The cityscape of Nevaeh passed below, a grid of grimy, dilapidated buildings.
Nevaeh had been the only safe haven from the Plague twenty years ago, so everyone who was not infected had moved here—including Ironbloods, who created the gardens to separate themselves from the citizens. An extra layer of protection from the Plague. But soon the space station fell into disarray, with too many citizens and too little space and no money left to buy land on-world on Eros or Iliad after the Plague was eradicated.
At least the view from the floating garden was still beautiful, he reasoned, as he rotated the piece of iron ore his father had given him between his hands. It was an old habit, and he always felt closer to his father when he did it. The ore rusted in his grip.
His father had given it to him the night he’d left for the Iron Palace seven years ago, mere hours before the Rebellion, when the palace’s North Tower went up in flames. The fire killed the royal family and—as rumors went—his father as well.
“Keep it safe until I get back, son,” his father had said. Robb still remembered the way he looked in the light that leaked through the cracked doorway into his room, thick beard and blue eyes and a lightsword on his back. “Don’t let anyone know you have it. I’ll be back by morning.”
Then he’d kissed Robb’s forehead and was gone into the night.
It was the last time Robb ever saw him.
In the seven years since, Robb still couldn’t puzzle out why his father had given him a rock, reminding him every day of what he was not. It was a piece of the same iron that made the crown, and like the crown, it rusted for everyone who touched it. Except those chosen by the Goddess to lead the kingdom. For the last thousand years that had been the Armorov bloodline, until they died in the Rebellion.
Would it rust for his brother, a Valerio?
Would it even matter?
Erik was the next in line, despite not being of Armorov blood. The Valerios were related to the Armorovs by marriage—their late aunt had married the late Emperor. But when they died in the Rebellion, the Grand Duchess became the interim ruler until the Moon Goddess chose another Emperor.
The Moon Goddess never did.
So now, what alternative did the kingdom have other than Erik Valerio? Besides, the other side of the Armorov bloodline, the Aragons, had gone reclusive after they’d lost their only daughter to outlaws.
Emperor Erik. The title made Robb sick.
The Valerio family was the wealthiest in the kingdom and ruled over twenty-three districts on Eros and Iliad, and a mining continent on Cerces, so they were expected to present themselves with a certain flair—especially at parties.
He straightened his vintage blue evening coat—it was his favorite, but after that altercation in the shrine there was a tear at the elbow. He hoped the flowers covered up the stench from the back alley of Nevaeh and no one would pay attention to the scratch on his cheek. He smoothed back his brown curly hair and took a calming breath.
“Please remove that unpleasant look from your face, darling, people are watching,” said an arsenic-and-honey voice.
Robb jumped, almost dropping the ore. He quickly pocketed it, rubbing the rust off on his dark trousers.
His mother came to rest against the railing beside him, her tea-length crimson dress, diamonds sewn into the lace, glittering like a bloodred sky.
“Was it too much to ask for you to be on time to a party for once?” she asked.
“Forgive me, Mother,” he said with a short bow. “I lost track of time.”
“And where were you this time? The horse races? A gambling den?”
“A shrine.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “The less I know about whatever you do these days, the less I’ll dislike. But you can at least be present at your brother’s celebration,” she added after a moment, pursing her red lips. “Your brother will be named heir to the Iron Throne—”
And crowned on the thousand-year anniversary of the Iron Kingdom, on the morning the three planets of Eros, Iliad, and Cerces aligned—Holy Conjunction—as if his brother could get any more insufferable.
The coronation next week couldn’t come fast enough.
“—and you need to start acting like the head of this family,” his mother finished.
The words made him pause. Feel nauseous. “Forgive me, what?”
“It’s only natural when the new Emperor takes the crown that he abdicates all family ties, and as the Goddess must have foreseen,” she said with an air of bitterness, “I have a second son.”
Robb bit the inside of his cheek before he could say anything he regretted. He wasn’t like his brother. At nineteen, Erik Valerio was dashing, popular, and conniving in a way that granted him whatever he wanted. He looked like their mother—tall and olive skinned, a sharp face, with straight dark hair and a smile that made you want to trust him. He was made to lead.
And as the second son, Robb never thought he would amount to much. He looked the most like their father, broad shouldered and stocky, with hair that curled like the lies that fell from his tongue.
Goddess save him, the head of the Valerio family?
That was his father’s position. His father’s title. Not his.
“Right, of course. Naturally.” He turned to flag down a waiter for a glass of champagne. “The rose blend,” he began—and paused.
The waiter wore a black collar around his neck. A voxcollar. Robb tried to keep his face placid, even though the sight of one of those horrible things made his blood boil. His grandfather had created them to control the prisoners on Cerces, but taking away one’s voice was a punishment no one should endure.
“Oh yes, I’ve been wanting to try that one—make it two,” added his mother, and the waiter bowed and left. Then she frowned. “I would much prefer Messiers at our next engagement. They do not gossip. I’m sure Lord Rasovant would let us borrow a few.”
“Is that why we’re using voxcollars on our employees?” he asked, keeping his voice level. To keep them from gossiping?
“Do you disagree with my choices?” his mother asked, narrowing her eyes. “Voxcollars keep my employees loyal.”
