Celindria was alone.

Solitude had wormed its way in again and burrowed into the aching chasm of her little-used heart.

How can we be millions of people at once and feel so alone?

Because we condemned ourselves to this carousel for a dream, lost in a vacuum.

So few voices now. So few Probabilities.

What to do? What. To. Do?

The prospects Nox had offered included a relationship with him and Xelan’s guaranteed assistance to retrieve Celindria’s Pax and Hope.

Or.

Celindria could wring Rayne dry and put the girl’s incredible blood to practical use by overthrowing the Progeny and claiming Iona Pax for herself.

Was there a third option?

Absent of fear, the loneliness called. Celindria opened the door and peeked into the most cherished Probability.

Cinder.

Nox’s Castle.

The pyre in his chambers blazed, and Nox held Celindria close in his sleep. In the next suite, their great grandchildren slept, healthy and happy under Li’s stalwart protection.

A voice, one long suppressed, whispered in Celindria’s ear.

I feel. Nox’s kiss. The children’s warm hugs. You feel it and fear it. Fear we could be happy and fear we can feel at all—

“No!” Celindria returned to the dominant reality with a shriek.

Fear. Yes, she felt it now.

All of Celindria’s emotions had trickled from one. The Probability she dared not linger within. There, she was only a woman—Nox’s woman. But anywhere else, Celindria was a goddess, forged in the Source.

Power?

Or love?

Why not both?

Celindria hugged her shoulders and rocked, muttering, “Why not both…”

Perhaps she’d went too long within the maddening confines of the Oblivion Cathedral. Out there, Celindria’s vessels waited. Iuo’s premiere of Rayne’s Verse would serve as the perfect diversion for her plan, assuming she wouldn’t take Nox up on his offer.

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Now, the Shadow knew Celindria was enforcing volition control. Why did she not kill Cinderken? Because if Celindria chose the rehabilitation deal Nox had offered her, father would be less inclined to believe Celindria was seeking reform if she’d killed someone in front of him.

Which will we choose? Love?

Or Power?

Celindria held up her palm and formed a golden pellet, like the one she had shot at Nox during the battle referred to as Volcano Day. It spun in her hand until she flattened it into a coin. Her face was on one side, and her lover’s face was on the other. Andrew, the Progeny known as Conscience, came by this technique of manipulating the Matrix naturally. Celindria learned it after a millennium of practice.

She flipped it high in the air until it came back down and landed.

On its side.

Ambivalent, Celindria stared at the tattered blue ribbon in her palm. It whipped about in the Oblivion Cathedral’s howling void. Unfeeling, she closed her fist over it and decided.

Both.

Celindria awakened inside her soldiers and scanned her inventory. Three hundred of them were conduit operators for the empire, all former Divine Booth addicts. Agreeable for her; unfortunate for them. She kept them at their jobs, where they stood sentinel in their glass shrines and ports throughout Ishkur and the worlds. Within their mindscapes, they laid prone and groaned in misery, so unaware of their prominence in New Paradise. In the work of a moment, Celindria pre-programmed commands for their next shift and left them on autopilot.

Onto the next.

Three hundred thousand Caprents who Celindria had vaccinated millennia ago joined her ranks today. All this time, her nanites sang in their veins. Two of them worked as transport specialists. They were digital cartographers for the Overseers within Ishkur. She would need them for the next phase of her plans.

“Please… let me go…” A female begged on her backward-bent knees inside her mind.

Celindria kept her back to the female while saying, “One day, you will see this for the gift it is, rather than the punishment you fear it to be.”

With this female standing inside one of Ishkur’s glass operating center, Celindria could see Torrentus, terraforming a continent near Cinder II. It swirled in its awesome hurricane of components, breathing life into the barren land. Vast and thick with atmospheric gases, the continent was perfect for F8’s people. Monarch 4.

Can we manipulate it from here? Can we poison it?

No. Leave it for when we take Iona Pax for ourselves. F8 will thank us and be our friend again.

Celindria left instructions for the cartographers to change course for all Overseers. At the opportune moment, of course.

Already, new Probabilities formed from her actions, branching into new universes for Celindria to explore. This was working according to plan.

Now to set the stage.

With the ribbon in hand, Celindria shadow-walked to one of the recent Probabilities. She traversed the treacherous path out of the Oblivion Cathedral and to the front of the mountain, surrounded by a cyclone of Cascading Light. In the eye of Thailea’s storm, she gazed up to the sky and basked in the magnificence of the ice rings colored in every shade of blood. A rainbow arcing directly above.

It invoked optimism, a fleeting emotion Celindria cherished. She clung to it and took the first nearby conduit.

Reipon.

Utilizing Lamias under her control in high places, Celindria traveled to Ishkur undetected. Once there, she chose the optimum location in the Palatial Grounds, the location of the premiere. It was near a secret alcove hidden within a ring of waterfalls where Celindria set the ribbon down.

Static crept along Celindria’s deep skin, drawing goosebumps and frizzing her hair. Tension rode the air, and the anticipation threatened to steal her breath, pulling taut in her bones until…

Lightning struck the ribbon and split reality open into the Seam.

Into Thailea.

Love.

Power.

Celindria would have both.