Bonds of Brass (The Bloodright Trilogy #1) - Emily Skrutskie Page 0,133

ten-year-old feet, and a hot pit of shame starts to grow in my stomach.

All of that strife and struggle, all of that effort, and I’ve ended up back at the bottom of the hole I crawled out of.

I think it smells the same down here, even after all these years. Something about it reminds me of the dust in the crawl space. Or maybe it’s closer to dust after rain, flattened down into nothing. It’s sterile and old. A mausoleum. A few vehicles are still parked down here, but no one’s coming for them.

It’s quiet, and it has no right to be. Overhead, everyone with the means is fleeing the planet. My memory flickers, images of broken ships raining from the sky overtaking my senses. The Archon fleet wouldn’t shoot down the refugees. They couldn’t. But on the edge of my hearing, I swear I catch the deep rumble of bombardment.

My heart rate spikes before I have time to realize it’s a car pulling out.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. I try to reduce my world to nothing but the steady rise and fall of my chest. Only I can’t keep it steady. My lungs shudder, and I squeeze my eyes shut as if it will stop the inevitable.

Isn’t this what you wanted all along? the voice in the back of my head croons. It’s okay. You can admit it. You wanted the invasion to succeed. You wanted vengeance for the fall of Archon, and now you’ll have it. The restoration of the former empire is at hand.

But no empire is worth it if I don’t have him too.

I give in, opening my eyes as the tears come fast. They spill down my cheeks, around the flare of my nose, over lips, chin, throat, collarbone. I feel them melt into the fabric of my shirt and choke back the sob trying to rise from my throat. Everything gets magnified down here, and I don’t want the concrete shell around me to throw the noise back in my face like it did seven years ago.

All of this is my fault. I put the idea in Gal’s head that he could break Maxo Iral’s onslaught and take his throne in triumph. We could have made an opening in our plan for us to bolt for the interior if Gal hadn’t been convinced he needed to claim his victory firsthand. If I hadn’t convinced him of it.

I gave up everything I had to keep Gal safe, and it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. It’s only fair that I’m back in this garage.

My stomach turns over, and I taste bile. It’s been nearly a full day since I last ate, but I know that if I tried, I’d see it all again too soon. I rub my eyes, massaging my swollen cheeks, and some of the nausea starts to abate as I realize the tears have stopped. Now I feel so wrung-out that I could keel over and drop into a deep sleep here on the freezing concrete.

“Got it all out of your system?” a familiar voice calls, and I snap upright, yanking my stolen gun off my belt.

I sight down the barrel, searching the gloom for movement. “You’ve got a lot of ruttin’ nerve, Wen Iffan,” I try to snarl. It comes out blunted by snot and strangled by the lump in my throat, and the last bit of my dignity withers.

She eases out of the darkness with her hands over her head. Even though I’m furious, I can’t help the relief that warms through me when I realize she’s unhurt.

“How?” I ask, even though I know the answer’s going to piss me off. How is she here when Gal is gone and the world above us is turning inside out?

“Little hard to keep me in a place I don’t want to be kept,” she says with a shrug. She looks like the day has worn her hollow, and it reflects in the flatness of her voice. “Though I think once they realized I’d slipped the zip ties, gotten into the vents, and wormed out of their perimeter, they decided I wasn’t worth the trouble. They had