Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(108)

It bleeped, its lens closing, as she pulled a small cube out of its grip. It was barely bigger than a copper. A memory core. It pulsed gently, flaring and dimming with a gray-white light. Her eyebrows furrowed as she held it, the scrapes and dents across its surface like old battle wounds.

“Is this Di’s?” she whispered.

E0S bleeped again. Yes.

She closed her fingers around it as the bot grabbed her by her nightshirt and pulled. She got to her feet and followed the bot up the stairs. There was a voice coming down the hallway. It was familiar, and loud—much too loud.

She climbed the stairs and turned down the hallway toward the cockpit, like she had done her entire life, but it felt so strange now. The hallway was too small, the ship too cramped. She gripped the memory core tightly, pressing it against her stomach. The wound throbbed, but it was a pain she could endure, because she knew that voice.

She followed it like a siren’s song.

Her fingertips brushed the rusted walls, the sounds of Wick’s fiddle and Riggs’s voice playing phantom songs in her head. Barger’s boisterous laugh, the hum of Di’s Metal parts as she pressed her forehead against his.

The ship was full of ghosts.

Ahead in the cockpit, the crew stood watching the starshield. They didn’t hear her come to the doorway and lean against it, her very bones aching. She was just so tired.

In the video, the steward, in a too-tight morning coat, addressed the crowd from a podium in front of the palace. “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the death of our Empress.”

Her death? Was she dead?

She gripped the doorway, looking around at the crew, or whoever was left. Robb was in a chair, his shoulder bandaged up with gauze, tapering to nothing at all. He looked sunken, terrified. Jax stood behind him like the backbone Robb needed. Lenda shifted against the wall, arms crossed, as Talle massaged Siege’s shoulders. The captain sat in the pilot chair, hair dark for the first time Ana could remember, and she could finally see the gray between her black curls.

The cockpit felt empty and heavy with all the people they’d lost. Wick, Barger, Riggs . . . Di. Her Di. But now every time she thought about him, her wound flared, crippling.

The steward’s face flickered on the screen as the Dossier caught another solar draft. She could feel the shift under her feet, the spirals of stars rushing past. On a small screen in the corner of the starshield, a dot moved toward the asteroid belt. Toward Xourix.

Her captain was desperate enough to go to Xourix.

“Four days ago, a Metal attacked the heart of our kingdom. The lives of countless Ironbloods were lost, including the Grand Duchess Armorov, Cynthia Valerio, Quintin Machivalle, Vermion Carnelian, and Gregori Rasovant.”

Her fists clenched at the feeling of driving the dagger into him.

She had killed someone.

Count your bullets, Siege had said, but the guilt of killing someone didn’t suffocate her like she thought it would. She could have spared Rasovant, but as he’d reached into his robes she’d made her choice, and she had prayed for a heart of iron. In that moment, she had thought that the Moon Goddess hadn’t answered.

But maybe she had.

Her hands were not shaking, and blood washed off like every other stain. She’d tried being the daughter the kingdom wanted. The girl who studied the law and followed the rules. But now she knew—there were no rules. There was no peace.

Only blood, and iron, and flames.

“But in this hour of great need we need a great leader. We need someone chosen by the Goddess to combat these terrible crimes. We need someone with merit, someone with knowledge of the demons we fight. Someone who can unite our kingdom in this time of darkness.”

“It’s going to be Erik, I know it’s going to be Erik,” Robb murmured from his chair, his hand over his mouth.

Jax squeezed his left shoulder tightly. “He’ll be a terrible ruler. Someone will kill him off.”

“That’s not any better,” Siege replied.

“And the Goddess gifted us a ruler in our greatest moment of need. We look to him for guidance.”

But the man who came into view was not Erik Valerio.

She knew that gait—too smooth and too unnatural—and the color of his bloodred hair. He was dressed in all black, a crimson ascot knotted at his throat. His face was just as she remembered, seared into her nightmares. The sharpness of his cheekbones, the slant of his lips, the constellation of freckles across his nose.

She clutched the memory core against her stomach, feeling the core pulse again, and again, in a steadying rhythm. A heartbeat.

The redheaded young man knelt on one knee, and as the steward placed the crown upon Di’s head, Ana felt a strange shift in the universe, as if the stars had turned upside down and the sun was no longer theirs.

“Rise, Emperor of the Iron Kingdom,” said the steward, and the man rose to his feet again, turning his gaze to the crowd. His eyes shone blue—pupils as dark as space. Lightless, unending nothing.

A kingdom cast in shadows.

“Will you lead our great kingdom in our time of need? Will you sacrifice all you have for the greatness of our Goddess? Will you give your life for Her?” the steward asked, reciting the same oath Lord Rasovant had said to her a lifetime ago.

Captain Siege slammed her hand on the disconnect button and cursed under her breath. She turned back to the crew when she finally noticed Ana in the doorway. She gave a start, jumping to her feet. “Darling! You’re awake!”