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Chapter
One
Torq
Ihissed in a breath as I buttoned up my shirt and the fabric brushed one of the small burns on my chest, a painful reminder of the final challenge within the maze. It could have been worse, I told myself. Considerably worse.
I glanced at the empty bed across from mine, the bed neatly made with the gray blanket tucked mercilessly tight. My roommate wouldn’t be returning, although I didn’t know if he’d been a victim of an alien beast or one of the other deadly challenges. So far, no one could tell me, and I wasn’t sure if I truly wanted to know.
We hadn’t been close, but he had been one of the only other high-born Drexians in our cadet class, so we’d had a baseline understanding of each other, even if he had talked too much for his own good. Now he was gone, and the room felt unnervingly quiet.
At least I’d survived. At least I hadn’t been eaten by one of the vicious alien beasts that had been roaming the maze. At least I’d made it out.
“Barely.” Even now, I shuddered as I thought about the trials and how close I’d come to dying. No doubt about it, I would have died if it hadn’t been for the other cadets in the maze with me and the two instructors.
I pushed this thought roughly from my mind. I hadn’t been raised to be grateful to those who were beneath me, and every one of the cadets and instructors who’d gotten me through the trials were what my high-born family would consider beneath them.
Now my mind stirred with thoughts of my family, something I wanted to dwell on even less than almost perishing during the trials. But it was impossible to banish them from my mind forever, since it seemed like I was haunted by their influence even when I wasn’t with them. Even when I was at the academy and far from their grasp.
I smoothed my hands down the front of my dark shirt, glad that my family hadn’t been at the trials, glad that they hadn’t witnessed me emerging from a ship filled with humans, glad they wouldn’t know that I hadn’t made it out solo.
But they would know. They always knew. It was one of the curses of being from a well-known clan. Their power and influence meant that they had friends—well, informants—everywhere.
I wondered if they had known some of the High Commanders who’d been dragged off the dais. Then I remembered that those Drexians had intended for me to die along with every other cadet, and I hoped that my family didn’t have a connection to them. My parents wouldn’t have allowed me to come to the academy if they’d known, would they?
That should have been an automatic no, but with my parents, I genuinely did not know. If they’d been told that sacrificing their son would gain them favor with even more elite Drexians, would they have refused such an offer? The idea that they might not have rejected the idea outright made my stomach harden into a rock and familiar pain seize my heart. This was not the first time I had felt torn between the fear that I was nothing without my clan and the fear that trusting my clan to save me would be my end.
“You are not nothing without them,” I told myself, even though the whispered words felt traitorous as they left my lips. As much as I’d relied on my clan’s name to bolster my confidence in the first term, my status had done nothing for me when I’d faced down a monster. It had not been House Swoll that had gotten me through the maze. The deadly tests in the trials did not care about clan, and I was starting to think I should not either.
I pivoted toward the narrow slit of a window that let in hazy afternoon light and drew in a long breath, wishing that I could catch a hint of salt in the air from the sea. I imagined I could, and that I was standing on the cliff overlooking the Restless Sea sucking in breath after breath of crisp sea air that purged my body of all the anger and fear that had welled up in my chest.
A loud knock on the door brought me back to my dorm room and back to reality. My pulse jangled, not because the knock was unexpected but because I’d been waiting for it.
Making it through the maze had only been one part of the trials. Being selected by a school because of your actions in the maze was the part that mattered.
Of course, there was no part of me that thought I’d wash out of the academy, even though it wasn’t uncommon. My own brother hadn’t made it far enough to be placed into a school, a stain that still marred my family’s legacy and had made them even more insistent that I join the academy and become a pilot, like so many of my forefathers.
My heart pounded as I placed my hand to the panel beside the door and it slid open. My chest was already puffing out in anticipation of greeting the representative from the School of Flight. But one of the Wings wasn’t standing outside my door holding a sealed invitation.
It was an instructor from the School of Battle, the one who hung around Lieutenant Volten, and the envelope he held wasn’t imperial blue, it was purple.
I fought the urge to shake my head. This couldn’t be right. I’d been chosen to be a Blade? I was supposed to be a Wing. Every male who’d made it through the academy in my clan had been a Wing. Blades were grunts who were on the front lines of every battle, the first ones to be slaughtered, the ones who sacrificed the most blood and sweat in every war.
“Torq of House Swoll?”
I nodded mutely, my protests stuck somewhere deep in my belly, along with a primal scream.
“I am Kann of House Lannis. As an envoy from the Blades, I invite you to be initiated to our ranks.” He extended the shimmery, purple envelope that was sealed with the gold emblem of two curved blades.
I managed to take the envelope, still without speaking, as Kann stood smiling at me.
“Your bravery and blade skills in the maze were admirable, as was your dedication to your team.” Kann thumped a hand to my arm. “We need more brave and loyal Drexians like you in the School of Battle.”
I almost laughed out loud at this. I’d never once thought of myself as brave or loyal. Even though the Drexian Empire prided itself on these traits, they’d never been championed within my clan. Personal glory had been something to strive for, perhaps even courage to fly into battle, but loyalty? The only things that had ever commanded my clan’s loyalty was their own status and anything that could elevate it.
Even so, I liked the sound of it, and I liked the way Kann looked at me. Not like everyone else at the academy, who either wanted to gain favor with me or avoid me. The avoidance had come from the humans, and I’d brought that on myself. But what would it be like if everyone believed I was the Drexian Kann thought I was? What would my life be like if I was brave? If I was loyal?
As we stood facing each other in silence, Kann’s smile faltered. “Do you not wish to be a Blade?”
