Ariock half-wished that Vy was with him. Her presence was a comfort. But this was going to be a tense confrontation, and he didn’t want her in the middle of a heated argument between powerful Yeresunsa.

The courtyard atrium overlooked the ocean ports of the city. Garrett smoked a pipe, seated on a colonnade plinth and looking relaxed. Evenjos stood next to him, regal and radiant. They probably expected a simple update about the ongoing sabotage and dismantling of the death cult.

Ariock sat on a marble bench across from them, beyond their telepathy ranges. He didn’t have to wait long for Thomas. Without his hoverchair, dressed in ordinary street clothes and a sunhat, Thomas looked deceptively unremarkable. Just a teenage boy.

“All right, we’re all here,” Garrett said as Thomas sat on a plinth. “What’s the update?”

“Great-grandfather.” Ariock addressed the old man with cold formality. “I’ve been having a recurring dream. You told me to ignore it.”

Garrett raised a bushy eyebrow, inviting further explanation.

“But,” Ariock went on, “I’ve learned that my dreams are prophetic.”

Evenjos looked shocked. Garrett swore, but he didn’t seem entirely surprised. He used his staff to lever himself to his feet, shooting a narrow-eyed glare at Thomas that promised revenge.

“You knew?” Ariock did not conceal how much that hurt. His closest family member had not trusted him with the truth.

“Your dream is not a certainty,” Garrett said hurriedly. “The prophecies show us winning. We’re on the right path according to Ah Jun, and she was an oracle. Your dream is vague. It doesn’t really count as prophecy.”

Ariock wanted to believe that. He wanted to put his faith in the prophecies of Ah Jun and trust that everything would turn out all right.

But Ah Jun had died a thousand generations ago.

Had her prophecies even included Vy?

Thomas stared hard at Garrett. “Why don’t you show Ariock the book so he can confirm that for himself?”

Garrett’s stare become ferocious. “Certain knowledge is dangerous.”

Ariock tried to hold onto his good feeling. But who was Garrett trying to protect? His extremely overprotected great-grandson?

Garrett had devoted his entire life to shielding his heir. He had given Ariock a massive inheritance, plus all the protection that superpowers and a fortress could provide. He kept making sure that Ariock was safe and loved and cared for. Oh, and clueless. Garrett wanted his great-grandson to be painfully ignorant, so he could blindly stumble his way along the hero’s journey which Garrett had carefully plotted and laid out for his feet.

That much coddling led to backfires.

If Ariock had been allowed to forge his own path, then perhaps he wouldn’t fall to pieces whenever he met with disappointment. His mother might have entrusted him with hard facts, and treated him like a man—an adult—instead of a big, scary child. She would have told Ariock that she was dying from cancer. She would have told Ariock that he had foretold his father’s death.

His fiancee, too, would have shared her deepest fears with Ariock, instead of protecting him from his own overreactions.

Ariock was done being manipulated by a paternalistic mind reader. His deep voice was so strong, the ground trembled. “Show me the book.”

“It’s not worth seeing.” Garrett scrambled onto the marble plinth that supported the colonnade. That did not make him tall enough to meet Ariock at eye level, but he tried. “The future can be hard to face. Let me tell you something.”

Ariock prepared to override a pointless lecture.

“Not everyone can handle iffy news with courage and grace.” Garrett made a fist and thumped his chest. “I’m destined to die. Ah Jun painted my decapitation. That’s my future.”

Ariock winced at that unexpected confession. It was hard to believe. Garrett was so full of grit and vitality, he seemed eternal.

Evenjos gripped Garrett’s hand, her gaze filled with love.

And sorrowful resignation.

She knew.

Thomas, too, looked as if this was old news.

Ariock recalled offhand comments from other friends—Vy and even Kessa—implying that Garrett was destined to die. And he realized that everyone else had known.

Everyone except for him.

Maybe no one trusted Ariock. Or maybe they just didn’t want to share knowledge with their mentally slow sidekick? Maybe it was too much effort to elucidate to a non-telepath? Ariock supposed he should have tried telepathy gas more than once.

“I don’t know when it will happen,” Garrett was saying. “Or who will slice my head off. I have no idea.” He looked slightly harried, as if he half-expected someone in the atrium to do it. “But that ending is coming for me. I’ve had to make my peace with it. Now, do you think you could do the same?”

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Ariock thought carefully about his answer.

He could handle death in battle. That was what being a protector meant. He wasn’t as emotionally fragile as Garrett seemed to assume.

Apparently his thought process was too slow, because Garrett interrupted it. “Strength is strength. But strength isn’t wisdom. And it isn’t strength of will.”

His insult was plain.

“I’m not saying you’re a coward,” Garrett hastened to explain. “I’m talking about our roles. Ah Jun foresaw that you would be the embodiment of Strength. And I’m the embodiment of Will.” He thumped his chest. “I can handle anything if it ensures our victory. But you’re not me. You want to see the future? What if a glimpse of the prophecies sends you into a self-defeating spiral of self-hatred and despair?”

Ouch.

“Because that’s your pattern,” Garrett said.

The old man had a point. Ariock wanted to defend his own fortitude, but when he thought of Vy tumbling into outer space, soundlessly screaming, sucked towards oblivion faster than he could reach her…

That was a future he would reject no matter what.

Maybe he couldn’t handle hard truths if they were too painful? Maybe he did need to be kept ignorant for his own safety?

“In my experience,” Thomas said, “knowledge is always better than ignorance.”

Garrett glared at the teenage super-genius.

