Oaths of Legacy

by Emily Skrutskie

  I slosh my own drink haphazardly down my throat as we go, certain that wherever she’s taking me, I’m going to need the polish in my system. We wind our way through the Archon elite, past heroes of the last war and financiers of the new one, past would-be governors waiting for Ettian to reclaim their destined seats and officers who will be on the front lines of the effort to do so. Some of their curious gazes stick on us as we move, their expressions ranging from relatable confusion to smug satisfaction that at last the Umber prisoner is leaving and now the party can really begin. I offer them a sly smile in return, partly because I hope it’ll confuse them, but mostly because I hope it’ll mask just how confused I feel too.

  The hall outside the court is a dark, looming expanse that feels at odds with the polish sparking through my system. It makes me want to duck into the cozy alcove we pass that houses a massive vase, though I usually prefer to do that sort of thing with company and I wouldn’t particularly enjoy it with Wen. Her grip on my arm is unrelenting, a constant reminder that while I’ve been losing my academy muscles, she’s been doing nothing but gaining.

  I have enough of a buzz going that it takes me almost a full minute of walking to realize we’re headed toward an unfamiliar area of the palace. “Wen?” I hazard.

  She lets out a hiss, glancing warily back over our shoulders. Two guards are posted at the doors of the court, and the wink of familiar security-camera lenses glitters overhead. We’re far from unobserved, and our exit wasn’t subtle, so I’m not sure what kind of secrecy she’s trying to preserve here. She tugs me around a corner, her other hand running along the wall until her fingers pause in a catch I barely even saw.

  She crimps into it, and a door swings inward, letting out a soft sigh of cool air and revealing a darkened passage.

  “Close the door behind you, turn left, and start walking,” Wen says, her voice low enough that the words barely go farther than my ear. I put a steadying hand on the edge of the door, peering into the blackness. It seems to be some sort of servant corridor inside the walls. Useful intel, if ever there was any—wish I’d known about this before I tried to crawl through the vents. A part of me prickles with wariness, but the polish settling into my bloodstream is quick to soothe it away. Whatever Wen wants me to prove, I’m game.

  I step into the darkness, grab the edge of the door, and heave. Wen’s pleased smirk is the last thing I see before the last sliver of light from the hall disappears.

  It takes me a minute to adjust and realize that I’m not completely in the dark. Two dim orange strips run along the floor, casting a soft flush against the walls. I reach out, spanning the corridor to steady myself as I turn left. My fingers curl tighter around the stem of my glass.

  Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. This could be the place someone kills me and gets away with it. There aren’t cameras. Wen’s on the other side of the wall, and if she matched me drink for drink, she’s well on her way to becoming just as useless as I am sober. Panic creeps up my throat.

  I swallow it back with another gulp from my glass and start walking.

  There’s something familiar about these corridors, something that reminds me of the hidden chambers of the Imperial Seat on Lucia. I grew up in the core of a labyrinth of servants’ passages and locked doors, a secret so protected that I didn’t see daylight until nearly a decade into my life. My parents were on such rigid schedules that my time with them was sparse, their visitations always accompanied by a timer ticking down and a complicated security scheme that left me far too anxious to do anything but nod along to whatever hasty lesson they were trying to impart.

  I remember that time as comfortable—maybe because I didn’t know any better comforts—but teetering back toward the feeling of those narrow halls feels downright claustrophobic.

  What am I doing? Why am I going along with this? I lean close to the wall, trying to spot the hinges of a door that might let me out of here, feeling for cracks that might lead to an exit.

  A shuffling noise from farther down the hall doubles my heartbeat’s force. A shadow looms in the low light.

  Someone’s in here with me.

  A familiar raw impulse overtakes me, the same heady feeling that sang through my blood when the assassin dropped out of my ceiling. My wrist flicks, smashing the glass in my hand against the wall. The bulb shatters, leaving a wreath of sharp ends attached to a stem. “I’m armed,” I call out into the darkness.

  “Gal, it’s me,” a far-too-familiar voice calls back.

  The shadows resolve into a lean form that slips closer, feeling along the wall. He’s discarded his crown, and the sight of his bare head takes me by surprise, dragging me back to the boy I loved, not the emperor I hate with every fiber of my being.

  “There’s uh…broken glass,” I tell him flatly when he gets close enough for me to make out his eyes. His gaze drops to the makeshift weapon in my hand, and I suppress the urge to grimace. We’re too comfortable with each other, a fact that the tabloids are all too happy to point out, but it’s never really sunk in how instinctive it is to treat him as a friend, how naturally my body wants to slip into it. Hold the line, I tell myself, my grip on the glass stem tightening.

  And now I feel Wen’s amorphous dare slip into its true form.

  I could kill him right now. He’s standing mere feet away, I have the weapon in my hand, and there’s no guard around to stop me or retaliate. This secret passage probably has a convenient exit somewhere, one that’ll leave me with far more options than my mad scramble through the vents a week ago. I can feel the possibilities branching inside me, sprouting like an unruly bramble patch.

