Oaths of Legacy Read online

  Oaths of Legacy is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Emily Skrutskie

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Circle colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Skrutskie, Emily, 1993– author.

  Title: Oaths of legacy / Emily Skrutskie.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Del Rey, [2021] | Series: The bloodright trilogy; book two

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021003365 (print) | LCCN 2021003366 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593128923 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593128930 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Inheritance and succession—Fiction. | Government, Resistance to—Fiction. | Gays—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S584 Oat 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.S584 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2021003365

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2021003366

  Ebook ISBN 9780593128930

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design and title-page illustration by Edwin Vazquez, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Ella Laytham

  Cover illustrations: © Charles Chaisson

  ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Emily Skrutskie

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  There’s a quiet to captivity. Its monotony steals time. I can feel myself getting slower and duller to match it.

  It’s the exact opposite of what I should be doing. If all had gone according to plan, I’d be at the Umber Imperial Seat right now, preparing to take my crown. I’d be caught in a tumult of meetings designed to bring me up to speed on the seven-year handover process that would begin the day I turned eighteen. I’d be proving to my mother, Iva emp-Umber, that I deserve wholeheartedly to take up her mantle—that I am the perfect heir she raised. That’s all gone to hell now.

  All of this is to say that my guard is solidly down when the man comes crashing through the grate on the ceiling.

  I’m lounging on an ostentatious couch that used to belong to Berr sys-Tosa, legs kicked up on a pillow, and for a moment I find myself locked in my messy repose as my body scrambles to inject the necessary adrenaline into my bloodstream. Two horrible, still seconds pass as the intruder locks his sights onto me.

  Then he lunges.

  I grab the pillow from behind my head and fling it at him, but it glances harmlessly off stealth-black tac armor. I barely manage to snag the pillow at my feet and jam it up between us before he’s on me, his right hand swinging up with an obvious glint in it. The blade sinks into the pillow, the tip of it tearing free mere inches from my throat. The sight of it sparks something deep in my gut, a survival instinct so strong that for a moment my brain takes the copilot’s chair. I twist my arms, yanking the knife away from my jugular as I brace one foot on the sofa beneath me and lunge upward.

  The assassin staggers back a step, giving me the space I need to snatch his wrist and lever his arm up over his head. The whites of his eyes flare in surprise, and I jam the heel of my hand up against the hilt of his blade, popping it out of his grasp before he can counter. The clatter of metal against the stone floor sends a pulse of relief coursing down my spine.

  Then the man’s free hand latches around my throat.

  He throws me down hard, nearly cracking my head open on the tiles. I’ve got one breath left in my lungs, and before he can tighten his grip, I holler, “Help!”

  My brain slides back into the pilot’s chair just in time to realize what a waste that is. There are guards stationed outside my room, but their only order is to prevent me from getting out. They don’t care about anybody getting in—in fact, they’d probably welcome the death of the Umber heir with open arms. Most people in this palace are solidly on the side of cutting off the Umber line of succession.

  I’m one of the few holding out on the other side. I squirm as my throat collapses under the assassin’s weight, trying to wrench a knee up somewhere soft. All I find is more tactical weave, bruising me wherever I try to strike it. My hands scrabble fruitlessly at his wrists, a plea caught in my spasming windpipe. All my life, I’ve been surrounded by people who leap into action whenever someone tries to kill me. Bodyguards when I was a kid, growing up in the shadows of the Imperial Seat. Sleepers once I left its safety to study on Naberrie and train on Rana, in the heart of the former Archon Empire. And when that life and the secrets that propped it up shattered on a clear winter’s day in the skies above the academy—

  When a Corinthian mobster on a wiretram raised his gun with my heart in its sights—

  When the great Archon general Maxo Iral, risen from the dead, victorious in his bid to reclaim the old empire’s capital and have his vengeance on my parents for their conquest, held my fate in his hands—

  Fury strikes like flint, and my blood ignites. My gaze flicks sideways and catches the end table perched next to the couch. Within reach?

  It had better be. I lash out with one hand, knocking over the glass of sweetwine I’ve been nursing. It shatters with a sharp, clear noise that doesn’t break the assassin’s laserlike focus on watching the life drain from my face.

  Pity. If he’d looked, he would have caught the moment my fingers closed around the stone coaster.

  A thrill washes over me the moment I slam it into his temple. I feel myself come back to life in the crunch—all the way back, back from the languor that’s lasted so long that I’ve nearly lost track of the time I’ve spent here. His hands spring free as he instinctively reaches up to guard his head against another blow, and I choke down the breath I sorely need. But the air has its price; the assassin is already lunging for the knife he dropped. I surge to my feet and hurl the coaster at him, striking him hard on the back of his skull. He falters enough that I have the opening I need to leap on top of him.

