“… ad astra!” the crowd roars.

I remain on the steps as the festival swings into motion below on the Field of Mars. The Golds disperse onto Citadel grounds, heading for our private feast. Augustus watches from my side. Behind us, the bronze sun sets on his city, stretching our shadows over the lowColors below.

“Walk with me,” he commands.

We walk, surrounded by bodyguards. Unease spreads through me as I see them cluster tight about us. He’s spoken to his daughter. He knows. Of course he knows. I have my razor, no gravBoots. Just ceremonial armor. How many of the Obsidians could I kill before I’m overwhelmed? Not many.

Then I realize where he’s taking me and I nearly laugh at myself for being foolish.

The throne room burns with sunlight. Ceiling all of glass, marble columns stretching a hundred meters high. The expanse buzzes with noise. IonSaws, hammers, and the delicate thrum of seven ionScalpels on a lump of onyx twice my height.

“Out,” Augustus demands.

The Violets slide from their perches on the onyx and disperse with the Orange masons and Red laborers. Augustus’s bodyguards leave us as well. Our boots click against the floor, lonely sounds for such a room.

So he’s not going to kill me after all.

“They’re making you a throne,” I say, going to touch the onyx. I breathe out the tension. A lion’s paw takes shape near the base of the throne. To the left, its tail curls around the other side.

“You have broken the law, Darrow,” he says behind me. “You gave Obsidians razors. The weapon of our ancestors in the hands of the only Color to ever rise against us.”

“Is that all?” I ask in relief. “I did what I needed to do.”

“An Olympic Knight was killed by your bodyguard. This is public.”

“If Ragnar didn’t take the wall, we would have lost, and you, my liege, would be in chains, or executed. You’d know better than I. Ragnar had my warrant.”

“My father taught me it is weak to ask others what they think of you,” he says, clasping his hands behind his back. “But I must. Do you think I am a cold monster?”

I turn to examine him.

“Without a doubt.”

“Honesty.” He looks up at the ceiling. “You’d think it would echo differently than all the other horseshit. What I am, Darrow, is a necessity. I am the force that corrects those who err. Tell me, why do you give an Obsidian a razor? Why do you urge lowColors to rise up? Why do you let a Blue run your ship when she should merely take orders and fly it?”

“Because they can do things I cannot.”

He nods as if I’ve proven his point.

“And that is why I exist. I know that Blues can command fleets. I know Obsidians can use technology, lead men. That the quickest Orange could, if given a proper chance, be a fine pilot. Reds could be soldiers, or musicians, or accountants. Some few—very few—Silvers could write novels, I wager. But I know what it would cost us. Order is paramount to our survival.

“Humanity came out of hell, Darrow. Gold did not rise out of chance. We rose out of necessity. Out of chaos, born from a species that devoured its planet instead of investing in the future. Pleasure over all, damn the consequences. The brightest minds enslaved to an economy that demanded toys instead of space exploration or technologies that could revolutionize our race. They created robots, neutering the work ethic of mankind, creating generations of entitled locusts. Countries hoarded their resources, suspicious of one another. There grew to be twenty different factions with nuclear weapons. Twenty—each ruled by greed or zealotry.

“So when we conquered mankind, it wasn’t for greed. It wasn’t for glory. It was to save our race. It was to still the chaos, to create order, to sharpen mankind to one purpose—ensuring our future. The Colors are the spine of that aim. Allow the hierarchies to shift and the order begins to crumble. Mankind will not aspire to be great. Men will aspire to be great.”

“Golds aspire to be great, and we force the Colors to war,” I say, taking a perch on the black lion’s paw. Augustus has not moved from his place at the center of the floor.

“Yet there are men like me,” he replies so sincerely I nearly believe him. “I do not truly fight because I want to be king or Emperor or whatever word you slap above my name in the history texts. The universe does not notice us, Darrow. There is no supreme being waiting to end existence when the last man breathes his final breath. Man will end. That is the fact accepted, but never discussed. And the universe will continue without care.

“I will not let that happen, because I believe in man. I would have us continue forever. I would shepherd us out of the Solar System into alien ones. Seek new life. We are barely in our infancy as a species. But I would make man the immutable fixture in the universe, not just some passing bacteria that flashes and fades with no one to remember. That is why I know there is a proper way to live. Why I believe your young ideas so dangerous.”

His mind is vast. Worlds beyond my own. And perhaps for the first time, I really understand how this man can do what he does. There is no morality to him. No goodness. No evil intent when he killed Eo. He believes he is beyond morality. His aspirations are so grand that he has become inhuman in his desperate desire to preserve humanity. How strange to look at the rigid, cold figure he casts and know all these wild dreams burn inside his head and heart.

“What about all you said? What about the things you’ve done?” I ask, thinking of his first wife, whose mouth he stuffed with grapes. “You take advice from creatures like Pliny. You bomb innocent civilians, who haven’t broken any laws. You embrace a civil war … and you say you’re trying to save humanity?”

“I do what I need to do to protect the greater good.”

To defend himself. To benefit himself. “To protect mankind,” I echo.

“Yes.”

“Eighteen billion draw breath across this empire. How many would you kill to protect mankind? A billion? Ten?”

“The number doesn’t change the necessity.”

“Fifteen billion?” I ask. Red, Gold, every part of me is shocked.

“Someone must make these choices,” he says. “The rest of our race grows sicker by the day. The Pixies chase pleasure instead of achievement, while the Peerless have grown so hungry for power that our Sovereign is a woman who cut off the head of her own father in order to take his throne. They must be ruled.”

“By you.”

“By us.” His unblinking gaze does not waver. “By us,” he repeats. “I treated you poorly, because I feared your brashness, your impudence. But I promised I would make amends, and so I will, because you have shown the capacity for growth, for learning. Become my heir. Not my Praetor. I have enough lords of war. What I need … what I want is a son.”

“You have a son.”

“I have a parasite that wants my power. That’s all. He has no use for it. No plan once he gains it. He simply hungers as our Society has taught him to hunger.” His face shows a flicker of intrigue. “Yet, remarkably, this was his idea. You have his blessing.”

I don’t doubt I have his blessing. Knowing my ally, I merely wonder what it’s going to cost me. He’s a businessman. He’ll want return on his investment. Especially this investment. He should have told me.

“What about Virginia? You don’t need your heir to be male.”

“But I want it to be. And I want you for her. A husband fitting her mind.”

“You’re using me,” I say suddenly, seeing through his scheme. “I tie her to you. Especially if we marry. We both know you don’t want reform.”

Even now Reformers from across the Society flock to Mars to rally behind the man who said he would give them the Senate when he defeats Lune and her allies.

“The Reformers are cancer,” he says.

“But you’re promising them that you will—”

“Promises were necessary to gain their support. When we have defeated Octavia, I will put the Reformers in prison, or execute them for treason.”