  But killing him does nothing—I’ve paid too much attention to ignore that fact. Killing him just hands the reins to General Iral, a far more competent leader. It removes the internal tension that might be the only thing preventing Archon from excising Umber completely from these territories. I want to believe it’s the logical choice not to kill him. I want that logic to absolve me completely from the reason Wen shoved me into this passageway in the first place.

  But something inside me knows I couldn’t. All the hate in my heart, all the good it would do the galaxy to remove the Archon bloodline—and still, it isn’t enough to outweigh the force that’s keeping my hand from raising the jagged shard of glass and plunging it into his jugular.

  Ettian eases closer, his hands drifting up warily as he takes another step that falls with a splintering crunch under the heel of his shoes. “Wen pinged me. Told me you wanted to meet,” he says, his eyes fixed on the glass in my hand. But still, he leans closer, drawn by a gravity that fear can’t outweigh.

  Of course she said I “wanted to meet.” Of course that’s all it would take for him to abandon a critical night, a party that could decide the scope of his campaign, his last chance to cement his status among his elite before he deserts his post on Rana for the glory of the front. One mention that I wanted to see him, and he rushes right in like the vast fool he is. And yet, he’s the one crowned, the one who gets to live in his bloodright, the one who doesn’t have to live each day in ruttin’ chains.

  As Ettian teeters closer, I rise to meet him.

  Not with lips but with glass.

  I feel the soft pulse of his breath on my cheek and the steady thrum of his racing heartbeat in my fingertips, conducted through the shard I’ve laid against his throat. He freezes in place.

  He could pull back, but he doesn’t. I may not know Ettian as well as I used to believe. But he knows me just as well as ever, and he knows I go no further than this.

  It’s hard to suppress the flicker of indignation that sparks to life in me. Shame rides in on the heels of that spark. I could end him with a flick of my wrist. His bloodright is pulsing below my makeshift blade. He’s giving me the opening, not even making it difficult. A true Umber imperial would carve his throat open without hesitation and then move right along to so
lving the next problem. My mother did it with her sister to claim the throne, and I can feel the echo of the history in my blood trembling through my hand.

  And yet.

  Ettian’s lips twitch into a slight smile.

  Maybe it’s the dark, I tell myself as his hand curves up to ghost along my wrist—still not pulling me away, still trusting that I won’t press down. Maybe it feels like I can get away with this because no one will see, least of all me. Maybe I’m just drunk, and that’s excuse enough.

  Maybe in the dark, I can fool myself into believing that no part of my emotions is involved in this.

  The soft brush of his fingertips sends a jolt through me more powerful than a Viper’s engines. Sweat prickles on the back of my neck, and I feel my pulse rise to meet the thrum I feel through the stem of my shattered flute. I don’t know how my brain could have possibly strayed to death when all I can feel between us is life. And all that vital instinct is pushing me to do is tilt my head back, rise on my toes, and seal my lips over his.

  Ettian inhales sharply. For a moment, I think it’s because he’s surprised, but then I feel a faint wetness slip down my blade. Without breaking the kiss, I let the glass tumble from my fingers and press my hand carefully against his neck. A scratch—nothing more—but the warmth of his blood on my skin feels downright sinful mixed with the warmth of his mouth on mine.

  I want more. I want to take this boy, who’s taken everything from me, for everything he has. I want him to pour himself into me, to fall victim to the relentless gravity of the raging star I am. I want him obsessed. I want him confused. I may not be a killer yet, but I can claim his life in other ways.

  He presses me back, my spine rolling straight against the wall of the passage. His thigh slips between mine, and I buck against the heat of it, seizing his bottom lip between my teeth. I could bite down hard and spill more blood, but I only tease it with a tug, and he comes away smiling.

  That’s right, I think. Let him enjoy this. Let him get his every desire. Let him think he can hold both me and his corner of the galaxy at the same time. Let him forget every rumor about the two of us for some drunken fun in a dark corner. Let him lose the repercussions in his happiness.

  And let me never forget them. Let me always remember that every stroke of my tongue against his confirms a thousand vicious theories spinning around the two of us. Let me remember the cost of the heavy ache stiffening against his leg.

  Let me never forget that this isn’t real.

  But for a dangerous second, I do. There’s a moment when my hand slips around the nape of his neck and cradles the base of his skull just like I used to, and in that moment I’m in love with him again. It hits me so hard that I almost lose my feet, forcing me to cling even tighter to him—all of the joy, all of the terror, all of the feelings that made me understand why he likes flying so much.

  And on the heels of that, I realize something so glaring that I can’t believe I never considered it before I rose to Wen’s inane challenge. I’ve been treating the love I had for Ettian like this fake thing—an illusion that shattered when I learned his real name.

  But he’s in my blood, and I haven’t flushed him yet. The familiar patterns his lips press against mine, the familiar shape of his hands on my hips—they’re all feeding a fire I thought I doused. I could stand encouraging the rumors that I’m down on my knees for the emperor every night if I knew they didn’t brush close to a truth deep inside me.

  And that truth means I don’t stand a chance of pulling this off.

  I shove Ettian off me so forcefully that he staggers back, catching himself on the opposite wall. “Gal, what…” he murmurs, his eyes widening in the low light.

