Chapter 8: The betrayal
Lace woke to the hollow chill of empty space. The blanket was twisted around her legs, the stars above had shifted, and the spot beside her was cold. A familiar ache, sharp and sour, bloomed in her chest. Of course. He’d left. The night, the brutal possession, the unexpected stillness afterward—it was just another round in a game she didn’t know the rules to. She sat up, dragging the blanket around her shoulders, and let out a shaky breath that fogged the glass.
Then she felt it. A shift, a weight beside her.
She turned.
He was there, lying on his side facing her, one arm stretched out where she had been. He was deeply, peacefully asleep. The harsh angles of his face were softened in the low light, the perpetual calculation behind his eyes finally stilled. His hair was a mess, a silver strand falling across his forehead. He looked younger. Unarmed.
Her heart did something complicated and painful in her chest. She didn’t move. She just watched the steady rise and fall of his breathing, the faint pulse in the vein at his temple.
As if sensing her gaze, his eyes fluttered open. There was no immediate guard, no sharp assessment. Just a slow, drowsy clarity as he focused on her. For a long moment, they just looked at each other in the grey, star-lit quiet. The air between them felt charged with a different kind of electricity—not the frantic spark of collision, but the deep, resonant hum of a connection grounded.
He didn’t smile. He simply lifted his hand, the one that had been around her, and cupped the side of her face. His thumb brushed her cheekbone, a touch so deliberate and tender it stole her breath. He drew her toward him, slowly, giving her every chance to pull away.
She didn’t.
Their lips met in a kiss that held none of the prior night’s desperation. It was slow. It was a discovery. It was a silent conversation of skin and breath, an acknowledgment of the shared, secret space they occupied. It tasted like sleep and something else, something fragile and new. When they finally parted, their foreheads rested together, their breath mingling in the small space between them.
No words. Words would have shattered it.
They got ready in that same heavy silence, pulling on discarded clothes, avoiding each other’s eyes now not out of hostility, but out of a mutual, terrifying understanding. He helped her fold the blanket, his fingers brushing hers. A simple touch that felt like a vow.
The walk back to the inhabited sections of the castle was the longest of her life. With every step, the mask slid back into place. By the time they reached the corridor leading to the dining hall, his posture was once again that of the imperial prince, cool and untouchable. She felt her own shoulders square, her chin lift, the familiar defensive spark lighting in her gut.
“Try not to lag behind in the simulators today, Paladin,” he said, his voice crisp and carrying, meant for any listening ears. “Your footing was atrocious yesterday.”
“Worry about your own archaic tactics,” she shot back, the retort automatic, but her voice felt thin. The performance was the same, but the stage had shifted beneath her feet. Something was different. She could feel it humming in her veins, a residual warmth from his skin on hers. She just couldn’t name it.
The battle, when it came, was a chaotic scramble. A Galra mining outpost on a volatile asteroid, intelligence courtesy of Lotor. He fought beside them, his sinuous ship moving in perfect, lethal synergy with the lions. He saved Pidge from a crushing blow. He covered Hunk’s flank. He called out coordinates, his voice calm in Allura’s ear, and the team moved as one, trusting him.
They were winning.
Lace felt a wild, giddy hope cut through her. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe all her suspicions were just fear. Maybe the man in the abandoned deck was the real one.
“Formation Beta!” Shiro commanded. “Lotor, draw their fire to the chasm. We’ll collapse it on them.”
“Understood,” Lotor’s voice crackled, smooth as ever.
His ship banked, a beautiful silver streak against the asteroid’s rust-colored sky. He led the swarm of Galra fighters right to the jagged fissure, just as planned. The lions powered up, ready to blast the edges.
Then, in a move so swift it was barely a blur, his ship pivoted. It didn’t fire at the Galra. It fired at the lions.
A searing, purple blast of raw quintessence, more powerful than anything they’d seen from him, slammed into the Red Lion, sending Keith spinning into a tailspin. Another shot grazed Blue’s shoulder, the impact shuddering through Lace’s controls, setting off a symphony of damage alerts.
“What are you doing?!” Allura’s scream was pure, shattered disbelief over the comms.
Lotor’s ship hovered, turning to face them. The Galra fighters, now clearly under his command, fell into a protective formation around him.
“Securing the resources of this sector,” his voice came through, no longer calm. It was imperial, final, and utterly devoid of the tenderness from that morning. “You were a useful distraction. My gratitude.”
He fired again, not at the lions this time, but at the asteroid’s core. The destabilizing blast rocked the entire field. The Galra fighters covered his retreat as his ship shot into a waiting wormhole, vanishing without a trace.
