Chapter 26
The next morning, Ren leads me to a training deck on the far side of the residential wing.
I expect a waiting room or conference table – instead, the doors slide open into a chamber full of shifting grey walls and vibrating machinery.
The gravity plates adjust in a slow rhythm, enough to make the air feel alive under my boots.
Lord Castor is already inside.
He doesn’t greet me, doesn’t even look up.
He’s adjusting the configuration of a holographic maze that flickers above the central platform, its walls sliding and rearranging like it’s alive.
He taps a command on the console and the projection tightens into a narrower structure, the light sharpening at the edges.
I take two steps inside and the doors seal behind me.
“Come to give me a pep talk before the big day, Princess?” He smirks, entering codes into the console. “I’m already ready. Jupiter trains for speed,” he says, still without turning. “Strategy won’t mean shit if you can’t act before the maze closes in on you.”
The projection contracts again. A corridor vanishes, another dead end forms.
He finally looks at me. There’s no hostility in his expression – only measurement.
“Show me how quickly you move.”
Before I can respond, the floor panels shift. A low pulse runs through the chamber and the walls begin to reconfigure in slow mechanical sweeps. The simulation is active.
“Lord Castor.” I glance at the nearest panel as it rotates ninety degrees. “I’m not here to spar.”
“Didn’t ask you to fight. Asked you to move.”
He steps onto the platform and gestures for me to join him. I climb up and the maze projection expands, spreading across the air around us so every corridor floats in layered light. Up close, I can see the bruises from the first trial are starting to heal.
“The Fractured Mirror doesn’t reward patience,” he says. “It punishes it. Grinds it into dust and spits it back at you.”
The projection flashes and a timer ignites along the wall. Thirty seconds. I don’t know what it counts toward.
“Pick a path,” he says.
I study the maze, looking for a logical opening, trying to see how it sets up our entire team. Before I choose, two corridors dissolve into static.
“Too slow.”
He isn’t mocking me. He’s stating a fact.
I choose a route on the left. The projection acknowledges it with a faint glow. Lord Castor tracks my selection without comment and enters a counter-command. Three new obstacles appear instantly along that path.
“This is what the maze does,” he says. “Reacts. Destabilises. Forces you to commit before you’re ready.”
He taps the panel again and the obstacles multiply, a cascade of barriers that spreads too fast for me to anticipate.
“Stop thinking and choose the next turn.”
“I’m—I am choosing quickly, I just—”
“Then choose faster, for fuck’s sake.”
I point to a branching route with a narrow bend. Lord Castor adjusts the projection so the bend compresses even tighter, almost to nothing.
He circles me slowly as the maze rotates in the air. Each step is deliberate and smooth. He doesn’t fidget the way some commanders do. He keeps his weight forward, his attention everywhere at once, ready to move before anything else can.
“Jupiter soldiers learn to make decisions in half seconds,” he says. His voice is flat, instructional. “We drill it until it’s reflex. Until your body moves before your brain catches up.”
The maze flickers again and the entire left quadrant collapses, leaving only one route open. I reach for it and Lord Castor lifts a hand.
“This is the part you need to understand, Princess.”
He enters a manual override and the projection freezes. Then, with a slow gesture, he draws a line through the space between two corridors, a clean arc of light that hovers in the air between us. He traces it with the same control he uses in combat drills.
“I lost a squad because I hesitated.” His voice doesn’t change. No emotion bleeds through. “Ash fields, first ever deployment. Snipers in every direction … and I had a shot. A clean angle. But I wanted confirmation – wanted someone to tell me I was right.”
He marks another small point in the air. “That pause cost my team their lives. Seven soldiers bled out in that canyon while I waited for command to give me permission to do what I already knew I had to do.”
There’s no break in his voice, no pain that slips through. He delivers it like coordinates, tactical data that needs to be understood.
“That’s why Jupiter doctrine is what it is.” He dismisses the projection with a sharp gesture. “If your leader falters, you take command. If the team slows, you force the pace. If a choice needs making, you make it and accept whatever comes after.”
He steps closer, his hazel eyes locked on mine. “So, here’s the deal. If you falter in the Mirror tomorrow, I take command. No debate. No hesitation. I move and you follow.”
I hold his gaze. He expects resistance – expects pride or fear or both.