  “You’ve got more important things to be doing, don’t you?” I reply, trying to disguise my breathlessness as I nod to the empty spot on his brow.

  “Can we at least talk about this?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Your precious little knight insinuated we might enjoy some time alone, I was drunk enough to think it might be fun, and, well…Now I’ve had my fun.” I shrug. And learned a few things he definitely doesn’t need to know—for purely tactical reasons, or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. “You probably don’t have time for anything else,” I add with a wicked tilt of my eyebrows I learned from Hanji.

  “Gal,” he says again, and the sound of my name on his lips tugs like a fishhook in my gut so much that I feel myself leaning back against the pull of it.

  “I think it’d be best for all parties involved if this little incident never happened,” I tell him. “Wouldn’t want anyone wondering why you let an Umber prince put a knife to your throat. Might want to get that thing cleaned up before you go back to the party, by the way,” I add, wiggling my bloodied fingers at the nick on his neck.

  Ettian lifts a hand to his wound, looking somewhat stunned that it comes away wet. I’ll give myself credit where it’s due if he completely forgot he was bleeding. I give him a different grin as his eyes lock on mine again. One that I learned from his rogue knight. One that should remind him of the fact he keeps forgetting.

  I’m dangerous, and they all keep missing it.

  Just not as dangerous as I’m supposed to be.

  His lips slip open like he’s about to try one more line, some last desperate attempt to convince me to have a real conversation. But for once this night, Ettian emp-Archon follows his better inclinations and simply turns on one heel, feeling his way back into the gloom of the corridor and leaving me wondering how the hell I’m going to get myself out of here.

  CHAPTER 7

  By some miracle and a lot of panicked fumbling, I manage to find an exit from the passage. It seems like Wen must have cleared a path for me, because I’m able to sneak unnoticed through the emptied halls of the palace and collapse in my own bed before the adrenaline high comes crashing back down. My mind’s been caught in that eternal, buzzed circling around the drain of sleep for what feels like hours when three heavy knocks pound on my chamber door.

  Terror swipes up the back of my neck before my rationality can swat it back, and I’m halfway out of bed before I remember that anyone who wants to kill me wouldn’t knock. Somehow the sheets get wrapped around my legs, and I flop gracelessly, kicking and floundering.

  The pounding repeats. I wriggle free of the sheets and make my way out into my antechamber. I have no idea how I managed to seal the complicated lock on my door behind me, but it takes me three tries to pry it open again, wondering all the while who could be knocking when anyone with any reason to visit me already has the clearance to access my rooms.

  When the door swings open, Wen Iffan tumbles face-first into me. I’m too startled to catch her properly, and she goes down hard with a sharp, short laugh. “Rocks and rust,” she mutters, lurching to her feet and listing sideways into a table. “Hold on—”

  “Take it you didn’t stick to two drinks either?”

  She snorts. She’s barefoot, her fancy chest piece askew. Her eyes are fringed with ruby streaks, and she seems to be having a hard time focusing them on anything. The table creaks under her weight, and I take a step forward with far less caution than she deserves, catching her by the elbow. “Bed or couch?” I ask as she leans into me.

  “Didn’t even…tried to stay out of the way and I didn’t even…”

  “Couch’s closer.” I yank her forward, and she digs her heels in.

  “No,” she mutters, her eyes lighting up with cold focus.

  “Wen, you need to get off your feet before you hurt yourself.”

  She stills, as if to prove to me that if she can just hold herself rigidly upright, she’s good to go. But even that’s too hard to maintain for more than a second, and with a resigned wheeze she allows me to guide her to the anteroom’s sprawling couch and collapses face-first onto it.

  I double-check that the door’s locks have
reset, then set myself next to her, rubbing my hands down my face. “Why am I the prince who gets to deal with all your drunken fun?” I groan.

  Wen’s voice is muffled and small. “I thought I was doing well. Thought everything was good. I was good—I tried to be, but…but I’m not good enough.” She rolls on her side, plucking halfheartedly at the snaps that lock her chest piece into place. “Can’t even get this rusted thing off.”

  I consider helping her—a weird impulse I don’t fully understand, although this is already a weird night—but Wen tends to ask for the help she wants and trying to help her get undressed is asking to lose a hand. “What happened?” I ask, a little firmer this time.

  Wen pauses her fumbling. “Emperor found me after your little rendezvous. Tried to tell him I thought it was for the best that you get…whatever’s between you still out of your systems. He didn’t like that.” She scowls, her head lolling backward. “Betting I’m about to get the same from you.”

  I’m strongly considering it, but I know it’d just go in one ear and out the other in her current state, and that robs me of all the satisfaction. Yes, I’m a little pissed that she pulled a move straight out of an academy cadet playbook, taking two people who obviously have some unresolved tension between them and throwing them in an enclosed space to let it out. Even more pissed that it went exactly how it was supposed to. Ruttin’ furious that my weakness humiliated me so badly, even if Wen and Ettian were the only witnesses. I scrub one hand self-consciously over my lips, battling against the memory of what happened just hours ago.