Chapter 30
The next mirror activates with a sound like cracking ice.
Lord Castor goes rigid beside me.
The image shows a grand hall on Jupiter. Soaring ceilings, columns of dark green marble, banners bearing Jupiter’s storm sigil hanging from the walls. It’s magnificent, built to intimidate and inspire in equal measure.
Two figures kneel before a throne. A man and woman with Lord Castor’s strong build, his sharp features.
They’re older, dignified, wearing the deep greens and blacks of Jupiter’s royal house.
The man has greying hair and scars across his face.
The woman has Lord Castor’s hazel eyes, and holds herself with pride, even on her knees.
My father sits on the throne, a sun crown blazes on his head.
“Commander Orion and Lady Hera,” my father’s voice echoes through the hall. “You’ve been building alliances against me.”
“We serve Jupiter’s interests,” Commander Orion says, his voice steady despite his position. “Not yours. Authority must be earned, not taken, Solric.”
Golden cups are brought forward by servants in my father’s gold colours. The liquid inside them gleams red.
“Drink,” my father commands.
In the crowd, pressed between two guards, stands a younger Lord Castor. Maybe thirteen, fourteen at most. His face is carefully blank, but I can see the terror in his eyes, the way his fists clench at his sides.
Commander Orion and Lady Hera exchange one look. Then, without hesitation, they take the cups.
They drink.
The poison works fast. Lady Hera’s face twists in agony first, her spine arching as convulsions wrack her body. Blood trickles from her nose. Commander Orion tries to reach for her, but his own body is seizing, muscles locking up until I think his bones might snap.
It takes three minutes for them to die.
Three minutes of choking and bleeding and pain while the court watches in horrified silence.
Young Lord Castor doesn’t make a sound. He stands there, face blank, watching his parents die. But his hands shake. His whole body shakes.
When it’s finally over, when there’s nothing left but two bodies crumpled on the marble floor, my father stands.
He walks past the corpses without a glance and stops in front of young Lord Castor.
“Rule better than they did,” he says. “Or join them.”
Young Lord Castor’s face doesn’t change. But his eyes go dead.
The mirror releases us.
I turn to look at Lord Castor now, here in the maze with me. His face has gone pale, jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle protruding, war hammer trembling in his grip.
“Lord Castor,” I whisper. “I didn’t know—”
“Don’t.” His voice is harsh, raw.
But it’s true – I didn’t know. All my life I was told the sanitized version – how the Sun King installed all of the current House Leaders at young ages due to this reason or that.
How Solric preferred having these teenagers and children ruling the kingdoms, as they were easily manipulated and fell in line faster.
Not until Zevran’s confession did I know my father had a hand in the demise of the previous rulers.
And if he killed Zevran’s parents … and Lord Castor’s … then…
Before I can finish my thought, another mirror activates.
Lord Evander’s breath catches.
The new image shows a library on Saturn. Vast and beautiful, with shelves stretching six stories high. A man and woman work at a large table, surrounded by documents. They have Lord Evander’s elegant bone structure, his brown eyes, his aristocratic nose.
The door bursts open. Soldiers in my father’s colours flood in with weapons drawn.
“Lord Arcturus, Lady Minerva. You are charged with illegal documentation of the Sun King’s military campaigns. The penalty is death.”
“We document history,” Lord Arcturus says calmly. “We are Saturn’s archivists. It is our duty to record truth.”
“Your truth is treason.” A guard spits.
Lord Arcturus stays silent for a moment as he glances towards his wife, who gives a subtle, heartbreaking nod. “Then we welcome death, knowing history preserved will forever defy history rewritten.”
They don’t get a trial. The soldiers move with brutal efficiency. Swords through the chest, quick and clean. Lord Arcturus falls first, still holding his book.
Above, hidden in a gallery alcove, a teenage Lord Evander watches. He’s pressed against the wall with one hand covering his mouth, tears streaming silently down his face.
The mirror fades.
Lord Evander stands perfectly still beside me. His face is a mask of control, but his hands are trembling.
