Evenjos looked at the heroes of this era; all men whom she had begun to love. Thomas. Ariock. And especially Garrett.

She wanted their respect. She wanted to keep her secret shame well hidden.

“What’s your secret, Evenjos?” Ariock asked.

Evenjos smoothed a lock of her purple curly hair over her shoulder. She wanted to do her part in defeating the death cultists who were remnants of the Torth Empire. If she was going to set things right in the universe and make true reparations for all the wrongs she had caused, then she needed to learn the final prophecies of Ah Jun. That meant honoring the pact she had made here.

Some things were more important than her pride.

“I am directly responsible for the rise of the Torth Empire.” Evenjos hung her head, unwilling to meet their gazes. “I never told you.”

She had their attention.

“I made myself sound like a hapless empress who got caught off guard by events beyond my control,” Evenjos confessed. “But that was not the case. I was close—very close—to the man who was directly below Audavian in the House of Telepathy. I was there for everything he did.”

She felt the sharpness of Garrett’s focus.

Garrett would never be so rude as to probe. He was as gallant as anyone from this era could be. But he was also a third magnitude telepath, and he’d spent enough time with Evenjos to suspect her secret. He probably couldn’t wait to hear the sordid details.

“My lover’s name was Elome.” It felt strange to utter that name out loud after so many millenniums. Evenjos wished she could ensure that Elome was forgotten forever. Instead, here she was, talking about him. It was like bringing a piece of him back to life.

“Elome was a third magnitude telepath,” Evenjos explained. “Except he was actually fourth magnitude. He kept that fact hidden. He wore a third magnitude sigil, which tricked everyone into believing that was his limit. He fooled me into believing it.”

“Fourth magnitude telepathy?” Ariock was clearly struggling with the archaic terminology. “Is that mind twisting?”

“It is brainwashing,” Evenjos corrected. “Light mind twisting.”

“So you were a victim,” Garrett said.

How kind. Garrett laid out an easy route for Evenjos to escape blame.

Evenjos shook her head. “I could tell truth from lies.” Sorrow weighed heavily inside her, until her default body felt ready to spill apart into rivulets of water. “I should have easily sensed what Elome was doing to my mind. Instead, I was blinded by the glow of treasures and merriment.”

Ariock looked embarrassed on her behalf.

“I was the most powerful person of my era,” Evenjos said. “I could have sent Elome away with a word. That was my responsibility.”

Garrett went to Evenjos and hooked an arm around her winged shoulders. She nearly flinched away, expecting a mind probe.

But he only held her. His proximity was a warm comfort. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

Except it obviously was.

“It sounds like Elome tricked everyone around you,” Thomas said. “Not just you. He must have manipulated everyone in your royal court.”

“I suppose so.” Evenjos had not given a thought to Elome’s lesser victims, although she doubted that Elome would have brainwashed every chambermaid in the palace. He would have only altered the memories of a few key people, to keep them from reporting his secret communications.

“Plus,” Thomas said, “Elome was acting on the directives of Audavian, who was, in turn, following advice from Unyat. In some ways, you were a victim of a victim.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“That does not excuse my role in what happened.” Evenjos folded her wings closer around her body, wanting to hide from Garrett’s sympathetic gaze. She understood that Thomas and Garrett were trying to downplay her role, to make her less guilty. They were good friends. But leaders should not be excused for egregious mistakes.

As the goddess-empress of her planet, she could not claim ignorance or helplessness. She could not be forgiven.

“I was their pawn.” Evenjos closed her eyes, and forced herself to confess the most humiliating parts. “Elome was my consort. He slept in my bedchamber. I was with him for fifty years, with all the happiness you can expect from a pairing that lasted that long.”

Was it her imagination, or did Garrett deflate?

She had not expected the old man to be capable of jealousy. He claimed that he had no room in his heart for love. He was fond of her, and that was all.

“Elome used my power,” Evenjos confessed. “When he linked with me—and linking is consensual, that is the nature of how it works—he boosted himself to fourth magnitude. He must have been trained by Audavian in the illegal arts. So he whispered in my ear, and he changed my mind. And I…” She had to catch her breath, she was so ashamed. “I let him.”

