He pauses, and when his voice is strong enough to come back, it’s suddenly drenched in despair. “I could feel the blood inside me boiling back there. I understood my mother. How she could…How she keeps…”
My hands go soft at his hips, and I slip them around until I’m pulling him into the embrace he so desperately needs. The last notes of my anger rattle through my skull, but the broken fear in Gal’s voice is more important than anything I could yell at him.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he repeats, the words pulsing against my neck. “No one knows what it’s like. To be alone like this and know it’s never going to change. To be raised for shaping the galaxy, to know that nothing else matters beyond surviving to eighteen. So many people out there are hell-bent on making sure that doesn’t happen. And now—”
His voice catches, and against my better judgment, I hold him tighter.
“The general got right under my skin,” Gal admits. “When I was a kid, I had nightmares about what he’d do to me if I ever fell into his hands. Even after Archon fell, he was unstoppable. The biggest threat the Umber Empire ever faced was Maxo Iral’s revenge. And then we crucified him in front of the citadel, and I thought it was over. I never dreamed…”
I close my eyes and nod, mostly to keep him from stammering through an explanation that’s only going to shake him more. Gal never dreamed that the threat General Iral posed wasn’t over. He never dreamed that the Shield of Archon had escaped the Umber Empire’s reach. He never dreamed that man could amass a new army among the refugees with sponsorship from the Corinthian Crown itself. And now we’re stuck on this base, bound by the promise to give Maxo Iral critical information—information he could use to launch a whole new offensive.
“It’s my responsibility,” Gal whispers. “Billions of people live in the former Archon territories—people who depend on what we’ve built for them, people who were starving under Archon rule.” An urge to correct him lodges in my throat. He’s too freaked out to react well to any attempt to untangle the propaganda he was raised on from the facts. “I have to stop this somehow. I have to protect them from what’s brewing here, from him. I can’t bring them another war. It’s only been seven years.”
I stiffen, trying to press down the wild mess of thoughts threatening to overtake my head. Gal’s breath hitches, and he draws back slightly. My eyes open and find his, dark and searching, as if he can extract all of my secrets from a look alone.
“Ettian,” he whispers. “I know…I know you were born on Rana. I know you don’t have anyone left. But I need to know…”
I should tell him. It was so easy this morning—when Wen asked, the truth slid out clean. I thought that step meant more would follow. I thought I might be able to talk about those two years after the collapse of the old empire without feeling like the scars were being hacked open. But being here, surrounded by a small army dreaming of reclaiming the Archon territories, is like having the blade still buried in my flesh. There’s no hope of closure. It only gets deeper. It only gets worse.
“You know enough,” I say, the words laced with bile. “You know I shattered with the empire. You know I built myself back from what was left.”
I catch the flicker of disappointment in his eyes. Something twists in me, equal parts guilt and anger. I don’t owe him my history, but I feel like I should, especially now that Wen knows more than him. He’s shared his own story with me, after all. Twelve years in the citadel, three on Naberrie, and two and a half as my roommate on Rana. But for him, my story starts on the day he took the top bunk. Everything before that moment is lost in a fog.
I can’t stand to be touching him anymore. I pull away and cross to the bottom bunk, where I drop on my haunches as the weight of the day comes crashing down on me. My mind is caught in the tumult of a zero-G spinout. I pull over my pack and dig through it until I reach deep into an interior pocket and find my velvet bag with its drawstring still knotted. I squeeze it in my palm, letting its familiar weight ground me.
Gal sets himself down on the edge of the bed, and suddenly the bag is scalding in my hand. I stuff it back into its pocket, clamping down hard on the shame and nausea roiling through me. He leans close, and for a moment I’m seized by the irrational fear that he’s going to try to kiss me again. “I’m sorry,” Gal whispers against my ear. “I shouldn’t have…I’m sorry.”
“No apologies,” I mutter.
The silence hollows around us, inside us.
“Please don’t blow up at me again, but…” Gal says quietly. “You’re with me, right?”
I close my eyes. “Of course.”
“You’re sure?”
I hate that he has to keep checking. When I overrode him on the tarmac earlier, it was like something came over me, ripping out the lacing that’s been keeping me together for the past seven years. And if that wasn’t enough, I had to look General Iral in the face as the man I’ve idolized since childhood laid his hope on our shoulders. I may hate that Gal has to keep checking, but there’s no question why he feels the need to do so for the second time today.
But through all of this, through every part of this mess, the only thing that’s ever mattered is Gal. There’s only one side that has my allegiance. It’s not Archon, which fell and fled, or Umber, which conquered and reshaped. It’s not the past. It’s that possibility of a better future. It’s only ever been Gal.
Gal emp-Umber, but that isn’t exactly helpful at the moment.
“I’m sure,” I tell him. I’ll tell him as many times as it takes. “No matter what, I’m with you.” The pure relief of that simple truth cuts through the confusion. I was caught in the swell of an ocean wave before. Now I’ve found my footing in the sand. “But we need to decide what we’re going to do.”
He takes his time before answering, his fingers tangling in his lap. “There’s no way out but through. If we withhold information from the resistance, they’ll get suspicious. They’ll investigate. And if they find out who I am, we’ve handed them the greatest weapon they could possibly have. With the right negotiation, they could probably ransom their ruttin’ empire in exchange for me.”
The urgency in his voice has brought him right up against my ear, and I slip my arm around his shoulders to steady him. He doesn’t tense up at the contact—instead, he relaxes right into it, melting against my side in a way that has me tensing at how easily we could topple into something out of control. “So we have to feed them information,” I whisper, trying to get my thoughts back on track. “The kind that forces them to keep us. Maybe even…the kind that gets them moving where they’re headed.”