Kire nodded when he asked her to keep it from everybody else. “I understand. I promise.” She paused. “I see a little more clearly now why Envy wanted me to be cautious.” She climbed up beside him, thoughtful. When he asked her about the ring and being empress, she smiled, shaking her head. “I think I would have reached this conclusion at some point, with or without the Ring,” she said, though her expression was somber when she pondered his other question. 

“When I was first offered this Ring, I was told I have a chance to atone for something terrible I had done, when I was a young empress. Protect my people with extraordinary means, certainly that’s what I was told I’d be doing. I think I mentioned that before. But the one thing the Seer dangled in front of me that I couldn’t quite resist was that I could use this to cleanse me of my guilt. So. I suppose you could say I wanted it, in a way.”

She remembered Gael’s voice, how he had rubbed that in her face, how the Gemini used it as their motivation for their war with her. She clenched her jaw, then realized what she was doing and took a deep breath to relax it. “Besides, it’s hardly an ‘out’ when it’s given me an even bigger responsibility. A crown gave me one world, this thing gave me two.” She sighed at that. “It has its perks, though.”