Bonds of Brass (The Bloodright Trilogy #1) - Emily Skrutskie Page 0,137

the equal measures of hope and fear and love. I look away.

The beady lenses of six cameras swing around, and their presence, along with all of the officials in the room, emboldens me. With all eyes watching, they can’t gun me down. I straighten my spine and stride forward, lifting my chin.

“Ettian Nassun,” General Iral says coolly. “I was wondering when we’d see you next.”

I turn my right hand around, flashing the sparkle of emeralds, the pale glint of platinum, the signet ring in all its glory, freed from its velvet prison. The anthem’s last notes fade.

“Not Nassun. Ettian emp-Archon. And you will address me by my bloodright, or not at all.”

CHAPTER 31

NO ONE KNOWS what to make of me. I don’t know what to make of me. The silence grows deafening. The fire in the hall outside goes quiet, and a moment later I hear Wen’s familiar footsteps stop short a few feet behind my back.

So I just stand there and let the truth sink in. It isn’t difficult to see. I have my father’s large brow and my mother’s full lips. If you’re looking for one, you’d miss it. If you’re looking for both, you could never. But no one’s ever scrutinized me, not since the fall of Archon. I’m a street kid, raised from nothing, one of a thousand scrappy young things who shook off the rubble of Trost.

Only, that’s not quite how it happened.

What I said on the Ruttin’ Hell was a partial truth. There was an airstrike. It had been too risky to sneak me off-world this far into the war, and so I stayed deep in the palace’s recesses, in the stone-hewn rooms that raised and sheltered me. But we weren’t deep enough when the bombs hit. My world came raining down around me. My caretaker crushed. Every exit blocked by rubble. And somehow I still lived.

I still lived, but I couldn’t survive for long down there. Not until a world-shattering rumble sent tremors through the ground that freed an opening in the wreckage I had spent days scrabbling at, trying to dig a way out. Not until I found the panel behind the boiler and walked a mile in the dark of the mine-cut tunnel, my feet bleeding, my fingers scraped raw, my royal garb tattered beyond repair and recognition.

By that time, the war was over—the Warning Shot fired, my parents captured, our armies crushed, and Iral’s crusade of revenge only beginning. My useless bloodright hung on a platinum chain around my neck, the signet ring too large to fit on my ten-year-old fingers. In the parking garage, I wrapped it in one of my torn sleeves. I didn’t get the velvet bag until much, much later.

Now I hold the ring high for the whole court to see. Every camera and every pair of eyes fixes on the metal and stone, the pale platinum stark against my darker skin. They all know what it is. They all know what it means.

I wait for the doubt to find its voice. I may look the part, but maybe that’s luck. The ring could be forged. The imperial inflection I gave my voice when I announced my true name could be the product of careful practice.

I can’t look at Gal. Can’t bring myself to face his reaction. I only have eyes for Iral, the font of power that flows into the rest of this room. His gaze is steely, but I catch a glimmer of something that looks suspiciously like hope. He’s the first to speak. “Why now?” he asks, the first question I would have asked too.

The one I’m ready for. The one that will hurt the most to answer. “Because of him,” I say, still not looking at Gal, even though everything in my voice points in that direction. “Because I needed the Umber heir’s trust more than I needed an army that might lose. I needed to keep him close. He was the most valuable bargaining chip I had. He’s enough to win our empire back, and until the moment you took Rana, I wasn’t sure it was possible without him.”

The flattery eases the suspicion in the general’s eyes. The explanation wipes some of