Gal stiffens. It’s no innocent comment coming from my lips, not when he’s seen firsthand what this place seems to awaken in me. I can’t want the resistance to launch an assault. I don’t want the resistance to launch an assault. Not when our friends would be caught in the crossfire. Not when it’s only been seven years since the last war.
I take a deep breath, trying to sort through the facts. First, we have to give the resistance information. Second, we need the resistance to make it back to the Archon territories.
But a third fact slips into my mind, one with ramifications that go far beyond the crisis we’re facing. Third, and maybe most important, Gal needs to return to his empire with a show of strength. Something massive, something bloody. Something that will leave a mark.
And this plan doesn’t need the resistance to win.
“So we give them information,” I say slowly. “But not all of it. And not always the right information. We know the interior defenses inside-out.”
Gal straightens, inhaling deeply. I turn my head to find his face taut, his hooded eyes pinched shut. I know he doesn’t want me to go on. I also know he doesn’t want to finish the thought out loud himself.
So I lean forward, my lips skimming his ear. “We could convince them it’s possible to win Archon back. And then we walk them into a trap. Iral only escaped the first time because he had a trick up his sleeve that can’t be repeated. Imagine telling your mother that you didn’t flee—that you came here to pursue the Archon uprising that tried to out you as heir and obliterate you. You could take the throne with the defeat of Maxo Iral and his final rebellion on your hands.”
He stares at the crooked nest of his clenched fingers, and hangs his head. “The galaxy would bow to me. If…If I…”
If he brings her Iral’s head. If he stoops to the violence it took for Iva emp-Umber to claim her legacy and outdoes her a thousandfold. If he finishes what she started, crushing the Archon Empire before it has a chance to rise again.
“It’s necessary,” he says, but the words are more question than statement. “We have to stop all of this. If we start a war, the death toll would easily outnumber the people on this base. But then that makes me an asshole if I choose to see it all in sums, using the math to decide who lives and who dies. And I don’t want…I know what my mother’s blood makes me capable of. I could come at Iral with every ounce of hate in my heart for the way he dragged out the destruction of the last war for another two years. If he had laid down arms when his imperials did, so many lives would have been spared. And I can stop him from doing it again, but then what does that make me? And…why are you looking at me like that?”
I’m looking at him like that because this is the Gal I know. Iva emp-Umber’s brutal reign will cede to a boy whose heart is torn in half at the thought of destroying the man he’s feared since he was small. Gal and his uncertain heart will steer Umber away from a legacy of conquest and bloodshed, away from the ruins of his parents’ war.
And I’ve also realized something else. Something I can never tell him, because it’s only going to shatter us completely. It sits on the edge of my tongue like a lit fuse. And Gal is looking at me expectantly, waiting for something. “I…can’t process all of this,” I tell him, because adjacent truths are more manageable. I keel backward, pulling away from him and stuffing the pillow over my head.
“Yeah, okay.” The mattress bounces slightly as Gal pushes himself to his feet. “We need some real sleep. And then we’ll figure this out.”
I listen to him puttering around, getting ready for bed. I know I should change and shower, but I can’t even bring myself to sit up again. I feel like the weight of this day is pinning me to the bunk. Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve chosen. And yet, I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep—not with all of that tumbling through my thoughts nonstop.
On the other side of my eyelids, the room goes dark.
And then there’s a slight dip in the mattress again, the pressure of a single knee sinking in like a testing of the waters. “I know it’s weird, but…” Gal murmurs.
Wordlessly, I roll to the side.
* * *
—
Now I really can’t sleep.
Gal dropped off in a matter of seconds, his back turned to me and his breathing deep and steady. The gulf between us feels charged, and even though I have so many things to keep my mind off it, I can’t help but fixate on the bare inches separating us in this narrow, narrow bed.
I lie on my back, staring at the underside of the mattress above me. The thin light that comes through the crack beneath the door barely illuminates the geometric patterns of the stitching that holds it together. I try to count the stitches, but I keep losing track.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll be expected to give the resistance information. Tomorrow we’ll start the slow, deadly process of poisoning them from the inside. I’ll let Gal do the talking, but he’ll be guiding them into a trap that’s ultimately my design. My idea. My fault.
But I don’t believe in the empire that pulled me out of the rubble and glued me back together. And I don’t trust the empire that crumbled to dust and left me to die. My only allegiance is to an empire that doesn’t exist yet, to the possibility of Gal’s future rule. Maybe that makes me a traitor. Maybe it forfeits my soul. But for him—for this disastrous boy sleeping next to me—I would, I will.
CHAPTER 18
I WAKE TO a hand clutching my chest. Disoriented, I snatch it by the wrist and turn my head to find Gal half-awake and doing his damnedest to fight his way free from the blankets that pin him to the bunk.
“Hey, whoa,” I murmur, but my voice is nowhere near enough to snap him out of the raw animal panic that has him in its talons.
Whatever’s got him so worked up, we can’t afford it. No one can ask questions about why he’s so high-strung. He tries to rip free from my grasp, and I fight back, wrenching his arm against my chest as I loop my other arm around him and pin him.
He kicks and flails for a few seconds before his brain seems to register why he’s being held down. I roll on top of him for good measure, and he lets out a hoarse, helpless croak.
“Hey. You’re okay. You’re fine. Deep breaths.”
As he takes them, I key into three rhythms all at once. The first is my own heart, rattled from the sudden shock of waking. The second is Gal’s, fluttering underneath me like a trapped bird.
The third is the low, sonorous rudiments of skin drums outside. It wasn’t a bad dream that sent Gal into a panic. It was the nightmare of his reality. “They’re just the wake-up call,” I mutter into his ear.