He'd known, on some level, that it would be impossible for Gaheris not to notice the difference. They'd been the closest of friends. Gaheris had been the man Dylan chose to have at his back, at his side. The man he trusted with his life, with his ship, with his crew. He'd been going to be Dylan's best man.

Now he was the man Dylan blamed for ruining his life.

(Yet ... he still kept a photograph of the two of them in his quarters on the Andromeda.)

What would happen, if he told Gaheris the honest answer to his question, the result of the uprising? Could he stop it, or win Gaheris over? Did he have the right to even try? Could Gaheris see sense, see that what he was doing was setting the Known Worlds up for three hundred years of chaos?

At Witchhead, he'd decided to maintain the timeline, whatever the cost, because no other option had been better. Because nothing was certain except what had happened.

What had happened was that the man walking beside him had plotted against him and everything he stood for. Had shot one of his friends in front of him, sabotaged his ship, and tried to kill him.

Yet here he was, acting as if they were friends, when Gaheris had been planning to betray him for years.

Dylan paused, for a moment, then, very slowly, drew his force lance.

"The last time I saw you, you sabotaged my ship and tried to kill me."