Wraith? Oh gods. No, no, no. Not again. I strain against Hanji’s grip, practically choking myself as I try to reach the door controls. Wraith Squadron is the designation twenty people once used to try to kill me. No way in any system’s—
Hanji jerks me back, cackling into the comm. “Nothing, Gal’s just freaking out,” she tells whoever’s on the other end then clicks it off. “It’s fine, Your Highness. Just a bit of fun. We’ve been calling ourselves that for a while now. Seemed a shame to stop.”
I think I’ve miscalculated in nearly strangling myself. Not enough oxygen’s getting to my brain—I can’t make sense of half of the things Hanji’s just said. “So you decided to give me a heart attack instead?” I wheeze, whirling on her.
“Yeah, well…okay, I get it, it was mean. But seriously—Wraith Squadron has your back.”
“If you really had my back, you wouldn’t be—”
“I’m popping the outside hatch in a minute,” Hanji interrupts, dragging open a bin full of emergency breach suits. “You might survive the exposure by the time our ride arrives, but I wouldn’t gamble on it. Suit up.” Hanji pitches one at me.
I have a few suggestions where she can stuff it, but instead I bite my tongue and jam my feet into the leg holes. Hanji and the void scare me in equal measure, and if one’s going to have her way with me, I’m sure as hell not going to let the other one touch me.
When I grab a breach helmet and seal it over my head, Hanji nods in approval. “Well, here goes nothing,” she says, and yanks up the mechanical release for the void-side door.
“What do you mean ‘Here goes—’ ”
The whumph of escaping air shocks me to silence as I instinctively haul in what could be my last breath. The perfect quiet of the void has rushed in to replace all of the airlock’s atmosphere, rendering Hanji mercifully and terrifyingly silent. She reaches out and grabs my wrist, and I do my damnedest to dig in my heels, despite it being a lost cause. She yanks me forward, toppling us out of the Torrent core’s gravitational field and into that sideways-swimming-pool-dive sensation of slipping into zero g.
I go from struggling to worm out of her grip to holding on for dear life in the space of a blink as the void truly takes hold of me. The powersuit’s propulsion is the only thing that’s going to save us from drifting hopelessly in the blackness of the dreadnought’s hollow inner space until our air runs out, and I very clearly remember what happened to Wen the first time she tried it out.
After a minute, it becomes clear that Hanji hasn’t even gotten to that step yet. “Do you even know how to turn it on?” I yell pointlessly into my helmet. “Did you seriously just toss us out into the void with no idea how to operate the ruttin’ suit? ARE YOU. COMPLETELY. BRAINLESS?” I punctuate each word with a smash of my fist against the powersuit’s helmet, which, while ineffective, does genuinely make me feel better about our predicament.
Hanji seems unbothered. At first I think it’s just because she can’t hear me, but the more I smack her, the more I realize she’s glowing against the darkness of the Torrent’s interior. Something has a light on us.
I stop trying to beat through a tactical weave and twist, squinting against the blinding beams.
“You’ve gotta be ruttin’ kidding me,” I groan.
The familiar outline of the Ruttin’ Hell flashes its lights.
* * *
—
The second the cargo-hold door seals behind us, I start pounding on the floor. The sound’s deadened by the void, but as air trickles back into the hold, the volume starts to reach my ears. As soon as it levels off, I tear off my breach suit’s helmet and let out a long, wordless yell that rattles the walls of the hold around me.
I’m about to turn on Hanji and see if I can’t find a way to crack that powersuit open and start beating her face in again when the door above me slams open and Ollins Cordello all but jumps on top of me.
“Holy ruttin’ shit, it worked!” he crows, clapping me on the back obliviously and then bouncing over to all but run circles around Hanji’s powersuited bulk. “Holy shit! We got the prince. We got the suit. We got you. Wait, it is you in there, right?” he asks, slapping his hands excitedly against the suit’s chest.
