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.
I didn’t sleep much last night.
“Nassun,” the instructor repeats, and I straighten in my chair. “We were discussing the failure of the joint effort by the Corinthian Empire and the Archon general Maxo Iral in their gambit for the Utar System. Specifically, the personal decisions made by Iral which led to—”
My mouth goes dry, a tickle of nausea climbing my throat. “The Utar campaign failed due to a fundamental lack of resources,” I mutter. “The joint forces expected to be able to mine the system’s moons for fuel, but they didn’t establish the supply lines necessary to sustain that operation. With superior reserves, the Umber forces easily overwhelmed them.”
Too late I realize it’s the kind of answer Gal would have given—one that completely undermines the point of the question. This is a leadership seminar, and we’re supposed to be deconstructing the faults and failures of Maxo Iral, not unpacking the mechanics of intersystem warfare. The subtle point I’m supposed to be making, the one the instructor wants to hear, is how Archon leadership was inherently unfit, making Umber intervention not just necessary but downright humane in comparison. But I’m not keen on thinking about the ways the general failed.
After Knightfall, he was the next hero the Archon people hung their hopes on—myself included. We realized that we couldn’t rely on one person in a powersuit to come swooping in and save us. We needed people like Iral, people who could command hearts and minds, who could convince you to be your own goddamn hero.
Five years after they slaughtered the suited knights, the Umber imperials hung Maxo Iral on an electrified crucifix.
So much for heroes.
The instructor raises a brow. “Do try to be present the next time you show up for class,” she says, and moves her imperious gaze to the next cadet.
I scowl. None of this makes any goddamn sense. Gal is a prince, we nearly got killed yesterday, twenty kids died, and somehow I’m back in class. Somehow the academy is carrying on like the galaxy hasn’t suddenly reversed its spin. No time to catch my breath. Not even time to catch some decent sleep.
I let my eyes slide shut.
* * *
—
We were fifteen when we met. Both of us wide-eyed, clutching duffels, dressed in the simple grays of first-year cadets. His nose was too big for his face in the same way my ears were. We’d been assigned to the same bunk after the ceremony that marked our induction into the Umber Imperial Academy. I didn’t know what I was getting into when he shook my hand and introduced himself as Gal Veres. I smiled and told him my name was Ettian Nassun and he could have the top bunk if he wanted. Maybe I should have noticed the imperialism in his blood when he took it immediately.
At first, we were only friends in the way proximity demanded. Neither