Cyra stirred, struggled to move. But he had nothing to move, no body with muscles to flex. In this prison he was a pure point of view, able to do nothing but send out tendrils of intent to probe the cracks in the structure, to work their way through into the waking world. And to wait, to sense things changing. There was a big change now, and not one that he had hoped for.

The traitor had reached out for the crystal memories of the computer system. The traitor, who shouldn't even be able to incarnate, could reach back into files that even Cyra himself could not. Everything would fall apart if that went further; the traitor could break apart all of Cyra's plans, and steal his chance at love for all eternity.

There was only one way Cyra could find to make a difference here. He could barely touch the mortal world, and even if he did, he couldn't feel any feedback to tell him the results of his actions. But he still had the keys to parts of the crystal fortress. When he next felt the warriors of the Rainbow occupying the throne room, the cavern he had carved out on Mimas for their meetings, he would be able to direct their connections to some other place. He could give them access to more of their own memories, and hope that they would draw the right conclusions.

Cyra had been waiting for millennia, only occasionally trying to return to the real world. But now he needed to act. He had to reach out for the memories of the knights, and hope that they would care enough to release him.

* * *

"Princess," Urdia bowed deeply, pressing his head against the cool marble. He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to see the glitter of power within the stones. All he needed to know now was that the Princess wished to speak to him, and in the current circumstances, he couldn't treat her as an equal. "I am your humble servant. What do you command?"

"Lord Urdia," the Princess did not use the Perfect Voice; there was no aura of command to enforce her words. "Are we not friends?"

"We are the guardians of the rainbow, excellency," Urdia did the best to hide emotion from his voice, and recited the words that might have been found in a history book, if there were any books old enough to chart the rise of the group known as the Rainbow. "We are the protectors of the emotional spectrum, soldiers who have defended you since before this world was even formed. We have the deepest possible respect for your authority, and–"

"Lord Urdia," the impatience was obvious now, but so was her uncertainty. The Princess was struggling not to cry. She hadn't adapted to human emotions as well as the rest of them. They should have anticipated that, but they'd only realised when her humanity started to threaten the empire itself. "That was not what I asked. You are my protectors, but you were also my friends. Why does that have to change?"

"Because..." He swallowed, and thought for a moment. "Because you are the Immaculate Princess. You have the power to safeguard the world, and to preserve the empire. You are the beacon that granted sentience to the entire human race simply by your presence. You are divine, and perfect. You cannot display human emotion, and by encouraging you to act as a human, by treating you as a friend, we have endangered the whole world. We cannot allow that to continue."

"No," she insisted, fear and self-loathing still pouring out with her words. Two things that the Immaculate Princess should never be able to feel. "No. I was perfect on our world, among our people. But even there, war came to pass. Our civilisation fell because I could not bring myself to be imperfect, because I was a perfect jewel that my subjects could never hope to relate to. Our race is extinct now, Urdia. I am human, as much as you might deny it, and now I have a chance to be something else. To be the leader who can protect her people, and care about them as I do so. Is that not better? But to do that, I need more than lords, a parliament of guardians. I need friends, to tell me when I am wrong, and even to stand against me if I make bad choices. I am a princess now, not a goddess, and like all humans I need companionship. Those people are the Rainbow, and you know that, Urdia. You are not just knights. You are my friends. I need to have a friend."

"And you also need a lover to help you shirk your duty?" Urdia almost choked on the word. He hated himself for saying it, hated that he had to hurt the Princess who had sacrificed anything to shield the world from demonic influence.

She couldn't even bring herself to deny it.