“No you didn’t,” Garrett said firmly.

“I don’t think so.” Ariock sounded less certain. He must realize that in the same situation, he would also blame himself.

That was correct behavior. The strongest person in any partnership dynamic should always be the one to shoulder all the responsibility. Ariock understood that.

“May I?” Thomas stood, hesitant.

Clearly, he wanted permission to absorb her long-dead past. Perhaps he would spy on her intimate fun times with Elome. Perhaps he would look further back and find her other shame; her commoner lover.

But why not?

There was nothing left to hide. Evenjos doubted that her lesser secrets mattered, now that her friends knew what a self-absorbed tool she had been.

She nodded.

Thomas stepped into Evenjos’s range and sat next to her.

He was quiet for a few moments. His eyes were active, though. Evenjos could feel him rooting through her entire life. He was learning three hundred years worth of royal meetings, banquets and balls, press conferences, alien dignitaries, Yeresunsa councils, and everything she had done in private to amuse herself.

Garrett looked alarmed. “Is this really a good idea?” He raised an arm, and Evenjos knew that he would use his powers to seize Thomas and drag him away.

“I’m done.” Thomas held up his hands in a warding off gesture. “You are not to blame.” He clasped Evenjos’s arm. “Elome would have fooled most people. He did, in fact, fool everyone you knew. I think you missed a few clues, but they were minor and easy to overlook. Most people would have done exactly the same things you did.”

If anyone else had tried to assuage her guilt with such claims, Evenjos would have dismissed them. But coming from Thomas the truth-teller? Her vision blurred with tears of relief and gratitude.

She had to get a hold of her emotions. Otherwise she might literally fall to pieces and become a puddle on the floor of the courtyard.

“Your people would have been doomed even if you had figured out Elome,” Thomas said. “And in a worse way. Audavian would have had you assassinated so he could install a more obedient puppet emperor on the Crystal Throne.”

Evenjos supposed that made sense.

“The great war between Torth and Yeresunsa would have happened sooner,” Thomas went on. “And the predecessors of the Alashani would have had less time to prepare for life underground. The Alashani might never have existed, if you had accused Elome and forced a reckoning. That means Garrett would never have been born, and Ariock and I would never have existed.”

Evenjos gaped. None of those second order effects had occurred to her.

“You’ve been blaming yourself way too much,” Thomas said. “For years.”

Not just years. Millenniums.

A new revelation hit Evenjos with the weight of concrete. She had been so used to being alone at the pinnacle of every major decision, she had simply become unable to accept being a hapless pawn. Victimhood was unnatural to her. So she had rejected it as impossible. No matter what anyone else said, no matter what her own instincts said, she had decided that she was not a victim.

But Thomas saw the truth. He cut straight through her self-delusion.

Evenjos leaned against his narrow chest and sobbed.

Thomas put his arms around her, emanating a mixture of embarrassed sympathy and awkward teenage mortification. “It wasn’t your fault.” He patted her winged back.

Garrett sat on her other side. “It was never your fault.”

“In fact,” Thomas said, “your love for Elome might have planted the seeds for the downfall of the Torth Empire. Elome was the epitome of a closeted rogue agent. He probably loved you, in secret. And his secret emotions was likely an inspiration for later Servants of All, who had their secret cabal. That culture of deep secrecy planted mistrust among mind readers. It laid the fault lines for a fractured Megacosm.”

Thomas forgave her.

They all did.

Elome, Audavian, and Unyat had unleashed havoc upon the galaxy. They had ushered in a dark age that led to countless deaths and widespread slavery. But maybe Evenjos was not to blame at all. She had been a fool, deafened by laughter, yet she had also been an innocent person of her era. Everyone in her court had been just as misled.

Garrett held his arms open, and there was love there. Not mere fondness. Garrett accepted her, including her strengths, her flaws, even her hidden weaknesses.

Evenjos pulled away from Thomas to lean into Garrett’s less awkward and stronger embrace. His scent was comfort. His warmth was all that she had lost, given back to her.

Ariock enfolded all three of them in a huge hug.

That was silly enough to make Evenjos laugh. Soon Garrett and Ariock, and then even Thomas, were laughing as well.