  No one is rushing in to save my life now. For the first time in nearly eighteen years, I have to do the damn thing myself. My fists rain down on the man’s head furiously, my stom
ach convulsing as I try to keep down the urge to gag long enough to stop him from killing me. I lose my rationality to the steady rhythm of beating him senseless, and for a moment I think I understand why Archon people like their drums so much.

  It isn’t until a second set of arms wraps around me from behind that I come back to my senses. I buck and thrash against the grip, but they pin me tightly, yanking me off my knees, up and away from the twitching, groaning man I’ve left lying on the floor.

  The first clear thought lodges in my head when I spot the coaster next to him—Should have used that to finish the job, would have done more damage.

  The next: What the ever-loving rut is wrong with you, Gal emp-Umber?

  I’m half a second from throwing my head back into the nose of whoever’s grappling me when I note the emerald-green stitching on their sleeves. Imperial-guard uniforms, which means this is one of the two useless louts who were posted outside my door. Confirming that suspicion, the second surges past me, tucking a blaster back in her belt as she drops on top of my would-be assassin and wrestles his arms behind his back.

  “Oh good, you got him,” I say flatly, and she fixes me with a thin-lipped look over her shoulder. I don’t dare articulate the concern that gripped me earlier. If they were hoping the assassin would finish the job, I’m sorry to disappoint.

  My guard pulls the poor man to his feet, giving me a good look at my handiwork. His nose is crooked, one eye swollen shut, the lower half of his face painted in blood from a split lip. The slickness on my hands apparently isn’t just sweat. I reach back and wipe them on the uniform of the guard holding me.

  A resigned sigh wheezes in my ear.

  “Traitors,” the assassin chokes, spattering blood in the face of his captor. “That Umber whelp should be beheaded at the seat for the galaxy to see. Not kept in this ruttin’ jewelry box.” He rolls his eyes at the lavish appointments around us.

  “He has a point,” I mutter, and the hands restraining me tighten painfully. My guards are well aware of the public opinion. The Archon people want to give the Umber imperials a taste of their own medicine. Justice for my mother’s execution of Marc and Henrietta emp-Archon. They’ve been calling for my blood for weeks, but this is the first time anyone has had the gumption to take the matter into their own hands. I’m almost impressed, although that sentiment is dampened by the fact that he very nearly succeeded.

  Probably on account of being kept in a ruttin’ jewelry box. If I were in a normal cell with normal round-the-clock surveillance, there’d be no chance someone could get within striking distance. But instead I’m kept in comfort and nearly got my throat cut if not for a fancy embroidered pillow.

  “I’ll get this asshole to a cell and call in a perimeter check,” the female guard says. “You take the prisoner to the emperor and report the incident.”

  I resist the urge to squirm out of the guard’s grip, even though he releases me a second later. My blood heats back up to a simmer in a flash. Cool it, hot shot, I tell myself, rolling my head from side to side as I wring my hands, trying my best to wipe some of the slickness off my skin. Absentmindedly, I muss my hair, as if that’s going to do anything to smooth it back from its unruly state. Probably shouldn’t have done that. Getting the blood and spit out later is going to be hell.

  But if I’m going to see the emperor, I gotta look my best. As the guard beckons me toward the door, the absent weight at my wrists reminds me that I’m forgetting something. “One second,” I call to him, bustling to the other side of my suite.

  The platinum cuffs are right where I left them. My reflection warps in them as I approach, turning me into a twisted facsimile that blows monstrously huge as I reach for one. The cool, solid weight of it slips around my wrist so easily that for a moment I let it be nothing but comforting.

  These cuffs have been my constant companions in the weeks since General Iral ran down the Ruttin’ Hell and dragged me out in front of the galactic eye. Wrought in the Archon Empire’s metal, they mark me as a prisoner of the Crown, reassuring everyone I encounter of my status within the court. I wear them every time I leave my quarters—because of course otherwise it’s a little difficult to tell where I fit in, given the way the emperor has chosen to imprison me.

  I spare the room’s decor another withering glance. It’s neither my fault nor the Archon Crown’s that I’m being kept in such perceived luxury—that honor goes entirely to Berr sys-Tosa, the governor whose abandoned mansion the Archon usurper has turned into his base. In fact, most of the trimmings in this room are still done in obsidian and brass, the stone and metal of my own empire.