“They were documenting his war crimes,” he says quietly. “Recording casualty numbers. Civilian deaths. They believed truth should be preserved, regardless of who it indicted.”
Before I can respond, a third mirror activates.
Lady Nerida’s expression doesn’t change, but she steps forward as if pulled by invisible strings.
The image shows Neptune’s ocean cities. Vast underwater palaces with walls of transparent crystal.
Two figures stand in a central chamber, a man and woman with Lady Nerida’s sea-green hair, her shifting ocean eyes.
The woman is speaking to a crowd of Neptunians gathered, her voice carrying clearly.
“The Sun King forbids prophecy that contradicts him. But I will not be silent about what the tides have shown me – the famine is engineered, the executions are genocide. Silence protects the powerful, not the people.”
A messenger arrives. “Lady Thalassa, Lord Nereus – the Sun King’s emissaries are demanding you cease all public sermons at once.”
“Tell them our stories and sermons are part of Neptune’s heritage,” Lady Thalassa says without looking up. “They belong to the ocean, not to any king.”
Hours pass in the mirror, compressed into moments. Then the palace begins to shake. Alarms blare. The crystal walls start to crack.
The life support systems are failing. Sabotaged remotely.
Water begins to seep through the cracks. Rising to their ankles. Their knees. Their waists.
In the corridor outside, a young Lady Nerida is being pulled away by a guard, screaming. The last thing she sees before the door seals is her parents standing in rising water.
The mirror releases us.
Lady Nerida stands perfectly still, her face serene. But her hands are clenched at her sides, and tears track silently down her cheeks.
The three mirrors go dark simultaneously.
We stand in the corridor, the four of us, surrounded by the evidence of my father’s crimes. The victims aren’t abstract anymore. They’re not political casualties or distant historical facts.
They’re my teammates’ parents.
Lord Castor’s jaw is still clenched tight. Lord Evander’s hands tremble. Lady Nerida still has tear tracks on her face.
They all turn to look at me.
I chose this path. I chose truth. I asked for no illusions, no sanitized versions of history.
And the maze gave me exactly what I asked for.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and my voice breaks. “I’m so sorry. I chose this path. I led us here. I didn’t know it would mean—”
“You could not have known,” Lord Evander interrupts. His voice is still flat, controlled. “The maze responded to your choice. This is the consequence of choosing truth.”
“We needed to see it,” Lady Nerida adds quietly. “All of us. These memories … we carry them alone, usually. Separate. Now we carry them together.”
Lord Castor lets out a harsh breath. “Your father was a monster. We all know that. Seeing it again doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes one thing,” I say quietly. “You know what I am. You know whose daughter I am. You’ve seen what he did to your families.” I meet each of their eyes in turn. “Now you have to decide if you can still follow me. If you can trust me to lead.”
Lord Castor opens his mouth to respond, but the withdrawal hits before he can speak.
The nausea slams into me without warning. My vision blurs as I stumble sideways into the mirrored wall, my legs giving out. The energy cell in my sword’s hilt digs into my palm as I brace myself against the glass.
“Lady Cyra?” Lord Evander moves toward me.
I slide down the wall, ribs heaving. My hands shake so badly I can’t grip the sword properly. It clatters to the floor.
“You’re not alone anymore, remember?” Lady Nerida kneels beside me.
She’s right. I can’t hide it anymore.
“I’m addicted to my healing magic.” The confession tears out of me. “Just like my father was addicted to his sun magic. I need to use it. Every day. Sometimes more … and I haven’t healed anyone since before the trial started, so I’m … it gets worse when I’m stressed. And right now—”
“Right now, you’re leading us through a nightmare maze after watching your father torture people.” Lord Castor crouches down in front of me. “Yeah, I’d say that qualifies as stressful.”
I look up at him, expecting disgust or judgment. Instead, he pulls a water flask from his belt and holds it out. “Drink. You look like you’re about to pass out, and I’m not carrying you.”
I take the flask with shaking hands. The water helps, even though it doesn’t touch the real problem.