“Fine,” I say. “But while I lead, you don’t undermine me. You don’t split the team to pursue your own strategy. You don’t set your own pace and leave the others behind.”
He stops moving. For the first time since I walked in, he goes completely still.
The machinery continues its steady hum around us. The maze shifts through new configurations. The gravity plates adjust again, a subtle change in pressure under my feet.
Lord Castor studies me with focus that feels sharpened, assessing.
“Deal,” he says.
He steps off the platform and starts toward the exit. I watch as he stops suddenly just before the door.
“I reacted before I could think in the first trial.” His voice is low, his head bowed slightly as he faces away from me. “I didn’t intend to hurt Zevran. Perhaps that was a moment where hesitation could have helped.” Then he moves through the door without looking back.
I understand Lord Castor now. Not personally, not deeply, but enough.
Tomorrow, when we enter that maze, hesitation could cost us everything.
I just have to lead quickly enough that he doesn’t have time to doubt me.
One down. Two to go.
Ren walks me to the Neptune wing carved into the side of the arena complex.
The corridor narrows as we descend, the architecture shifting from the functional pragmatism of the main arena to a more organic material.
Walls curve like the interior of a shell, smooth and cool to the touch.
The lights grow dimmer the farther we go, shifting from steady white to soft teal, then to a deep blue that feels like the inside of a quiet ocean cave.
The air changes too – humid and warm, carrying the faint scent of salt.
Two Neptune aides, both clad in deep blue robes, lead us to a room down one of the halls.
When the doors open, Lady Nerida stands barefoot on the tiled floor of a circular chamber.
The room is filled with a pool that stretches wall to wall, the surface perfectly still like glass.
Bioluminescent patterns pulse faintly beneath the water, tracing designs across the bottom in soft blues and greens.
The air is thick with moisture that clings to my throat when I breathe.
Lady Nerida doesn’t smile. Doesn’t bow. She lifts a hand and beckons me forward. “You came. Good.”
“What is this place?” My words echo faintly, multiplying before fading.
“An immersion chamber. Built for Neptune delegates during older Conclaves.” She gestures to the water with a hand. “It amplifies intuition and reveals internal fractures. You’ll need both clarity and honesty in the Mirror. This team won’t survive without them.”
She steps back into the pool. The water reaches her ankles and pulses outward in a single slow ripple, the bioluminescent patterns responding to her movement.
She turns her back to me and moves deeper, her sea-green hair darkening as water soaks into it.
She stops when the water reaches her waist, her teal robes floating around her like seafoam.
“I want you to join me, Lady Cyra.”
I hesitate at the edge of the pool. The water looks inviting and threatening at once, its surface too perfect, too still. She doesn’t coax or reassure. She simply waits, the water steady around her, the bioluminescence pulsing in slow rhythm beneath her feet.
After a moment, I wade in. The tiles under my feet are smooth, almost slippery.
The water is warm but not comforting. It wraps around me like a steady hand, guiding but firm.
The bioluminescent patterns swirl away from my steps, then reform behind me, tracking my path through the pool.
When I reach her, she tilts her head slightly.
Her eyes catch the dim light, their ocean colours deepening to almost black in the shadows.
“Sink below,” she says.
“Lady Nerida, I’m not sure I can hold my breath long.”
“You won’t need to. The chamber induces a deprivation state. Your body stays at the surface. Your mind goes where it must.”
I swallow hard. “And where is that?”
“Where you hide the things you don’t want to lead with.”
I take a breath and slowly lower myself, letting the water rise over my shoulders. The warmth seeps into my muscles, loosening tension I didn’t realize I was carrying. Lady Nerida places two fingers at my temple. Her touch is cool despite the warm water, sending a shiver down my spine.
“When you’re ready,” she says. “Let your head fall back.”
I lower myself further. The water closes over half my head with a soft rush of sound as I lay horizontal in the pool.
I close my eyes as darkness fills my vision, complete and absolute.
The sounds of the outer chamber vanish under the water, replaced by my own heartbeat, slow and distant like a drum echoing.
The water supports me completely, removing all sense of up or down, left or right.
My body floats without effort. A voice threads through the dark, quiet but unmistakable.
“Good. Let the mind open.” Lady Nerida whispers in my mind.