My mother’s words came to me as I remembered her telling me about my Perception Dome-ni.

It is the ability to expand your awareness so you can comprehend and see connections that ordinarily allude others… It can even be used to orchestrate a series of events in order to get people or a person to a certain outcome.

It had been so great to make a connection with the my birth father yesterday, and even this morning. He had seemed almost understanding, and had gone to a lot of effort to understand me. But what if it had all been exactly what I wanted to hear?

I grunted. I took a moment to survey the man sitting across from me. I even tried to reach out to any emotions he might have, but I got nothing. I definitely remembered picking some up from him yesterday, and even this morning at breakfast. But right now, he seemed empty.

A thought occurred to me. Was he blocking me? I probed again. This time I realized it wasn’t exactly an empty feeling I was getting. More like an invisible wall that was keeping me from reaching what was there. He was blocking me. A cold tingling sensation zipped down my spine.

I’m not sure what I was the most surprised at. That I had actually tried to use my Empathic Dome-ni on purpose, instead of just being a victim of it, or that I was almost hundred percent sure that I was being actively blocked by the Emperor. I needed confirmation, so I tried a tactic my dad had sometimes used often enough on me growing up when he suspected I had done something, but I wasn’t coming clean about it—by confronting me with the brutal truth.

“You know. At first, I really believed we were connecting and that you were trying to get to know me for who I was, but that wasn’t it at all. You were just trying to manipulate me to do what you wanted me to do. That’s been your whole game plan from the very beginning, hasn’t it?”

I paused a moment to see if he would deny it. He didn’t. He just sat there with that cold look like it was beneath him to even acknowledge I had even spoken. That caused my anger to snap back as brilliant and fiery as in the garden. I slammed my glass on the stone table between us. I was surprised it didn’t break with the force. I certainly felt like something was breaking inside of me.

“Why couldn’t you just leave me alone? Why can’t you let me go back to my old life? I don’t belong here. I probably won’t even be any good to you, not in the way you are wanting. And quite frankly, I’m pissed at you for forcing me to come here out of fear you will hurt my dad. He’s a good man, and all he’s ever done is protect me. You should be thanking him for keeping me safe, not trying to kill him!”

By this time, I was on my feet and my chest heaved with emotion. And I had got nothing but a calculating look from the other man.

“So this is about Aragon, then,” the Emperor said in a matter of fact voice.

It was like he had thrown jet fuel on the scolding hot fire with in me. How could he just sit there? How could he just be so cold and aloof?

“That’s all you have to say? You aren’t even going to deny what you’ve done? But you don’t really care, do you? You don’t care that you ripped me from my home, and everything I’d ever known. You don’t care that I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. You were just acting out to retrieve something that was stolen from you like some child trying to get back what was his.

“Well, I’m not an object to be possessed. I’m not even a child anymore. I’m a person. A full grown adult. I do get to have a say in my life, in what I do and where I go. And if you wanted my help, then you should have asked, not just assumed I was going to do it. And definitely not threatened me to make it happen.”

I stood there for a moment after all I had said, realizing how badly I need to get it all out. For too long I had gone along with things out of fear, terrified that the wrong word or action would cause Vang to go back for my dad, and most likely my mom. But it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that dad would have never wanted me to do that, not even for him, and neither would my mom.

“From what I understand, you left willingly enough,” the Emperor replied smoothly from his still seated position.

I blinked at him in disbelief for a long moment before it it really began to sink in. The Emperor didn’t care what I had to say, or cared about what I wanted. He had his own agenda, and that was the only thing that mattered.

My heart sank as I dropped back down on the chair I had vacated in my anger. It was still there, but I felt numb to it as a surge of despair consumed me.

“You know why I left. It was pretty clear what the consequences would be if I didn’t. If given the choice, I would have stayed.”

“And that, wherein lies the problem,” the Emperor said.

I nodded absently. And there it was. The truth I hadn’t been wanting to see, because I had been too busy with my own expectations of how I wanted things to go or at least hoping they would. Part of me had really thought that the way I’d been brought back to Ethia, and even the threat against my dad was all Vang. I could accept it as Vang just being a hard ass. That was who he was after all.

I think deep down I had hoped that once I came face to face with my birth father that he would be much more understanding or at least have some sort of empathy toward me and what he was asking me to do. That maybe I could reason with him.

But I realized how ridiculous that had been. I had been warned after all. By both my parents, and even Vang. But I didn’t want to listen.

“And you suspected that might be a problem from the very beginning. After all, my dad had years with me, to turn me against you. You said that yourself. So you made sure that Vang knew to do whatever was necessary to get my cooperation, and that’s the real reason he didn’t go back to Earth for my dad, even when he had the chance.”

The Emperor’s stone blue eyes felt heavy and cold, and expectant. Almost like he had been waiting for me along to figure it out, and found me a disappointment that I had taken so long. I almost snorted as my birth father’s strategy became clear.

