Leanor knew that if he wanted Leah back, he would have to give up his dream of power, at least for now.

  When his mother appeared, he was still seated with his throne at his back and the stars spread before him like an infinite, indifferent sea. His eyes were red. His lower lip trembled with a weakness he had not allowed himself in years. Emotions he had buried so deep they started to feel unreal clawed their way back up, dragged free by memory and by hope. Hope sharp enough to crack the hard surface he had spent so long building.

  She stood a few paces away, uncertain whether she should disturb him.

  Leanor straightened. He blinked until the blur cleared, until the wetness in his eyes felt like it belonged to someone else. Then he fixed his gaze on her and forced his voice to behave.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  Their plan was already in motion. The poisoning of his father had begun, slow and careful, built for certainty. But it would not be fast enough now. It would not be good enough, not with Leah in the mix.

  A hostage caught between two warring factions.

  And the worst part was simple. His father knew exactly where to place the blade.

  Leanor did not have anything left to bargain with. Nothing his father truly wanted. If he could bring Tristana and Grakor to the same side, he would finally have currency. He could trade the game itself. He could trade planets. He just had to hope they would agree.

  Hope was not a strategy. Not against his father. Not when Leah’s life sat on the table.

  He had barely started turning the idea over before his mind was made up.

  “Can you get the Fates here?” The words came out flat and harsh, even as he watched his mother’s face.

  She looked just as pained as he felt. Another victim. Another piece moved across a board neither of them had agreed to play.

  His mother flinched, eyes widening, wild for a heartbeat. Then something steadied in her expression. She saw the logic. She saw why he was asking.

  She did not argue or protest. She wanted her husband dead just as much as Leanor did, but this superseded it for now. Leah changed everything. Once Leah was safe, the war could begin in earnest.

  Even without planets as currency, Leanor had built enough alliances that he would still have a chance.

  His mother vanished in a streak of light.

  When she appeared again, the Fates stood behind her, their black cloaks drifting as if the air belonged to them alone. They were not like gods. They were older, or stranger, something truly eternal. Not quite living, not quite dead. No one knew where they came from, or where they would go when they were finished.

  Only that they were here.

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  Leanor opened his mouth to speak, but the moment he tried, he was cut off. Their mouths did not move. Their message arrived anyway, pressed into the air like a hand closing around a throat.

  “We know what you seek. A bargain is required. A cull.”

  Leanor dropped to his knees, eyes fixed on the dark fall of their cloaks. “What do you want? You can have anything.” The words shook, already afraid of the answer, but he could not take them back.

  “We can tilt fate in your favor, not dictate it,” they said. “That is not how our world works. Some events are focal points, necessary, unchangeable.”

  As they spoke, the air rippled. Not like heat. Like the space itself recoiled from being forced to hold their meaning.

  Leanor swallowed. His voice barely carried. “Then tell me what it costs.”

  They went still. The room went still with them.

  “A cull of freedom,” the Fates replied. “A pruning of paths you believe are yours.”

  Leanor’s hands clenched against the floor.

  “For six cycles, you will do as we say,” they continued. “You will be our puppet, the vessel through which fate acts. Your worlds have grown chaotic, and your people are hungry for power.”

  A pause, deliberate.

  “This deal begins only once you sit on the throne, once your word carries more weight than mere whispers.”

  Leanor’s stomach tightened. Six cycles. Hundreds of years, depending on how the Game turned. Time enough for them to build through him, or ruin through him, or do both and call it balance.

  But Leah.

  If Leah was returned, it would be worth it.

  “Fine,” he said, the word rough in his throat. “Tilt the scales for Ashe.”

  The Fates did not move toward him. They did not need to.

  “You need only think it,” they said. “The blind herald will gain our favor once you agree. Once you submit to fate.”

  Leanor saw his mother react, her face hardening, her shoulders tensing as if she might lunge forward. She did not. She only watched, helpless and furious, as the Fates began to act.

  At first, only chanting filled the room. Then shackles burst outward from their cloaks, bright enough to sting Leanor’s eyes even in the dim light. They struck like snakes and wrapped around his arms.

  Leanor thrashed on instinct. He fought the restraint, rage flaring through him. Then he forced himself to stop. He let his body go still, because he understood what this was.

  Not chains.

  A confirmation.

  The shackles warmed. Then hotter. Each breath, each heartbeat, the heat climbed until the metal glowed red and the pain became a living thing. Leanor screamed. The ground shuddered. The walls clattered. His vision went spotty at the edges.

  The chanting cut off.

  The chains held.

  “Do you agree to the deal?” the Fates asked. The shackles rustled softly, as if they were listening too. “Leanor. Accept.”

  He shook his head, trying to clear the haze. “Accepted.”

  The moment the word left him, the heat vanished. The shackles turned cold, like steel in winter. Then they loosened and fell away, as if they had never been there at all.

  Gone.

  Leanor inhaled, expecting relief.

  Instead he felt it. Not a command, not yet. A thin thread set beneath his skin, quiet and patient. A hook waiting for the day his crown settled into place.

  He tried, just once, to picture a path where he broke the deal later, where he outplayed even this.

  His thoughts slid off it like water off glass.

  Leanor looked up.

  The Fates were gone, as if they had never been there.

  His mother rushed to his side, eyes wild. Blood ran from her lip. She had bitten down hard enough to split it, the kind of pain you choose when you need something else to stay trapped behind your teeth.

  Leanor barely looked at it.

  “Tell Father my pick,” he said. His voice was steady again, already filed down into something sharp and usable.

  His mother’s gaze searched his face, as if she was trying to find the boy she had raised somewhere behind the god he had become.

  Leanor did not give her time to speak.

  “Tell him the games are on,” he said.

  Then, quieter, like the word itself was another shackle locking into place.

  “Ashe.”