“He reminds me of Julian. He’s a good soul, despite everything. I’ll raise him right. Away from all this.” He extended a hand, not to shake mine, but to give me the ring he took from my finger the night Lorn and Fitchner died. I closed his hand back around it. “That belongs to Julian,” I said. He nodded softly. “Thank you…brother.” And there, on a citadel landing platform in what was once the heart of Gold power, Cassius au Bellona and I shake hands and say farewell, almost six years to the day since we first met.