“Yeah, it’s me, and stop that—it’s so loud in here,” Hanji gripes. She grapples uncertainly with the powersuit’s helmet. “Okay, how do I—”
“Gal?”
I whirl to find Rhodes Tsampa picking his way cautiously down the ladder into the hold. His disbelieving grin is stark-white against his deeply dark skin, and I swear I catch a glint of tears in his eyes as he steps off the ladder and pulls me into a hug that I don’t return. Before he can process the fact that I don’t look particularly thrilled to be here, Hanji yells, “Hey galaxy brain, get over here. I can’t figure out how to get out of this thing.”
Rhodes easily abandons me for the more interesting problem. “How’d you get into it in the first place?” he asks, pacing around her as he peers curiously at the powersuit’s joints.
“I dunno, Iffan had it all figured out.”
“And she didn’t tell you how to open the suit back up?”
“We were in a bit of a rush,” Hanji snaps, prying impatiently at her shoulder plating.
“Okay, well, bend over and let me see if I can get inside—”
“Gods, Tsampa, buy me a drink first.”
“Do you want me to leave you in there? Because I will leave you in there.”
I startle when a gentle hand slips onto my shoulder, nearly elbowing Rin Atsana in the face when I whirl on her. “Welcome back,” she says softly, a wry smirk tucked in the corner of her lips. “Did you miss this?”
I blink.
Because there’s a truth there. I did. I spent months in captivity yearning for their company, longing to be surrounded by people on my side. I missed their simple chaos so goddamn much, and watching Ollins dance circles around Rhodes and Hanji as the former tries his damnedest to yank the latter’s helmet off, I’m tempted to breathe deep and soak it all in again.
But then there’s the fact that they’re dragging me bodily away from everything I’ve chosen.
And—
Wait.
“The four of you?” I ask, both to stave off answering Rin’s question for real and because I have a concern.
“The four of us,” Ollins says, sidling up to my other side and throwing an arm around my neck.
“Then who’s flying the ship?”
There’s a brief beat.
“Shit!” Rin yelps, and darts for the ladder.
The four of them, I think with an exasperated roll of my eyes. Float me out the airlock, this is gonna be a long trip. I’ve probably got better odds of survival stuffing the breach-suit helmet back over my head and hopping out the rear door. I glance right to find Ollins grinning at me.
“Weren’t you taller?” he asks.
I shrug him off me and clamber up the ladder after Rin.
Credit where credit’s due. Somehow those four dipshits busted me out of there. Well, those four dipshits and Wen, whose turn I still don’t completely understand. I thought she’d finally done what she set out to do. She’d carved a place for herself in the Archon administration and proved her worth unquestionably with her run at the Fulcrum. And, what? She just threw all that goodwill she spent months fighting for away?
I guess that’s assuming she gets caught. Which might be a tall order, given how hectic things are now that the entire Tosa System has been claimed in the name of the Archon restoration. With her intimate knowledge of the Torrent’s workings, it’s entirely likely that she managed to frame Wraith Squadron—which I still can’t believe they’ve called themselves—as the sole perpetrators of my abduction.
I move through the Ruttin’ Hell’s corridor like a ghost, haunting the familiar darkness. The kitchenette and ba
throom on one side. The bunks on the other—the ones where Ettian and I curled up together with Wen overhead the last time I was aboard. At my back, there’s a sudden gleeful shout that must mean progress has been made in getting Hanji out of the powersuit.
And ahead, the cockpit. Rin’s taken the pilot’s chair, and I drop into the copilot’s with a sigh of resignation, my hands automatically flying to their usual places on the communication screens before realizing that Rin has done the smart thing and disabled them completely. She shoots me a worried look, her tongue poking between her teeth as she steers us onto a vector bound for the same outer-hull hatch I entered the Torrent through all those months ago.
“You seem…less than thrilled about all of this,” she hazards.
“Perceptive,” I grant her with a snap-point motion that used to make me feel so imperial. Now it feels like some kind of cosmic joke.
