“Without your mistaken beliefs of Tyr to bind you, you may have a chance of leaving this ship.”
She shook her head and pressed her face to her knees. “I never told you everything about Tyr’s death. I should have made you understand.”
“I do understand.” He unfolded his legs and leaned forward, regarding her as if she might break at a touch. “I saw it happen through your eyes, Cynara. It was not as you remember.”
She bit her tongue to keep from laughing. “You weren’t there.”
“I know why you remember the events as you have. You changed them because they were too terrible to bear.”
“I could have saved Tyr, and I killed him.”
“Because he would have killed you.”
“He gave me everything. He used the last of his life to transfer all his education, his skills, even his telepathic abilities. And I took them without thinking of the price. If I had refused, he might have recovered—”
“You are wrong. When he knew he was dying, he attempted to destroy your mind and take your body for his own. He would live on in any way he could, even at the cost of your life. The knowledge you received from him was only the unforeseen consequence of his attack, burned into your mind when you forced him to withdraw.”
One of them must be mad. “I couldn’t have. He was a thousand times more powerful than I am.”
“You were made to believe this, so that you would never be tempted to defy the last bonds that held you to Dharma and offer your services to the Alliance as a free and equal va’laik’in. As Tyr’s potential rival. But when you faced death at Tyr’s hands, you fought back.” He reached out, curling his fingers into a fist. “You felt him die.”
Cynara’s skull rang with memories as deafening as the surf at Highcliff. Sucking blackness. Blind, senseless hatred. She clutched her head between her hands, trying to shut them out.
“You blamed yourself for the circumstances of his death,” Ronan continued, “but not in the way they truly occurred. You had quarreled with Tyr on the bridge when he discovered your presence as a stowaway. You were still with him when the shaauri striker appeared. You became convinced that this quarrel distracted Tyr at a moment when he should have acted to save the ship from shaauri attack. He fed your guilt. But it was his own weakness that failed him, Cynara.”
The ringing in her head became klaxons of alarm. Men dashed about the bridge, stared at the screen framing the shaauri striker, called out questions that received no answer.
‘Tyr’s courage, his skill as a leader, masked a great flaw,” Ronan said. “When the shaauri striker attacked the Pegasus, he was faced with a choice between capture or almost certain death. He had sworn never to let the Pegasus fall into enemy hands, yet he feared his own extinction too much. He froze, and thus condemned himself… just as your idealized memory of him almost made you lose your life.”
Tyr had stood there beside the captain’s chair, unmoving, ignoring the crew, ignoring the shaauri. One of the torpedoes had disabled half the bridge. Crewmen screamed in pain. Tyr fell.
“All the events that followed Tyr’s critical error were lost to your memory, Cynara. No one knew what Tyr attempted to do to you. But they saw how you rose up and took command of the Pegasus, acting as your cousin should have, boldly winning escape.”
“I couldn’t have done it—”
He took her in his arms. “It was your courage that saved the Pegasus, even though you had experienced the depths of Tyr’s hatred and felt his death. A lesser person would have been crippled in mind and spirit. You rose to your true nature and earned the right to become captain.”
Devastating revelation. Terrible, unthinkable hope. “All these years… I’ve felt Tyr within me, reminding me of his sacrifice. Anything I did worth doing was because of him.
But I was afraid—afraid I would lose everything if I ever let him out. If I let go, even for a moment, he would… become me.” She rode the edge of hysterical laughter. “They were right, the Dharmans who judged me as tainted.”