Luckily I’ve sobered up a little since then. Enough to push down the mortifying emotions urging me to snap at her just like Ettian did and realize that the dipshit emperor has given me exactly the opening I need.
“I can’t say it wasn’t…fun. More fun than that stupid party ever could have been.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Wen says with a bubbly snort. “Was it fun when you put a sharp edge to his throat too? I’ll give you credit—didn’t think you’d go that far.”
“He told you about that, huh?”
“Showed me the nick and everything. Tried to explain to him that I knew you wouldn’t actually kill him, but…”
I sit with that for a minute, letting my own head drop back to stare at the brass filigree lining the ceiling. “How did you know I wouldn’t?”
Wen’s bare toes squirm on the couch next to me. “ ’Cause you don’t have nothing to lose yet,” she says after a long pause.
I sneak a sidelong glance at her, wondering if she’s actually drunk. She’s still bleary-eyed, her scar smushed flat against the couch cushion, but I guess there are some parts of her that never dull. And as long as she’s being honest…
“So he’s pissed at you for setting him up like that? He told me you told him that I wanted to meet. Sounds like he’s blaming you for his own poor choices.”
“Told him exactly that. Not a good idea, turns out.”
“Please tell me you weren’t out in the open.”
Wen sighs. “Might as well have been. Enough people saw. And now that he’s got me guarding you instead of doing real work, they’re probably gonna start rumors that I’m out of favor.”
“I mean, you’re guarding the empire’s most precious asset,” I reassure her sarcastically, gesturing grandly up and down my body. “But don’t let anyone hear you call me that or Ettian’s gonna find himself yanked off that stupid chair at superluminal.”
The tautness of her smirk tells me my words are working their magic. I’ve just reminded her that if her job has the worth Ettian wants for it, her emperor isn’t fit to rule. And given what she just enabled between the two of us, Ettian definitely values me as more than just a prisoner. The vector from that line of thought should be painfully clear. She’s caught in the middle of something doomed to fail—enabling it, even—and with Ettian ducking into dark corners for a chance to meet with me, that failure’s not far off.
“Y’know, you’re right,” I continue, staring down at my own bare feet. “You guys haven’t managed to kill off my hope yet. My throne still awaits. I’m not even of age to begin my succession. And the fact that we haven’t been scorched off this planet yet means my parents haven’t disavowed me. If my mother didn’t expect me to inherit her crown, she’d have torn through this system with the Imperial Fleet a month ago.”
Under other circumstances, this confession would be downright dangerous. Even though any rational person would assume my goals, the apathy I’ve been carefully presenting has scored me a few freedoms my guards have been taking for granted. Explicitly stating that I’m aiming to make it back home to the Imperial Seat would probably result in a security lockdown—or at least more scrutiny that would make it even more difficult for me to put shards of glass against the Archon emperor’s throat or have unsupervised, inebriated talks with the head of my security staff.
But Wen’s drunk and vulnerable, and I’m taking whatever advantage I can get in this war.
“You told me about your mother once,” I confess to the dark, letting my head drop between my knees. “You told me she raised you to inherit her throne.” Granted, it was a shitty mobster throne, but a throne all the same—and for my purposes, I let the word glow off my tongue like it’s the most precious thing in the galaxy.
And a glance tells me it works. I catch the way Wen’s glassy eyes sharpen, the way her brow furrows.
“I guess I used to think you’d understand me because of that, but now I’m not so sure. Don’t you feel…I dunno, guilty? For abandoning your purpose?”
“I didn’t abandon it,” Wen hiccups. “I’m just…I need to be more. And I’ve found more here.”
I shake my head. “That’s the point of bloodright though. What’s in your veins is already enough. Your mother passed that essence on to you and raised you to hold on to it.”
Wen might be a little too intoxicated to process the philosophy I’m laying on her. She makes a low grumbling noise, her fingers tightening on the cushion beneath her. “Spoken like a true princeling who’s never had to deal with the logistics involved in seizing power,” she retorts, the words spilling out like she’s just spent the past minute formulating them. Honestly I’m a little proud of her for making that valid of a point while drunk. “I started this year with nothing. I barely knew what I was doing. Now I’m…”
“You’re what?” I ask, trying not to grin at the trap she’s just stumbled into. Wen may be colloquially known as the Flame Knight, but Ettian’s never granted her an official rank. I’m almost certain she isn’t even considered a citizen in the eyes of the people for whom she’s been toppling buildings, the people whose colors she wears with her head held high. She’s utterly devoted to Ettian, and in return she has…nothing, still. No status. No protection. No ejector seat for when this all blows up in her face.
“I’m building,” she finally decides. “I’m laying foundations.”
“You’re laying foundations for a war that’s going to trap you here forever. A war that’s going to kill you before it’s done with you.” I sigh, and I’m surprised to find there’s a real weight behind it. “Look, believe me, I don’t even want to know what the Umber empress thinks of me right now. Guess we’re both failing our mothers.”
Wen rolls her face off the pillows. A spill of moonlight from the windows overhead traces over the topography of her burns. “Sometimes I think she wouldn’t even recognize me,” she confesses. “And sometimes I think that’s for the best.”