“You chose the honest path,” Lord Evander says. “Not power. Not conquest. Despite the addiction pulling at you, despite everything you have inherited.” He pauses. “That is what matters most.”
Lady Nerida hums softly, and the temperature around us drops a few degrees. The coolness eases some of the nausea. “The daughter is not the father,” she says. “The moon’s light is borrowed from the sun, but it shines differently.”
I want to believe them. Want to trust that I’m different.
“We should keep moving,” Lord Evander says.
He’s right. We can’t undo the past. All we can do is move forward.
Lord Castor hauls me to my feet with one hand, steadying me when I sway. He picks up my sword and presses it back into my grip. “You lead. We follow. The addiction doesn’t change that.”
I take a breath and turn toward the corridor ahead. The mirrors have gone quiet now, as if the maze has said what it needed to say. We walk in silence for several minutes, until the corridor widens into a circular chamber.
The walls here are covered in carved script – ancient, flowing letters in different dialects that shift and blur when I try to focus on them directly. They hurt to look at, like staring into too-bright light.
“What is this?” Lord Castor’s voice is rough.
Lord Evander steps closer to the nearest section, his brown eyes scanning the text. “Old Tongue … Saturn’s dialect.” He traces the letters with one finger. “But it is incomplete. The sentence ends mid-word.”
Lady Nerida moves to another section of wall, her eyes reflecting the faint glow of the script. “Here too – Neptune’s script, but fragmented. Like pieces torn from different pages.”
My stomach drops. The mirrors didn’t just show us our histories to break us.
They left us something.
“The memories,” I say quietly. “Each victim said something before they died … like they left us a message.” I stare at the words, at the pattern forming across the walls. Each fragment belongs to someone’s memory…
But they’re separate. Isolated.
Just like they’ve all been carrying these memories – alone.
“I think we have to say their messages all together,” I whisper.
Lord Castor’s expression hardens. “You want us to stand here and recite our dead parents’ words like some kind of—”
“Like some kind of acknowledgment that their deaths meant something,” Lady Nerida interrupts softly. “That what they believed in survived them.”
“It’s asking us to trust each other with the weight of it,” I say. “To stop carrying it separately.”
Lord Castor stares at me. His eyes shift – not softening exactly, but cracking. Letting something through.
“Fine.” His voice is harsh. “But if this is some manipulation—”
“Then we face it together,” Lord Evander finishes.
We stand in a rough circle, facing each other rather than the walls. The glowing script pulses around us.
Lord Castor’s hands clench at his sides. “My father. When Solric told him to drink the poison, he said...” His voice cracks. “He said, ‘Authority must be earned, not taken.’”
The script on the Jupiter portion of the wall begins to glow. Faint at first, then brighter. The letters rearrange themselves, flowing across the mirrors like water finding its path.
Lord Evander stares at the shifting text. “My parents.” He stops. Swallows. “They were archivists. They documented everything, even when it was dangerous. My father said…” He closes his eyes. “‘History preserved defies history rewritten.’”
More script illuminates. The fragments connect, forming coherent phrases in modern language.
Lady Nerida’s voice is barely audible. “My mother. Before the water rose.” Her eyes shimmer. “‘Silence protects the powerful, not the people.’”
The glowing script spreads, weaving between the three sections like threads forming a tapestry.
They all turn to me.
I close my eyes, forcing myself to remember. “Astrid’s mother. In the garden, when she warned my mother to run.” My throat closes. “She said…” I have to push the words out. “‘Hope survives when we choose to carry it.’”
The final section of wall blazes to life. Every fragment lifts from the walls, swirling through the air around us. The letters rearrange themselves mid-flight, combining and connecting until complete sentences form.
They settle into new positions, no longer separated by dialect or House:
What you carry together is lighter than what you carry alone.
The walls begin to dissolve.
Not crumbling or shattering – just fading, like mist burning off in sunlight. Beyond them, I can see the corridor continuing deeper into the maze.
That’s when we hear it.
The sound of combat. Steel on steel, shouts of anger and pain.
Zevran's team.