love the Society. I love my people.” His voice softens. “Can’t you see that?”

“I can.”

“And you love yours.” It’s not judgment, not forgiveness that he gives me. It’s just a smile. “I cannot watch mine fade. I cannot watch it all burn.”

“It won’t.”

“It will. Our age is ending. I feel the days shortening. The brief light dimming upon the kingdom of man.”

“Roque…”

“Let him do it,” Victra says from behind me. “He chose his fate.” I hate her for being so cold even now. How can she not see that beneath his deeds, he’s a good man? He’s still our friend, despite what he’s done to us.

“I’m sorry for what happened, Victra. Remember me fondly.”

“I won’t.”

He favors her with a sad smile as he strips the Imperator badge from his left shoulder and clutches it in his hand, drawing his strength from it. But then he tosses it to the ground. There’s tears in his eyes as he strips away the other. “I do not deserve these. But I shall have glory by losing this day. More than you by vile conquest shall attain.”

“Roque, just listen to me. This not the end. This is the beginning. We can repair what’s broken. The worlds need Roque au Fabii.” I hesitate. “I need you.”

“There is no place for me in your world. We were brothers, but I would kill you, if only I had the power.”

I’m in a dream. Unable to change the forces that move around me. To stop the sand from slipping through my fingers. I set this into motion but didn’t have the heart or strength or cunning or whatever the hell I needed to stop it. No matter what I do or say, Roque was lost to me the moment he discovered what I am.

I step toward him, thinking I can take his razor from his hand without killing him, but he knows my intention and he holds up his off hand plaintively. As if to comfort me and beg me the mercy of letting him die as he lived. “Be still. Night hangs upon mine eyes.” He looks to me, eyes full with tears.