“You’ve told me what she did, but never really what she was like.” I don’t turn it into a question, just a hanging statement begging for her to complete it. I can’t have her feeling like I’m prying. I just want her to feel like there’s something missing.
“She was kind to me and terrible to everyone else,” Wen admits. “As a mother, she was perfect. As a gang boss, she was also perfect. But she was never cruel for no reason. Her terribleness always had a purpose, whether it was gunning down a young upstart where he stood or throwing a snitch on an impossible mission. She didn’t have love from her people—she had respect. Honestly sometimes I wonder if she used your mother for inspiration. But I’d like to think she improved upon the model,” Wen says with a sly glance.
So maybe she’s not completely out of the game yet. I can’t ignore the sting of the barb, the implication that my mother could ever possibly misstep. Her way is paved by the right in her blood. When I was small, she’d tuck me in the crook of her arm during her brief visitations, running her fingers carefully through my hair as she spun stories of Umber achievement. Those stories were promises of the greatness I’d one day inherit, the greatness that only our bloodline was capable of wielding. In my memories she looms as large and unimpeachable as a goddess.
“A bold notion,” I scoff, playing exactly the jumped-up princeling Wen wants to see, “that a Corinthian mobster who never rose above the north side of Ikar could outdo the Umber empress.”
Wen shrugs. “My mother always had the benefit of hindsight. In the heat of the moment, maybe yours has better gut reactions. But, for example, if there was even the slightest chance of someone carrying on the Archon line, my mother would have rooted him out and taken him in instead of letting him slip through her fingers to wreak his vengeance on her.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like your mother. That sounds like Dago Korsa.” She flinches, and to soften the blow I add, “And you slipped throug
h his fingers in the end anyway.”
I have to be careful in this particular minefield. Wen’s sketched out the details of how the Cutter boss killed her mother and adopted her into his organization, how she fought to survive under his eye until the day a lieutenant snapped on her and threw her into the tailpipe of his speeder. She’s vowed to burn him to the ground one day, but I’m not sure what kind of emotions she has tied to that goal. And with what sounds like a little too much polish in her system, those mystery feelings are riding close to the surface. If I touch a topic wrong, she might shut down completely, rendering all my efforts wasted.
But I may never get another opportunity like this again.
“What makes you think you aren’t enough to take on Korsa?” I ask. I drop my voice low, the words quivering out of me like I’m terrified someone else might hear. “You’ve been pulling Trost up like a rug and beating your opposition out of it as if you were born to do it. You’ve gotta be an expert in the kind of warfare that would take him down by now.”
Wen snorts. “Think you’re the only one who’d call what I’m doing expert. And I’m losing my edge every day I’m stuck babysitting you.”
“So, what? You’re scared you’ll botch it?” The notion’s outrageous. Sure, she might have been a little sloppy in her methods—which was plenty worrisome when she was working for the Crown. But on her own, in a city that raised her, beholden to no one but the reason she was born? She’d burn him to the ground and walk through the fire.
And that’s the thing that’s genuinely going to sell this—I do believe in her. I believe she’s more than capable of doing the exact thing she was born to do, just as much as I believe in my own bloodright. I think it’s bullshit that she’s abandoned her purpose to ride in Ettian’s wake, and I’m hoping the weeks of being my guard have reinforced the pointlessness of her presence here. She might suspect I’m trying to drive a wedge between her and the emperor, but I don’t think she suspects that I truly think she’s capable of crushing Korsa—only that I’m trying to sway her by arguing that it’s for her own good.
Maybe she can’t be convinced to betray Ettian, but I’m betting I can convince her to be true to herself.
“I’m not scared I’ll botch it,” Wen grumbles.
“You’re gonna botch it if you keep giving him more time to dig in his roots,” I mutter, trying for disapproving but landing squarely in condescending.
“Might as well say the same about you,” Wen replies snidely. “And I didn’t have a knife at Korsa’s throat two hours ago.”
The temptation to reach over and muss her hair for that is both overwhelming and startling. Is it just because in this moment she’s a drunk teenager with her shoes off? Because I can’t see the knife on her, even though I’m sure she’s got one tucked away somewhere? This is the Flame Knight, the scourge of Trost, who drops buildings on the people trying to hold the city for my empire.
But this is also the girl I need on my side. And despite everything, I think I might be genuinely starting to like her. “You’re rooting for me, huh?” I chuckle.
Wen stills, and I can all but feel the careful bricks I’ve built tumbling down. I pushed it too far. There’s not enough distance between suggesting she’s in my corner and reminding her that means siding with a man who wants to annihilate Ettian and everything he stands for. There’s not enough between us to put her in my corner anyway. I’ve just reminded her that I benefit immensely from driving the two of them apart. She’s not drunk enough—might never be drunk enough—to let that slide.
“I’m rooting for you,” I admit, and the truth behind those words hits me like another glass of polish. “Which is more than Ettian can say.”
I watch the moment it saves me play out in the pale moonlight, watch her stabilize like a building adjacent to a blast. Her lips purse inward, her brows drop, her eyes shutter. Maybe what I said isn’t a fact, but it’s rooted in an all-too-real fear for her. Being Ettian’s rogue operative might be a worthwhile endeavor if he were as invested in her goals, but from the look on Wen’s face, he isn’t and she knows it.
