Blind Eyes Open - Katharine Jericho Book 1

Chapter Thirty-Two

A shaky breath came out of him. "For the right to ascent to the throne when my father passes into the evermore."

I stumbled backwards a few steps, taking in the map again, my heart in my throat. A thousand questions crammed my head full, and I scrambled to assemble them in order of importance. "But the others have territories vastly larger than yours."

"I told you I'm a disappointment to my father and the elders, so I was handicapped in a number of ways by the Marditsi, our governing body tasked with arranging and overseeing the rights."

"They don't want you to ascend." I shook my head, backing up more when confirmed it with a nod. "Then why the hell are you here?"

A lifetime of knowledge filled up his eyes, and I wished I could understand half of what I found in them. "If I thought it would have saved any of you from this, I would have withdrawn even though it meant that my life would be forfeit."

My heart clenched, and I clutched at my body armor in a useless effort to stop it. "What? You either play or die? What kind of messed up people were you born into?" And I thought my father was a bastard.

"They are more like your animals than your people. The strong survive, and the weak are slaughtered or banished. Our laws have the same two punishment options."

"So Leonidas broke the law, and you talked them into the second option. You saved his life." I frowned, wondering what Leo had done, and what their relationship had been before that.

Ramses snarled and drew up a fist, so I dropped it. I studied the map again, doing a mental tally on the populations of the other territories, my thoughts growing dark under the impossible odds of winning such a war. "Why haven't they attacked you yet?"

"There's a mandatory waiting period to give us all time to create our offenses and defenses." He moved his hand, and a count-down timer appeared in the upper right corner of the hologram.

Oh, shit. "Are you saying there are only six months left before the battle starts?" At his affirmative nod, I swallowed bile out of my throat and said, "And what happens to the people in this territory when time's up?" This couldn't be happening. Could it?

He swung around to face me again, his expression grave. "If we fail to hold the borders, then anyone who holds an echo will be killed, and anyone still human will be converted into whatever the sibling chose as his or her power of choice."

I closed my eyes against the images that wanted to fill them. "And you?"

"I will be ritualistically slaughtered at a ceremony when the Marditsi are satisfied that I have lost the territory, and all of my assets, resources, and domain will be passed to the sibling that has bested me."

My heart seemed to be imploding as I imagined Ramses on some sort of crucifix or hovering over a beheading block. Why did I feel like throwing up? Why was my blood on fire? God, no, I couldn't, I...

Drawing back from that thought spiral, I asked, "Why did your government choose Earth for this," I said. "You said there are other realms out there, I'm guessing many. How can your people be okay with exterminating a whole world full of people?"

"The Marditsi selects the world for the rights very carefully, Katharine." He seemed to be willing me to understand something with his eyes. "It's forbidden for the rights to alter the future of a planet in any way, only the means and perhaps the time it takes to see the same result."

I stared at him, the thought striking me like an uppercut to the diaphragm. "You're saying we were going to destroy ourselves in the near future anyway, so your annihilating us would have ended up the same way, only we'll be gone sooner."