The silence on the comms was absolute, broken only by the static of debris and Hunk’s low, devastated “Oh, man.”
Back on the castle ship, the atmosphere was a funeral. Allura stood in the control room, her fists clenched, her body trembling. “I believed him,” she whispered, then her voice broke into a raw sob. “We all did!” She crumpled, Coran rushing to her side, his own face ashen.
Lace stood with the others, her face a perfect, neutral mask. She felt their shock, their anger, their hurt as if through a thick pane of glass. She nodded in the right places. She accepted a pat on the shoulder from Hunk. She watched Shiro’s stony, betrayed expression. She performed the role of a fooled paladin.
She held it together until the door of her room hissed shut behind her.
Then, the world fractured.
Her knees buckled. She slid down the door, hitting the floor with a jolt. The first sob was a silent, wrenching thing that tore from her throat. She wrapped her arms around herself, but it was no substitute. She could still feel the ghost of his arms around her, the press of his lips, the solid warmth of his chest under her cheek.
The betrayal wasn’t just political. It wasn’t just the team’s trust he’d incinerated. It was the quiet kiss in the starlight. It was the shared blanket. It was the vulnerable sleep. He had taken the one secret, fragile thing that felt real and had used it as a stepping stone. He had made her believe, for a few devastating hours, that she was the exception.
A low, animal sound of pain escaped her. She curled in on herself, her forehead pressing against her knees, as the tears came in hot, silent rivers. She cried for the trust of her friends, for Allura’s very public heartbreak, for the strategic disaster now unfolding.
But mostly, in the deep, shameful privacy of her room, she cried for the beautiful, slow kiss, and the terrifying hope that had died with it, smothered by the cold, calculated vacuum of space he’d left behind.
But mostly, in the deep, shameful privacy of her room, she cried for the beautiful, slow kiss, and the terrifying hope that had died with it, smothered by the cold, calculated vacuum of space he’d left behind. A fist pounded on her door, making her flinch. “Lace? You okay in there?” It was Hunk, his voice muffhed and worried.
“Fine,” she choked out, scrambling to her feet and wiping violently at her face. “Just… just need a minute.” She heard his hesitant footsteps retreat. The silence he left behind was worse. It echoed with the phantom sensation of a blanket shared in starlight, a touch that had felt like a truth. Now it just felt like the blueprint of her own gullibility.
She spent the next hour mechanically cleaning her bayard, the repetitive motions failing to scrub the memory from her mind. Every pass of the cloth was a question. Had any of it been real? The sleep, the stillness, the way his thumb had traced her cheekbone as if she were something fragile? Or was that, too, just a sophisticated layer of the deception, meant to hook her so deeply the betrayal would paralyze the entire team?
The central spire of the Galra homeworld was a dagger of obsidian and violet light, piercing a perpetually storm-wracked sky. Lotor’s cruiser docked with silent efficiency. He descended the ramp, his cape swirling around polished boots, his face a sculpture of serene triumph. The hangar bay was lined with rows of high-ranking officers and nobility, their applause a dry, rattling sound like scattering stones.
At the center stood Emperor Zarkon, a mountain of malice and armor. “My son,” the voice boomed, a sound that vibrated in the teeth. “The reports are most satisfactory. You have crippled their cohesion.”
Lotor bowed, the motion flawless. “The Voltron Coalition is fractured, Father. Their trust is now their greatest weakness.” He accepted the adulation, a shallow smile touching his lips as generals clapped him on the shoulder. He moved through the throng in the grand hall, a goblet of pungent Galra wine in his hand, nodding at the correct moments, offering strategic insights that made the nobles murmur appreciatively.
His mind, however, was ten thousand light-years away. It drifted from the talk of quintessence yields and sector control to a quiet, abandoned deck. He wondered, with a sharpness that felt like a glitch in his system, what she was doing at that exact moment. Was she raging? Was she cleaning her lion with that focused, furious energy? Was she crying? The thought of her tears, the ones he’d once brushed away, caused an almost imperceptible tightening in his gut.
The celebration swirled on. A general, his breath smelling of spice, leaned in. “A fine victory, Prince Lotor! It demands a proper reward.” He gestured, and a young Galra female was brought forward. She was elegant, with striking violet markings, her eyes downcast in submission. “A prize for your cunning,” the general beamed.
All eyes turned to Lotor. He looked at the offered companion, then let his gaze sweep meaningfully to his father. He raised his voice, ensuring it carried. “Your generosity honors me. But the true architect of this victory requires no distraction.” He raised his goblet high. “The strategy, the patience, the vision—all belong to Emperor Zarkon. Let the glory be his alone.”