She needs real allies.
She needs me.
Obviously I’m not going to suggest we run away together tonight. All I want is for her to wonder what might happen if we did.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning, my usual pacing session is interrupted by a squad of five soldiers in full tac armor storming into my quarters. They’re blacked out with helmets and cowls, but when a sixth figure enters the room on their heels, I recognize Wen’s stride immediately.
“Surprised you’re not bent over a toilet somewhere,” I remark with a smirk, quirking an eyebrow her way. I smother the panic trying to seize me. Do they know about my little rendezvous last night?
“Shut up,” the squad’s leader snaps in Killian Arso’s unmistakable harsh-edged voice. On closer examination, one of the other soldiers matches Tarsi in build, and from there my brain finally connects that this is half of the people we flew to Rana in the Ruttin’ Hell’s hold. In the time since Archon took the planet, they’ve been working for Ettian’s administration as a lightly supervised task force. Wen did her best, most destructive work with them, though I’ve heard plenty of rumors suggesting they’re getting on just fine—possibly even better—without her.
“Are we clear?” Arso asks.
“Room’s secure,” one of the other soldiers replies, tapping their goggles.
“Red Two, Red Six, secure the package.”
“What do you mean pa—” I manage before two of them are on me, one pulling my arms together in front of me as the other snaps a set of cuffs—real cuffs, chained together, not the ceremonial platinum nonsense I’ve gotten used to wearing in public—around my wrists with practiced fluidity. The panic I’ve been holding at arm’s length breaks free and coils around my neck as I remember all too well the feeling of being bound and marched to what I thought would be my execution.
I’m not well dressed enough to be killed in public right now. I almost open my mouth to announce that fact, but then Arso flips a hand signal and I find myself yanked bodily out of the room before I have a chance to say anything.
Wen moves in to flank my other side as we rush through the halls, her head bent low and one arm braced against my back. “What the rut is going on?” I mutter, leaning over to her ear.
She draws a breath to answer, but before she gets a word out, the shriek of air-raid sirens blares through the palace.
There was a feeling of muddled tension before, but the piercing howl carves it into perfect clarity. Trost is under attack. And even though I’ve only lived on Archon soil for a little under three years, I understand the visceral fear these people feel, a fear rooted in the sight of a dreadnought in their skies seven years ago, in the rumble of boltfire pummeling into the ground, in the acrid smell wafting from the brand-new crater blasted just north of the city. The Warning Shot was a reminder of just how frail Trost is against a dreadnought’s guns, and if any of those ships have broken through to our skies, annihilation is certain to follow.
The hall collapses into a flurry of activity, doors opening and slamming, people slinging datapads back and forth as they shout and beckon. My escort closes tight around me, packing me between their shoulders. I’m not sure if I’m meant to be seen. I’m still trying to puzzle out why they’re blacked out and I’m not when an abrupt yank on my elbow veers me into a recess in the corridor where one of them jams a hand into a crack in the wall.
A door swings open into a familiar orange-tinted darkness.
I balk like I’ve never seen it before, forcing the soldiers escorting me to tighten their grips. Better to act like I don’t know this place—and on the assumption that only one other person here knows what went down in these tunnels last night. That person wheezes a consternated sigh that fogs her goggles and shoves me forward into the dark.
The tunnels seem a thousand times tighter with seven people hustling through them. I lose track of the turns and nearly trip over my own feet when they pack me down a staircase. The temperature drops as we descend, the walls going from the smooth, refined concrete and steel of the palace to rough-cut bedrock. Down here appears to be storerooms and facilities for the palace’s support staff, but it’s eerily empty. We storm past the machines and shelving without a second glance, set on a vector for an ancient-looking boiler.
Two of the soldiers disappear improbably behind it. One of them hollers, “All clear!” and I find myself stuffed forward into a narrow slit in the crumbled stone.
I tumble out into a surprisingly open passage that seems to have been bored through the bedrock. It’s lit by harsh floodlights that skim over the outline of three agile-looking transporters—Kinos, I think. Similar capacity to an Umber Beamer, but much sleeker and a little toothier thanks to the pair of guns they sport on the top and bottom of the ship.
I glance back at the crack in the rock as the rest of the squadron worms their way through. Am I dreaming? Am I getting out of here? My knees go a little weak at the thought that I’m outside the palace for the first time since I put that ruttin’ crown on Ettian’s head. Keep it together, I warn myself. I’m just getting moved somewhere less predictable due to the inbound attack.
But if I’m getting moved, then—
I turn to find six more people waiting for us at the hatch of the nearest Kino. All of them are dressed to match the squad that escorted me here, but a few have their helmets off—including Ettian emp-Archon. He regards me with a surprisingly composed look. You’d never guess that just last night he was trying to stuff his tongue down my throat.
I’ll grudgingly admit—grudgingly—that the tac armor looks good on him. Or maybe my standards have dropped significantly to the point that “anything not Archon colors” gets me going. I’m not going to unpack that.
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