“And I have more lived experience than anyone else alive, except for Serette and Mondoyo,” Thomas said, underscoring the validity of his point. “No one should gate-keep knowledge. That’s what Torth do. That’s how the Death Architect operates.”

Garrett puffed up his chest, affronted. “I’m not the Death Architect.”

“You’re keeping us in the dark,” Thomas said. “Needlessly.”

“You want a roadmap of your next step?” Garrett smoked his pipe. “I can tell you the panel I saw. It’s Wisdom triumphing over Death with the three of us backing him up. Torth throughout the galaxy fall to their knees.”

Thomas looked thoughtful.

Not shaken, not shocked, but thoughtful. It seemed Thomas had already considered that implied future. He had the mental tools to figure it out. He just hadn’t bothered to talk it over or share it with the rest of them.

Then again, Evenjos didn’t look shocked either.

Garrett must have shared that future prediction with her. Vocal discussion was unnecessary for mind readers.

Only Ariock was excluded.

He was their sidekick, shielded from potent truths and important conversations, shepherded and manipulated. It seemed the mind readers discussed a lot of things before calling Ariock into certain meetings. They told him only as much raw truth as they thought he could handle.

“You see, this is the problem with loving a commoner.” Evenjos gave Ariock a condescending stare. “I warned you. Now you are obsessed with protecting the poor delicate girl.” She drew closer to Garrett, draping an arm over his shoulders, and gazing at Ariock with self-righteous judgment. “If anything will lead to disaster, it will be that.”

Whatever the future was, Evenjos probably knew it. Garrett must have told her.

And Thomas must suspect it.

All three of them had watched Ariock struggle with his recurring nightmare. They had let him suffer with uncertainty for months. They all knew or strongly suspected that Vy was fated to die, and they hadn’t spoken a word about it.

Not out loud, anyway.

Thomas had the excuse of a promise made to Delia Dovanack, but she was dead. He could have said something sooner. Instead, he had waited for an opportune moment to finally enlighten his supposed friend.

All three of these mind readers had absorbed Ariock’s greatest fear—losing Vy—yet even now, they still refused to tell him whether it was inevitable or not.

They all probably knew the answer.

But they didn’t really care about Vy. Not the way Ariock cared. They might want to save the universe, but Vy was expendable.

And they did not trust Ariock to handle that well.

They did not respect him.

At all.

Calmness came over Ariock. He didn’t feel outraged at all. He was tired of battles and fighting and war. He only wondered why he kept striving to win the respect of fellow heroes who secretly castigated him as a hopeless fool.

Why should he obey allies who did not trust him enough to let him make important decisions?

He wasn’t actually one of the four heroes. That was obvious.

Perhaps the whole story of the four heroes was just a lie designed to pacify him. Even though Ah Jun had depicted the Strength in paintings, he was barely a participant. He was always missing vital information. He was blindfolded and deafened and chronically ignorant. The true heroes were Wisdom, Will, and Transformation.

Ariock stood and walked away.

He didn’t belong among the people who made actual plans and actual decisions. He shouldn’t have been allowed to call a meeting in the first place.

“Don’t go!” Thomas sounded alarmed. “We need you. We can’t save the universe without you!”

“You are important,” Evenjos said.

“You’re the heart of our team,” Garrett called. “Ariock. Wait.”

A force field of hardened air appeared in front of Ariock, blocking his exit. That must be Garrett’s doing.

“We can come to an agreement,” Garrett said raggedly. “I’ll show you the next prophetic pivot. How about that? Just please don’t quit!”

How magnanimous.

“How about if you show us all the prophecies?” Thomas challenged Garrett.

Ariock turned around, aware that the problem wasn’t just Garrett. All three of the mind readers were secretive.

Ah Jun had painted them as equals with Strength, not his superior. The Prophet Migyatel had described them as his advisors. She had made it sound like they would become his support team. So perhaps prophets could be wrong.

Or maybe the future was not set in stone. Maybe people had to make certain things happen.

“I want to be an equal with the rest of you,” Ariock said.

They looked as if he was speaking gibberish.

Evenjos shook her head, at a loss. Garrett pretended to not have any idea what Ariock was talking about.

Thomas, at least, was honest. He looked guilty.

“No more secrets.” Ariock emphasized each word. “If you can’t trust me with facts? Then I’m not your equal. If you don’t respect me? Then it’s clear you don’t respect anyone who isn’t a mind reader.”

That truth seemed to hit home. They all began to look guilty.

“Either we work together as equals, or we don’t work together at all.” Ariock would quit a team that was built on lies and mistrust. “Evenjos?” He looked at her. “You lied to me, manipulated me, and tricked me, all because you thought you knew what was best for my love life. That proves what you really think of me.”

Evenjos could not deny it. She looked down in shame.

Ariock shifted his gaze to Garrett. “You’ve manipulated me for most of my life. And recently, you pretended that my deepest fear meant nothing. You lied to my face. You’ve been withholding a major and vital secret from me, apparently because you will never trust my judgment.”

Garrett looked ashamed.

“I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong,” Ariock admitted. “But if you don’t give me the chance to prove myself? Then you’ve ensured that I will never be someone worthy of trust.”

“I suppose you have a point,” Garrett mumbled.

Ariock wasn’t done. “I do not accept your judgment of me. You don’t get to decide who I am.” He turned to the teenage boy. “Thomas, I believe that you’ve never told a direct lie. But I’m not sure you relate well to anyone who isn’t a fellow super-genius.”

Thomas acknowledged that with a bold nod.

“Let’s trust each other.” Ariock gave them all a stern look. “Now. Either you trust me with the major secrets you’re hiding, or this ends. I need partners who get that I’m one of them.”