- Storm: What are demons, but reflections of our fears and shame? Things we bury within us, hide from loved ones, even as they poison our heart until we finally heal our adversary by embracing it.
- Professor X: Your man speaks as if I am your pet. Hmm. Not an entirely displeasing thought.
- Empress Lilandra: Hush now, beloved. You may bark later.
- Empress Lilandra: Yet families often mimic black holes. Visit and risk being stuck in its everspiraling vacuum of dramas.
- Forge: Lord of chaos! Weaver of lies, I tear your thread and break your loom. Depart to the desert, demon. Depart, and be gone.
- Lord Araki: [clears throat] Your Majesty, I have known you since you were but a hatchling and wish only for your happiness. But given our war with the Kree, and how it's divided even we Shi'ar, is a royal wedding...
- Empress Lilandra: Gladiator and his Guard fill my ears with news of coming victory.
- Lord Araki: Yes, but we have been trapped in so much change, some yearn for the stable comfort of what is familiar for sameness.
- Deathbird: Araki sugars his words, my sister. Your consort was born on the wrong side of the stars. He is Terran.
- Empress Lilandra: Gentle sister, heed my throne.
- Deathbird: A throne that is bound to more than the whims of your heart. A union with the Terran would bind the Shi'ar into alliance with his inferior home world.
- Professor X: I respect you speaking the quiet part out loud, Deathbird, so let's speak plainly. Your Empress and I decide alliances, as well as which world we call home.
- Lord Araki: Chandilar is home. Our throne world.
- Professor X: Of course, Lord Chancellor. I merely meant...
- Lord Araki: Spoke the quiet part out loud? Xavier would see his Milky Way ghetto become our new throne world.
- Professor X: You are twisting my words.
- Deathbird: High Council, for the sake of the empire, I must invoke the Rite of M'Dashaa.
- [all gasping]
- Deathbird: Terran, the rite requires...
- Professor X: A non-Shi'ar pass a test of loyalty in order to wed a royal. I finished that volume my second day here, Deathbird.
- Deathbird: Not any mere test, Terran. A challenge of my own choosing.
- Professor X: Then choose.
- Deathbird: To ensure we are protected from your Terran ties, you must renounce Earth and erase all memory of your life there.
- [all gasp]
- Empress Lilandra: Charles is a formidable psychic. His mind will not be easily scrubbed.
- Deathbird: Luckily, we Shi'ar bow to a ruler of equal psychic power. Charles Xavier must purge all memories of Earth, and you, dear sister, must be the one to do it.
- [crowd murmuring]