He had been using the classic good cop, bad cop routine on me. And why not? Vang, was the perfect bad cop. Hell, he was literally born for that job with his Coercion Dome-ni.

Then, the Emperor expertly lead the conversations in our face to face meeting yesterday and this morning to make it seem like we were building a connection, even making it seem like he cared. He even threw in the irresistible carrot of an unsolvable problem, knowing it would reel me in hook, line, and sinker.

Damn.

I felt like such an idiot.

This was the Perception Dome-ni in action.

I meet the Emperor’s stony gaze, and saw the calculating and knowing look there.

“I see you are finally getting a glimpse of the true power of our abilities. That’s a good start.”

I shook my head. “If this is what it means to use my talent, then maybe I don’t want anything to do with it.”

The Emperor gave one of his half smiles. “Don’t be so dramatic, Adar. I assure you, there are many ways Perception can be used. And a Master makes sure to know them all, and most especially, when to use them.”

“Even if it alienates the people you use them on?”

“There are more important things than coddling peoples’ feelings. An entire Empire, in fact. And if you had been raised in Ethia you would have a much better appreciation of that. Leaders many times have to put their personal feelings aside in the interest of doing their duty.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Well, my brothers were raised here and they seemed to have a hard time with that lesson too,” I scoffed.

The Emperor didn’t have an immediate come back for that one. So we both sat there glaring at each other. The silence in the room growing heavier with each second that ticked by. Finally, he spoke up, but I could hear the tinge of frustration coloring his voice. I felt a little smug at finally getting an emotional reaction out of him.

“It is a shame that you seem to detest me and your new situation so much. I truly was hoping we could resolve this in a peaceable matter. In spite of that you think, I am not the enemy here, but it’s clear to me that Aragon’s influence on you has had a larger hold on you than I originally thought.”

I scoffed. “Well, you should be happy to know you finally got your revenge on him.”

For the first time, I saw a look of puzzlement on the Emperor’s face. “What do you mean?”

I felt a stinging in the corner of my eyes and the room around me began to blur. I wasn’t sure I could say it, to say the thing that made me want to rip everything apart, to fight through twenty more of those guards, and to scream at the injustice of it all.

“I had a conversation with Master Kiev. I told him about something that had happened to my dad just before I left Earth. He said…” I faltered for a moment before I could continue. “He said my dad was trapped in something called the living death. So I came here and did all of this for nothing.”

I waited to see the smile of satisfaction on the Emperor’s face, but it didn’t come. He still sat there clearly determined not to give me any more emotions to read, even one of victory. But I didn’t need to see it. I just knew he was getting satisfaction on learning his enemy had been severely compromised.

“I see,” the Emperor finally replied. “And you think that because he’s incapacitated that means your reason to be here is gone.”

I didn’t say anything, but yeah, I was thinking it. A big fat yes. Granted, I knew there were others on Earth he could go after, especially my mom. The Emperor knew she was still very much alive. She had been right beside me in most of those photos I had seen of Earth yesterday. And my heart shuttered to think I had just put a target on her back.

Maybe there had always been one there, but with dad out of the way, she would rise up to become enemy number one. I suddenly felt like a bumbling fool. I should have never come here. Instead, I had let my anger get the best of me, and now here I was, waiting for the threat I knew was coming.

“The universe knows I have tried my best to reason with you, Adar. And yes, I even went out of my way to try to connect with you. Maybe it did serve a purpose, but my desire to connect with you was genuine. Most of the time, I don’t bother. But I was willing to make an exception with you because I know that sort of thing matters to you. That much I have definitely been able to learn.

“But I have also learned something else important about you, and it’s that you care about all the wrong things. You care enough to check yourself and be more mindful of your words and actions. So since you keep on insisting that you don’t belong here or that you should not be walking the path that is your birthright, then I’m going to do whatever is necessary to see that you do your duty to the Empire.

“I also want to assure you, Adar, that what I’m about to do brings me no pleasure. This is me doing my duty to the Empire. I hope that you will be able to see that one day.”

The Emperor stood up and walked across the room to a smaller desk like the one I had seen in his office yesterday. He picked up something sitting on the top and came back to sit down across from me again. He then pushed a button and a hologram rose across the top of the short round table in between us. It was a picture of a very familiar planet. It hung in the air between us, slowly rotating.

“The planet you call Earth, I believe. The only planet in that system that is currently hosting life. It’s still in its pre-interstellar evolution. So in technology terms quite primitive. It’s doesn’t even have an effective world shield, so it would take only three mark 12’s placed at certain vectors to eliminate most of the native life in a matter of moments.”

Three points of red lit up in strategic locations around the rotating planet. They blinked for a moment, and then the lights plunged down through the atmosphere. Each of the red marks quickly reached their targets. There was a short pause before all three exploded. Each one engulfing only a small portion of the planet, but it was the aftershocks that did the most damage. I watched in disbelief as massive ripples embraced the planet. By the time the disturbances died down, the entire surface was seared to a crisp.

