The thought barely has time to settle before Gal’s fingers wrap around the back of my neck, pulling me down. I let out a startled yelp, nearly losing my footing in the sand as I catch his shoulders, stopping his lips inches from mine. A look of confusion flickers across his face, his hands slipping hesitantly down over my collarbones. I shy back from his touch, pressing against the sun-warmed hull behind me.
“But you…” he says. “But I…”
“We can’t,” I croak, even though a part of me is violently raging to throw all that thinking and resolving I did aside. “You…I thought…In the river…”
“Yeah, well, you were covered in river water then,” Gal snaps, taking a few steps back and running a hand through his sweat-fluffed hair. “And I needed time to think it over—it was a lot to process, and it all happened so fast. What happened between then and now?”
I have absolutely no idea what to do with my hands, but they’re starting to shake. “I thought it over. I realized it’s stupid—it’s so stupid—”
“It’s not,” he murmurs, lunging suddenly forward, but he pulls up short when he sees the way I tense. His wide brown eyes bore deep into mine, and there’s something about the half-light that makes them a thousand times more intense. “Ettian, I have so little time left to make my own choices. I want to do everything I can to make the most of it.”
I suppress a shiver, forcing myself to hold his gaze. My hands curl into fists at my sides. “And when your time is up, you want to leave me like this?”
“I won’t leave you,” he swears with a fierce shake of his head.
I wish I could believe that. I don’t tell him how badly I wish for it—I’m afraid if the words leave my mouth, I’ll somehow fool myself into thinking we could make this work. “You will,” I mutter. “You have to. You should.”
“I’m the Umber heir,” Gal protests. “I can make a place for you. There’s always going to be a place for you at my side.”
“As what, your consort?”
“Don’t be crass.”
“Your chauffeur?”
“Ettian.”
“Your pressure point?”
And that gets him. His eyes dart guiltily away as the blow registers, his lips twisting in a scowl. He knows the games imperials play. Gal’s whole life has been spent in hiding to keep him from being used by power-hungry system governors. He’s already dragged me into enough of his mess, but if it got out that the Umber heir had given his heart to some kid from the former Archon Empire, I’d be the target of every single knife the governors might want to bury in his back. Swinging for a prince might have serious consequences, but nobody gives a shit about Ettian Nassun.
Nobody except Gal, who’s looking at me again in a way I can’t stand. “It might be my last chance to have something real,” he whispers, and I feel like my heart’s being pulled out of my throat.
We have to kill this thing before it’s too late.
I shake my head, dropping my gaze to the poor scorched plants withering in the sand. “It can’t work,” I mutter, hating every breath of the truth that slips between my teeth. “It’s better like this.”
There’s a long pause, filled only by the soft chatter of the distant river and the hum of insects awakening in the twilight. Gal looks around helplessly, hugging his arms to his chest and hunching in a way that makes him look even smaller. “But you’re still…with me, right?” he finally asks.
Part of me wants to fire the snappy retort trying to force itself from my lungs, but I bite down on it. “Yeah, of course. Always.”
“Well, not always,” Gal points out.
“Fine—until we reach the Seat. Until then, I’ve always got your back.”
He flashes a weary smile, and I hate that it’s enough. “I…scraped most of the paint off a ship, and my arms are about to fall off.”
“You know, I would have taken a turn, but…”
He rolls his eyes, starting up the Ruttin’ Hell’s ramp at an unsteady gait. “We have to get moving bright and early tomorrow. Dawn at the latest.”
I nod but don’t follow. As he disappears into the dark of the ship, I tip my head back, staring up at the unfamiliar stars of this system. Even though I feel a yawning, terrible ache in my chest, there’s a thread of giddiness trying to sew it shut that brings a soft smile out of the corners of my lips. I wasn’t making it up. There was something there. Something mutual. Something that has to end, but it was real.
When I finally make my way to bed, I find Gal’s taken the top bunk.
CHAPTER 9
WE LEAVE BEFORE sunrise, and by the time the summer heat’s begun to shimmer on our wings, the Ruttin’ Hell is on its approach to Isla. The planetary capital sprawls out ahead of us, and a ping of misplaced jealousy rattles through me as I think of Trost. Isla has never been the site of any war of conquest, and this city grows tall in a way my home was never allowed to. Traffic hails and insistent drones shunt us into a regulated lane once we move over the suburbs, and my teeth grate as our speed slows and slows.
Gal’s propped up on his elbows, peering at the skyline rolling beneath us. Ships in the lower lanes cut across our view, and briefly I wonder if it’s strange or liberating for him, seeing people he won’t rule one day. He doesn’t have to think about anyone here as his future subject, and I can’t ignore the bitter taste of that reminder.
“Eyes on the sky, Ettian,” Gal warns, and only then do I realize I’ve been staring at him.
I turn my gaze to the buildings below, biting down on a scowl.
“I mean, you can enjoy the view, but your eyes are making promises you don’t intend to keep.”
My lips twitch. He’s been like this all morning—constantly reminding me that for two mismatched seconds yesterday, the door was wide open. I thought watching Gal flirt with other people at the academy was bad enough, but I underestimated how much it sucks to be in his sights and know I can’t do anything about it.
I mean, I could, but—
I focus harder on the city. Isla’s built with precision, relying on subtleties of shape and carving to distinguish skyscrapers nearly identical in build. Its character is brutalist and square, everything arranged along a clean-cut grid. Most of the downtown buildings are capped with granite carvings and ironwork in homage to the Corinthian Empire’s metal and stone. Corinth coalesced from the settlements made by the people who ventured the farthest along the galactic arm back in the generation-ship days, and their choice of crude metal and rough stone represents their pride in hacking it on the fringes. The sight of such deep, established patriotism is unsettling after seven years in a conquered territory.