The feeling deepens when the massive hatch starts to slowly winch open, letting in a sliver of the starlight beyond the Torrent’s hull. Like Ettian said, the dreadnought’s been instructed to let the Ruttin’ Hell go. Our departure is by the mandate of the emperor himself.
What’s he going to think when he discovers me gone? Horror starts to rise inside my gut as I realize exactly what he could think. Maybe he’ll guess that I was planning on leaving all along, that I only told him I’d stay so that I could devastate him the way he devastated me. I’ve spent the past months manipulating him—why wouldn’t I turn him throwing the door open for me into one last chance to tear his heart out?
The Torrent disgorges us into the stars, and I slump deeper into my seat, throwing my feet up onto the inert dashboard. Back to square one again. At this point, the sensation is so familiar that it’s almost comforting.
In fact…
Well, the thing is I’ve been here before. Over and over, I’ve been kicked back down to nothing, my resources stripped away, the careful plans I built shattering around me. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I always have more than I thought. Sure, they’ve torn me off the Torrent, away from Ettian, away from the choice I thought I’d made and the sureness I thought I’d instilled in his heart. Sure, it hurts like a dreadnought’s hit me at superluminal, like something has torn through my essential matter.
My eyes slip sideways to Rin Atsana. Clever Rin, who can build almost any piece of weaponry if you just slide her the schematics. In the hold, I have Rhodes Tsampa, who could find those schematics if they exist and whip them up if they don’t. I have Ollins Cordello, the ever-faithful witless muscle who’s cheerfully borne the brunt of so many ill-advised plans—and holds the dubious honor of being the only academy student in history to streak the officer quarters all the way to the head’s door and back.
And I have Hanji Iwam, the devilishly smart tower tech turned soldier of fortune, the only person to come close to killing Ettian emp-Archon since he took his throne, and my long-lost academy co-conspirator. She may be the trickiest asset to manage, but she’s an asset all the same.
It’s a week to Lucia from here. I don’t need them beating Archon triumph rhythms by the end of it—I just need them more loyal to me than to my mother. It’ll take a lot of talking, but if I don’t have the bones of something by the time we reach the Imperial Seat, I never deserved a crown in the first place.
I wait with bated breath as Rin takes the Ruttin’ Hell superluminal.
When the black around us settles into gray, I catch her eye, open my mouth, and go to work.
EPILOGUE
There are three versions of myself in the mirror.
The first is a photograph of me on the day I crowned Ettian. I look exhausted and betrayed, my wrists locked in platinum cuffs and my hair slicked back to expose my face to the galaxy. The image has been pulled up on one of the screens by the makeup chair for reference.
The second version is a doctored picture of a headshot taken a few weeks ago, which has been painted over with the stylists’ vision of the man they’re trying to shape me into. My skin has been smoothed over with makeup, my cheekbones have been shadowed, and the dark spots under my eyes have been brightened. My curls have been artfully tousled. I look bright, polished, and unquestionably Iva emp-Umber’s. The artists have done everything in their power to distinguish me from the boy the galaxy met in chains.
In between the two sits my face as it stands right now, desperately being yanked toward the man on the right.
It’s not going well. In theory, everything should be in place. My makeup matches the picture exactly, my hair falling in the same wavy swoops carefully placed to look careless. But there’s nothing the artists can do for the emptiness in my eyes. I try to set my expression to match their rendering, but all I feel when I mimic it is how distant I am from the way I should be feeling right now.
This was supposed to be the most important day of my life. A spare few months ago, this moment was all I ever wanted—everything I had been born for. Now my heart is tied to a man on the other end of the galaxy, who’s just lost the most effective shield he had against the reckoning coming for him. The last thing I want is to be a part of the force that’s out to destroy Ettian emp-Archon.
But there’s still a chance I can help him. A chance I can sway the course of his reckoning enough for him to escape it. The thought of the careful web I’ve been weaving lights a determined glint in my eyes, and suddenly I find my reflection twinning with the one on the right, the one that paints me with my mother’s features and her raw ambition.