After a few rotations showing the lifeless planet, the hologram blinked out of existence, leaving the room a little darker and far more quiet than it had been since I first stepped into it.

“Just so you know, Admiral Vang was shrewd enough to leave three dormant mark 12’s nestled in the dark side of the moon orbiting the planet you seem to love so much. He’s a planner like that. All it would take is a short burst from his unity ring to wake them up.”

It was like all the air had been sucked right out of the room. I couldn’t breathe, and for a moment, I couldn’t even think. All I could see in my mind’s eye was the lifeless surface of the planet I had grown up on.

“You can’t be serious,” I heard myself rasp out.

But he was. I could see it, the hard determination in his eyes. It would mean nothing to him to kill that planet. Or maybe it would. Maybe he would get the satisfaction knowing my parents were gone and would never trouble him again. The fact that he caused the genocide of an entire planet to get that satisfaction not even something to be concerned about. It was a tool to keep me inline and if I acted out––well, then he would finally be able to get the revenge he’d been waiting so long for.

“Oh, I am quite serious. I assure you, this isn’t some trick, some bluff. I would have much rather resolved our issues peacefully, and you would have never been the wiser of this particular plan, but Ko-tus assumed, quite correctly I might add, that you might need some extra convincing to do your duty to the Empire. It didn’t have to get this distasteful. You only have yourself to blame.”

I snorted. Like hell! But considering what I had just witnessed, I thought it better to keep my thoughts to myself. It was becoming clear to me how absolutely outmatched I was. It left me feeling overwhelmed and completely at a lost as to what to say or do. How was I supposed to deal with something like this?

It made me wonder what dad would do. I stopped short. Actually, I did know what dad would do. He had already done it. At some point, he had realized the enormity of what he was up against and choose to run away to another galaxy, not an easy thing for a man like my dad to do. But he had put my safety over his pride, showing me in yet another way how much he cared for me.

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place as I realized there was a second reason I had been shadowed by guards almost since the time Vang picked me up. They were afraid I might run too. That I would follow in Aragon’s footsteps. And maybe that was the biggest reason for such an over the top response like bombing a planet to oblivion. They were desperate to keep me here.

“Why is it do damn important that I be here?” I spat out.

The Emperor sighed like he was finally starting to loose patience with me. “I already explained that to you. I need you, Adar. You are my last hope of having a successful Heir, and I really do need your help with a certain problem.”

I worked my jaw back and forth, trying to come up with something to say that would convince the Emperor he was wrong. I wasn’t his last hope. He had three other sons. They weren’t dead, which meant he could talk to them, get them to come around. But then if he acted with them the way he acted with me, maybe he had pushed them too far too. I suddenly felt sorry for them. At least I had had a chance to grow up away from all this, away from him. They never had that luxury.

It also made me wonder. What if the problem of finding a proper Heir wasn’t really my brothers fault? Maybe the problem had always been the Emperor himself. I decided to keep that conclusion to myself. I was sure he didn’t want to hear that, and I wasn’t sure how much I could push before he decided to call up Vang and tell him to send those bombs down to Earth.

“I think we’ve settled things then,” the Emperor said as he stood up. He picked up both of the glasses and set them back on top of the counter where he had gotten them from. He then turned back to me. “You can go back to your room, take some time to cool off and get your head straight. You will resume your lessons with Dur-rele tomorrow as scheduled.”

I simply nodded my head. What else could I do?

“I can’t hear a nod,” the Emperor’s tone was hard for the first time since I stepped into the room.

“Yes, father.”

The Emperor nodded to me. “Good. And Adar, some helpful advice. Next time you want to make a point, make sure you can back it up. Also, I won’t be at breakfast tomorrow. I have business to take care of. I will have a meal delivered to your room. Dur-rele will come collect you when it’s time to begin your lesson.”

“Yes, father,” I replied.

I made for the exit. He didn’t say anything else as I left, which was good because I wasn’t sure I had anything left in me. I felt numb from my head all the way to my toes.

The anger was still there, but in the last few minutes it had changed. The burning emotion still pulsed just underneath my skin, but it felt darker and deeper than anything I had ever felt before. It was like it had seeped into my very essence and had become apart of me in a way I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. But there were a lot of things coming up that I was uncomfortable with since arriving in Ethia.

All I had wanted was to set things right. To make things right for my dad. To let it be known how I felt about all of this. To find a way for this craziness to make sense. But instead, things had gone completely sideways in a way I hadn’t expect. Or could have even imagined.

I marched through the White Palace in a cold fury, making my way back to my room and the future I had absolutely no say about whatsoever. Because the Emperor had made it very clear what he wanted and how far he would go to get it.