The ground’s coming up too fast. My hands are numb against my Viper’s controls. I steal another glance out the windshield, through the flames wrapped around our hulls. Gal’s focus is on his instruments, but his mind must be miles away. I try to picture him beneath his helmet and visor, try to see his parents in him. Iva’s dark, hooded eyes. Yltrast’s golden skin. The proud brow distinct to the Umber line. No, I just see Gal as I’ve always seen him. Gal, who’s always been a bad liar and a good friend—except something in my darker spaces is urging me to say it’s the other way around.
And from those dark spaces, an intrusive thought hits hard and heavy. Fall back, it demands. This is the heir to the bloodline that rained hell on your homeworld. That stole your life out from underneath you, broke you, and remade you in its image. You belong with Seely. You can redeem yourself.
The fire dies around us as we slow into the atmosphere’s cradle. My fingers tighten on the controls. Thirty seconds, tops, until the Vipers on our tail start chugging boltfire into our asses again.
Fall back.
It’s where you belong.
Fall back.
Redemption.
I let out a long breath.
And a missile shrieks past my cockpit. Two seconds later, a thunderclap booms at our rear. On my dash, the command channel goes live. “Base to Gold One, watch for shrapnel,” Hanji’s voice announces, flat with raw horror. It’s the most serious I’ve ever heard her. “Runway Three’s been cleared for your approach.”
Fourteen of the defector Vipers are gone. Reduced to nothing but shredded, heated metal that spatters across our backs like rain. A hollow, terrible feeling rips through me. They were assassins. Classmates. Archon kids like me.
Obliterated.
The clatter of debris on my hull shocks me back into reality. This is what happens to everyone who goes up against the Umber Empire. To suited knights and generals and even the imperials themselves. You don’t become a hero.
You just get killed.
The six remaining Vipers scatter, pursued by a volley of heat-seekers that scream up from beneath us. We don’t have time to see what happens to them. The ground’s rolling up fast, and the spires of the academy’s buildings are rising to meet us. I punch my thrusters and adjust my drag flaps, and Gal falls in at my wing. Our approach cuts wide across the plains and finally—finally—there’s the tarmac of Runway Three.
I extend my Viper’s landing gear. Pull my nose up. Yards. Feet. Inches. The Viper hits the pavement hard, and I feel something snap. Hear the shriek of rending metal. Know without seeing that I’ve ripped my wheels off.
“Base to Gold One, you’re dragging fire,” Hanji chirps helpfully in my ear.
My flight suit’s coolant isn’t enough—the cockpit’s cooking as my Viper skins its belly on the tarmac. Sweat trickles down the back of my neck. My fingers fumble on the controls, scrabbling for the release.
There. Grab. Pull. The cockpit pops open, my seat ejects, and I catapult into the mercifully cool air. A whoop escapes my lips as I watch my flaming ship skitter away beneath me, outstripped by Gal’s Viper. He streaks down the runway unhindered, leaving me in the dust and ashes. My parachutes deploy, yanking me out of my fall. I try to twist, to direct my descent, but I have no control—I’m at the mercy of the cold winds blowing in off the prairie.
By the time I touch down, Gal’s already out of his Viper. I land fifty yards away from him and immediately start tearing at my restraints. Farther down the tarmac, people are swarming Gal. First a doctor, for whom everyone clears the way, then a security team flanked by high-level academy officials.
I stagger to my feet. My legs shake beneath me. I have to get to Gal, have to talk, have to wrap my head around what’s happening. Hanji chatters in my ear, but I rip my helmet off and tear out my earpiece before I can register what she’s saying.
I stumble down the tarmac. A fire crew screams past me, bound for the wreckage of my Viper. As the siren fades, I start to make sense of the hubbub surrounding Gal. They’re talking about putting him in isolation. Summoning the governor Berr sys-Tosa from his winter estate on Imre, an inner world of the system. Arranging for transport to the Imperial Seat in the distant Umber interior.
Gal stands in the middle of the storm, his uncertain gaze flicking from face to face. His eyes find mine, and he lunges toward me. One of the security officers clamps a hand down on his shoulder. “Your Majesty,” she says urgently.
I try to push through the people, but someone grabs me. “Gal,” I wheeze, still trying to recover from the shock of the ejection and landing. None of this makes sense. I need him to make this make sense.
“Ettian, something’s—” Gal breaks off abruptly. “I…I’m so sorry.”
I’m so used to brushing those words off. So used to forgiving him instantly. But now, for once, as the security officers bundle my best friend away to whatever fate awaits him, I stand in the hollow silence left over and let him mean it.
CHAPTER 3
THE INSTRUCTOR’S ON her third iteration of my name by the time I realize she’s calling on me. “Cadet Nassun,” she declares. “We’d appreciate your input, if you’d be kind enough to join us.”
I blink. Thirteen pairs of eyes blink back at me. I’m used to dozing off in this particular leadership seminar, but our numbers have decreased dramatically this morning, leaving it remarkably easy to catch me zoning out. Four of us were among the twenty shredded in the sky by academy missiles, and the usual occupant of the empty seat to my left is sitting gods-know-where, waiting for someone to cart him home to his parents.
At least, I think that’s what’s happening with Gal. No one’s seen him since the security officers pulled him off the tarmac, no one’s told me anything, and if I think too long about either of those facts, I end up wanting to break something.
Plenty of rumors are flying back and forth. By now, the whole academy knows the Umber heir is within our walls. The base is on lockdown, and all communications have been blocked. The thinly veiled threats in the academy head’s morning announcement made the consequences of letting the heir’s identity slip past the base’s fences unquestionable. And everyone knows the traitorous connection among the other empty seats in our classrooms. Every single cadet born on Archon soil walks with caution today.
My empty stomach keens, but I can’t fathom eating. Not when Tatsun Seely and nineteen other Archon-born kids were reduced to ashes yesterday. Not when he tried to co-opt me into my best friend’s murder less than an hour beforehand. Not when that traitorous voice crept into my head seconds before the missile strike.
I can’t shake that hopeful spark in Seely’s eyes when he put his arm around my shoulders. I wonder if I was the last person he ever touched.