  The empire I stand little to no chance of inheriting, thanks to the cuffs around my wrists.

  I rub one sleeve over the red-stained thumbprints I’ve left on them, then straighten my back. “Right then,” I tell the guard. “Let’s go see the emperor.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The first time I entered the room that would become the Archon court, I was cuffed in brass and convinced I was about to die.

  There wasn’t much time to admire the majesty of it with its Umber trappings—the vaulted ceiling above, the geometric brass statues that not-at-all-subtly point the eye to the center of the room. General Iral’s steady hand kept an iron grip on my shoulder as he marched me to the dais at the court’s focal point and started barking orders. I stood at the eye of the regime change’s storm, watching as the incoming Archon army installed itself firmly in the hole Berr sys-Tosa left when he ceded the planet to Iral and betrayed my identity.

  They had been setting up cameras, and I knew I was about to be shot in front of them.

  I’d almost made my peace with it when the faint strains of the Archon anthem echoed from the hall outside. Followed by boltfire. Followed by a senseless boy striding through the ornate doors, brandishing a platinum-and-emerald ring and declaring himself to be heir by bloodright to all of Maxo Iral’s spoils.

  A senseless boy I was in love with up until precisely that moment.

  Now it’s my turn to blow through those doors, my escort’s grip locked firmly around one of my biceps as he slams them shut behind me and signals to the others guarding the room. Within seconds, every exit is sealed, trapping us under the cavernous vault of the court’s high ceiling.

  Trapping me in a room with him.

  I keep my gaze averted as the guard marches me up to the dais, passing the officials who had been presenting to the emperor before our interruption. They throw glances my way that dance the line between hatred and amusement. I feel the weight of their attention hit my platinum cuffs the strongest. Good, I swear I hear them think. My humiliation is proof that all is right with the world. Doesn’t even matter that I have blood on my knuckles that’s not mine—as long as I’m cuffed, in their eyes I’m harmless.

  And much like the guards posted outside my room, they don’t give a shit if I come to harm. The only person in this palace who actually does is sitting on the throne ahead.

  I can’t look at him. I have to look at him. He’s a black hole and a burning sun all at once, the gravitational center of everyone in the room. All I want is to escape him, but everything about him makes that impossible.

  I pin my focus to the cuffs on my wrists and my twisted reflection within them, wishing the Archon occupation hadn’t done away with the brass sculptures. I could have spent hours distracting myself in their geometries. Instead, all I have is my own image thrown back at me in the trappings of my imprisonment. Since the moment the emperor presented the cuffs to me, pleading with me to understand that it was just for the coronation ceremony—just for the cameras, just for the galaxy to see and know for sure that I was his prisoner—I haven’t let the goddamn things out of my sight. If I’m going to be his prisoner, I’m going to rub it in his face as much as I can. Every moment he sees me in the cuffs is a reminder of what he’s done to me, and I want that wound to bleed foreve
r.

  In the warped, silvery metal, I see him rise abruptly from his throne. “What,” Ettian emp-Archon asks, “the ever-loving rut is going on?”

  “Perimeter breach, Your Majesty,” the guard dragging me says. “The intruder’s been apprehended, but we’re going on lockdown until we figure out exactly how he got in.”

  It’s absolute agony to hold my tongue, but I bite down on the urge to butt in. Ever since Ettian burst through the doors of this room with that unforgivable signet ring on his finger, I haven’t said a single word in his presence, and I’m not about to break that streak just to be pedantic. Instead I twist my wrists, knowing the glint of the cuffs will catch his eye and the sight of blood on my hands will keep it.

  “What happened?” Ettian asks. In my warped periphery, I see the suggestion of him sweeping down from the dais. “What did you do this time?”

  Don’t you ruttin’ dare react, I warn myself, even though it’s taking a full-body effort just to keep myself from rolling my eyes. Over the past month, I’ve taken every opportunity possible to test the limits of my imprisonment. Knocking plates off tables and watching them shatter. Clicking my cuffs together over and over again until the guards’ eyes start to twitch in time with the noise. If I had the means, I would have sent the bedsheets up in a blaze, but I haven’t figured out how to start a fire yet. The aim of the game is petty annoyance—seeing just how much I can get away with in the confines Ettian has imposed, and showing off to the guards just how loose a leash he keeps on me.

  “The intruder…got to him,” my guard admits after an optimistic pause, no doubt hoping I’d answer for the hole he’s dug himself in. “It seems to have been a targeted attempt on his life.”