The hall erupted in louder cheers. Zarkon gave a slow, approving nod. It was the perfect deflection: filial piety masking a private truth he dared not examine. He couldn’t stomach the touch of another. Not when the memory of a paladin’s weight on his chest, her hair smelling of ozone and castle soap, was so violently, inconveniently specific.
Hours later, in the austere silence of his private quarters, the performance finally ended. He dismissed his attendants and stood before the wide viewport, watching the lightning web the dark sky. The applause was gone. The hollow echo of his own words remained. He replayed the asteroid battle, the clean shot he’d taken at the Blue Lion’s shoulder, the precise amount of damage calculated to disable, not destroy.
He had executed the plan perfectly. Every variable accounted for.
Except one.
His hand, resting against the cold viewport, curled slowly into a fist. The triumph tasted like ash. The silence in his spacious, powerful room felt deeper and more absolute than the vast quiet of space he’d shared with her. He had succeeded in everything he set out to do.
And for the first time in his long, calculated life, a victory felt exactly like a loss.
The hollow feeling persisted for days, a cold spot in his center no tactical victory could warm. He buried it under logistics, under the brutal calculus of consolidating power from the asteroid sector’s quintessence flow. He toured a Galra equipment ship, a brutalist freighter humming with the stale odor of ozone and recycled air, acknowledging the salutes of engineers with a detached nod.
A glint caught his eye in a storage alcove, an oddity among the blunt tools and weapon cores. A pair of goggles, their design organic, almost Altean, with filaments like delicate veins. “What is this?” he asked a passing scientist, his voice cutting through the industrial din.
The scientist, a gaunt man with tired eyes, blinked. “A psychic artifact, Prince. Salvaged from a dimension-jumper’s wreck. It doesn’t show reality.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “It shows the viewer the future they most desire. A curiosity. Mostly useless.”
Lotor’s hand closed around them. The metal was warm. “I’ll take it.”
Alone in his ship’s austere meditation chamber, the door sealed, he turned the device over. Desire was a vulnerability. He knew this. Yet the cold spot in him ached. He slid the goggles over his eyes. The world dissolved into a swirling, liquid gold.
Then it resolved.
He stood on a dais under a sky of blazing, peaceful stars. Not the Castle of Lions. A new palace, all elegant, sweeping arches of gleaming metal and light. Below, a crowd of beings from a thousand worlds—Altean, human, Galra, Olkari—cheered, their faces open, unafraid. He wore the royal raiment of an Emperor, but the cut was different, a fusion of styles, a symbol of union.
The weight on his right was familiar, solid. A child, a boy of maybe three with Lace’s startling blue eyes and a messy mop of white-silver hair, sat perched on his hip, giggling as he pointed at the cheering throng.
And on his left, her hand linked with his, stood Lace.
Not a prisoner. Not a consort. An Empress. She wore a gown of deep cobalt, a diadem of sapphire and platinum in her hair, which fell freely around her shoulders. She was smiling, a real smile that reached her eyes, the fierce spirit in them tempered into a warm, steadfast pride as she looked out at their people. Then she turned that smile on him, and it deepened, becoming something private, intimate. She leaned into his shoulder, the trust in the gesture absolute.
The vision was saturated with sensation. The clean scent of a spring-washed atmosphere, the warmth of the child in his arms, the crushing, perfect pressure of her fingers laced through his. It was peace. It was legacy. It was the impossible sum of every hidden, fractured part of him made whole.
He ripped the goggles off.
They clattered to the floor, the sound violently loud in the silent chamber. He was breathing hard, as if he’d run a marathon. The ghost of the child’s weight lingered on his hip. The echo of her smile burned behind his eyes.
His most desired future.
Not unlimited power. Not his father’s corpse at his feet. Not a universe of cold, obedient order.
That.
A union. A family. Her.
The revelation wasn’t inspiring. It was devastating. It laid bare the core of every conflicted action, every calculated risk that veered toward her. It was the blueprint of his deepest treason, not against Voltron, but against the very Galra essence he was supposed to embody. This was the vulnerability that could end him. This was the dream that made every other victory feel like ash.
He stared at the harmless-looking goggles on the floor. A curiosity. Mostly useless.
He now knew the exact shape of the weapon that could destroy him. It was the future he could never have, and now, having seen it, could never forget. The cold spot within him was now a howling vacuum, and he had just been shown the only thing that could ever fill it. He left the goggles where they lay, a silent, damning testament on the polished floor. Every strategy from this point forward would have to account for this fatal, beautiful flaw.