“Humans can’t be HIVE’d, Mother—”
“No but they can be quiet. As Valerios, we need to be mindful of what people say, especially once our Erik takes the throne.”
Because if word got out that the crown rusted for Erik Valerio, his legitimacy would be questioned, and instead of finding someone the crown didn’t rust for—including a citizen not of the nobility—the Ironbloods would rather choose their own. It was easier to control a kingdom that way.
But if he said as much to his mother, he wouldn’t have a tongue.
“And once he does take the throne,” she went on, “I will see to it that the Academy will forgive your prior misdeeds and welcome you back. I cannot have an uneducated son running my family.”
Prior misdeeds, as if his failures were simply part of a laundry list to be expunged, like every other smear on the family.
He pushed himself off the railing. “Excuse me, Mother, I think I hear my name being—”
She took his right wrist and pressed into the thin flesh to grind the tracking chip into the bone.
He sucked in a painful breath.
“I know you are still searching for him, Robbert,” she said, her eyes more steel than blue, marbles behind kohl lashes. “You will put an end to these heedless fantasies. Your father is dead, and we have a legacy to pursue. Toriean el agh Lothorne”—their family’s motto, carved into every crest and every insignia with their name—“Glory in the Pursuit. Understand that. Be the man your father couldn’t, or you will ruin us all.”
She pressed for a moment longer, grinding, grinding, thumb digging into his skin, before she released him.
He drew his arm away quickly, rubbing the tender flesh. He couldn’t meet her icy eyes. The tracking chip had been a precaution years ago, implanted permanently into both of her sons so she’d never lose her family again.
At least that was what she’d told them.
He could run, slip through the asteroid belt surrounding their kingdom, and disappear to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, but he could never escape her.
“Yes, Mother,” he replied as the waiter came back with their drinks. He pushed the glass of champagne away apologetically, trying not to stare at the voxcollar. “Can we pick this up later? Mother, it was a pleasant chat. We must do it again soon.”
He managed to control his gait as he left, careful not to let his anger dig into him until he was out of her sight. If she thought he would stop searching for his father now that he had a lead, she was sorely mistaken.
He was about to take the stairwell hidden behind a curtain of honeysuckle vines when his brother’s voice drifted up from the roses. “What do we have here? A rodent in the bushes?”
Robb’s feet slowed to a stop.
“Haven’t seen you around before. I think I would’ve noticed someone like you,” his brother went on—and one of his lackeys laughed. “And she doesn’t have a voxcollar! You really aren’t supposed to be here, are you? Trying to sneak in to get a better look at your new Emperor? Go on, take a good look.”
Now he understood why his mother had wanted the waitstaff voxcollared.
“Let go of me, asshole!”
He froze. He knew that voice—the outlaw from the shrine. The one with the rogue Metal. She had followed him here? How could Rasovant’s ship mean that much to a criminal? When caught, she’ll be arrested—at the very least for trespassing.
How had she escaped the Messiers, anyway?
The good Valerio part of him said to get the guards and call it a day, but his feet remained rooted to the spot.
“Oh, let you go?” Erik went on. “Or what? Where’d you get that uniform, sweets?”
“From your mother’s corpse, you pig.”
His brother laughed. “Aren’t you spunky—”
Turning toward the voices, Robb inhaled a little bit of courage and rounded a particularly dense rosebush to find Erik with a hand clamped tight around the girl’s wrist, his knuckle rings glinting. He never went anywhere without them.
She tried to twist against him, but his brother was stronger, thicker. Struggling was useless—Robb had sported enough black eyes in his lifetime to find that out.
Erik glanced over at him and grinned. “Oh, look who finally arrived. How’s it, brother? Do you know who this little ferret is?”
“She’s with me,” Robb lied easily, and the girl shot him a sharp glare.
“You?” his brother scoffed.
“Come now, is it that hard to believe?”
Erik’s lips curled into a sneer. He gave the girl another once-over, lingering on her scar that stretched from eyebrow to chin, and released her. “Of course not. You always made poor friends.”
It was a stab Robb tried not to flinch at. Everyone knew about the Umbal boy at the Academy—or they thought they did. But no one knew, not really, how deep that wound ran. How Robb had tried to talk him out of the window, laying their entire relationship bare to all the nosy, shitty people who watched from below. How the words didn’t matter.
And how, after, Robb himself felt like he had fractured on the ground, too.
With one last sneer to the girl, Erik Valerio snapped his fingers and left with his cronies, off to flirt with some unassuming Ironblooded girl. Erik was good at wearing masks—he’d tricked the entire Ironblood society with an amiable smile and a few choice words, so that even the knuckle rings he wore looked polite. They didn’t see what they didn’t want to, the real person underneath.
Once Erik and his escorts were gone, the girl turned to him with a scowl. “I didn’t need your help, Ironblood.”
He pulled his fingers through his curly hair. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re that Iron—”
The orchestra struck up the royal march—the Grand Duchess’s entrance cue. His ears prickled. Already? If his brother could see through this outlaw’s disguise, he didn’t want to chance the Royal Guard getting a look at her.
He’d opened his mouth to tell her to leave when she grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him into the shrubbery after her.