Page 52 of Seasons of War
With that, the Phaedra swung the door open so the light from the hall cut a rectangle into the darkness. He flipped a switch.
Stars and swirls of purple and red and pink lit the dome over their head in a replica of deep space.
The Phaedra lay down on his back. “Don’t stand there with your mouth hanging open. Shut the door.”
How did Zayne not know this room existed?
He sought out the constellations he looked for in the territories. “It’s incredible,” he said. “It’s always been here?” There were so many sections of the tower unknown to even the Phaedra’s inner circle.
“Spend a few days in here, and you’ll fix your vision problem.” With the click of a remote, a laser appeared on the dome, and the Phaedra maneuvered it over a speck of light. “There we are. Our galaxy.” Another click and the sun flaredbeneath the Phaedra, red and sparking with energy. “It’s as close to scale as we can accommodate, but we're still larger here than in reality. You see our planet?”
It looked like flakes of dust orbited the sun instead of planets.
Another click. A blown-up image of the Earth spread under his feet.
“Us. Look at our great Empire.”
Zayne knelt, running his finger over the Great Phaedran Range, to the flat of the Ruins where the Old World lay preserved beneath sand, on to the plains of Antor, and over the ridge of the Apalachee Mountains in the east.
Over the years, when he'd managed to sneak a secret trip to the Ruins, he’d hunted for Old World histories and maps. The towering mountain ridge that rose like a wall of protection between Ciondo and the rest of the empire had once been called the Rocky Mountains, but such knowledge was forbidden now, as if the empire were eternal, and had always been named after the Phaedras. Zayne wondered if rulers ever realized the mountains and the rest of the Earth existed before them—bore different names through the rise and fall of empires—and would outlast their reign. Their power.
“We’re specks,” Zayne said. It was the Phaedra who was a speck, no matter how powerful he felt.
“We're less than specks,” the Phaedra said. “Centuries of the Phaedras ruling like pharaohs and raising a dead continent back to life—all that greatness and still we're so small. So human.”
Ciondian schools taught little history of the Old World, but children did grow up learning anything that pushed the myth of a god-like Phaedra. They took so much inspiration from the Pharaohs, but the Followers, who passed on histories of their own, salvaged some of the forbidden knowledge from before the Collapse. At some point hundreds of years ago, they began calling the emperor of Ciondo 'Phaedra' because of the ruler's unquenchable lust for power. That was Zayne's favorite historical fact: that some emperor long ago did not understand the insult of his nickname, and now permanently bestowed this name upon all the emperors to follow him.
Their current Phaedra knew this history, but he said he rather liked Greek mythology and found the powerful feminine energy of Phaedra in those ancient stories to be misunderstood.
“This all keeps moving without us. God has the universe, but we only have this. Who would care if it blinked out?” The Phaedra's jaw clenched and unclenchedin the red light of the sun. “If we can’t make the tough calls, our light will vanish and the rest will continue without us. Forever.”
Kira’s eyes flashed.
Tough calls.
The Phaedra’s voice swelled in his mind, strangling his own thoughts.
“Our history is made from the broken glass of collapse,” the Phaedra said. “The world could end for good this time. The Old Ones abandoned us all to die here. But we survived. The lineage of the Phaedras bears the fruit of that survival.”
After growing up with the Phaedra's rhetoric, Zayne still forgot not to listen too closely. This was how the Phaedra overpowered him in a conversation.
“If we blink out, who’d care? The Neanderthals and Denisovans were human, but they’re gone.” The Phaedra laid his head against the floor beneath the universe of his own making, voice wilted with sorrow that sounded authentic, but Zayne knew was manufactured. “Our species is here, and theirs is not. That’s all that matters, isn’t it? That’s all the world remembers because mankind is the god of history.”
Kneeling, Zayne placed his hand over the earth. It fit perfectly against his palm. “It’s a miracle we’ve lasted this long.” He paused, considering what the Phaedra wanted to hear. “The Followers are a risk to our species. The Phaedras saved us from a damned world. That’s what you’re trying to tell me.”
The Phaedra stood up and reached out his hand to Zayne, glowing with the sun. “Our world needs a god to protect us, guide us, love us. I'll hold us all in my palm and lead us into perfection. I'll choose the best path, no matter the suffering.”
Zayne couldn’t look away. Jaw slackened, he didn’t feel in control of anything, even his body. His mind.
“Who can be the judge of God, Zayne? Who can know his suffering? Every God ever worshiped so loved his people that he slaughtered his own creation in floods and famine and plagues.” His voice lowered. “In mighty wars.”
Images of his dead soldiers blurred the Phaedra’s face. He was exhausted, living under surveillance and staying on guard without rest. Worst of all, decoding these convoluted conversations. The lingering effects of Dr. Cooper's drugs set him on edge.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Zayne said.
“More than you can see right now.”
The Phaedra took his face into his hands, tugging him close. He eased his cheek along Zayne’s until his mouth brushed his ear.