Behind me, there’s a knock on the door. “Showtime, boss man,” Hanji calls through it. I rise from the chair, nodding gratefully to the pair of stylists as they bow and mumble what might be the last “Your Highness” I’ll ever hear.
Hanji greets me in the corridor, looking smart as hell in a slim-cut suit and a brand-new pair of glasses. Since my return to the capital, she and the Wraiths have slid effortlessly into my shadow—though to my chagrin, the four of them are nowhere near as effective in the role of “unofficial operative” as Wen was in Trost.
Maybe I should be thankful for that. Wen caused a lot of trouble in Trost.
I want to hate Hanji—I do hate her—for what she did to me, but in my current sketch of a plan, I need her too badly to hate her properly. She and the rest of the Wraiths have been indispensable since my return to the Umber Core, and not just for my machinations. Gods of all systems, I missed having drinking buddies, and one of the easiest ways to make people write you off as a dipshit is to surround yourself with the biggest gang of dipshits you know. What’s a kidnapping between friends, anyway? I do occasionally look at Hanji and fantasize about breaking my hands on her face again, but we’ve got a common goal now—one too important to jeopardize with a grudge.
“Any news?” I murmur, bending close so the rest of my escort won’t pick up the words.
“Still no schedule for the execution,” Hanji replies. “But I’m keeping an eye on her condition—seems like the detention facility’s not giving her too much of a problem. Swapped her arm out with a less troublesome prosthetic though, which she’s clearly not happy about. Believe her exact words were, ‘If I wanted a floppy wad of silicone, I’d—’ ”
“I get the picture. See if we can’t do something about that. Have it ready for when…”
She nods knowingly. “I’ll get Rhodes and Rin to dig up where we’re keeping it.”
As we move down the long hallway of the hypocaust, she falls into an uneasy silence. I never like Hanji’s silences—it’s usually when the bad ideas get time to percolate. Or the jokes. Not sure which is going to be worse in this moment.
So it startles me when the next thing out of her mouth is “You ready?”
We’ve emerged into another subbasement room, where a massive round platform waits—and once I step onto that thing, I won’t be able to stop what’s set in motion. It’s my last chance to run. I meet Han
ji’s gaze, my mouth going dry at the magnitude of what I’m about to do.
“No,” I tell her, shrugging. “But when has that ever stopped us?”
Hanji’s vicious smile is the fuel in my engines, pushing me that final step up onto the platform. I drop my chin against my chest, tangling my sweaty fingers together as the mechanism shudders beneath me. It lifts me up through the aperture that swivels open in the ceiling, up through the dark channel of the citadel’s innards, and out into the blinding light of day, the sight of my people, and the swell of thunderous noise that greets my arrival.
I realize with a sharp, twisting pain that I miss the Archon drums.
The glory of the Umber Imperial Seat splays before me. Towering, angular skyscrapers rake the sky like the points of a crown along the wide expanse of Triumph Way. On any other day, the road’s brass-woven concrete would light up like molten gold in the late-afternoon sun, but today a swell of humanity pours over it, dressed in their glimmering black finest. At my back, the monstrous ziggurat of the citadel looms, its brass edges reflecting lethal blades of sunlight that force everyone’s gaze to bow down to the twin pavilions and the raised path stretching between them that crown the steps up from the Way.
I spent ten years buried beneath this grandeur. Today is the first time I walk in the light above my home.
As I step out into the open-air pavilion with a beatific wave to the crowd, I glance along the raised walkway that stretches before me to the pavilion on the opposing end of the citadel steps. Two familiar silhouettes await there, and the sight of them sends guilt boiling through me.
I can barely see the glint of the sharp-edged brass crown waiting in my mother’s hands.
I still don’t know what to think of her. After months in Archon hands, I got so used to seeing her image painted with such a vicious brush that I was terrified I wouldn’t recognize her when I arrived in the citadel.
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