Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(109)

The rest of her family turned, too.

“Ana!” they chorused, and she had never been happier to see familiar faces.

In two quick strides, Siege crossed the cockpit and drew Ana into a hug, and she sank into it with relief. The captain smelled like gunpowder, her coat scratchy, her hug bone-crushingly tight—and it was home. Her home. “I was so worried, so worried,” the captain sobbed, holding Ana tightly.

Tears brimmed in Ana’s eyes. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m sorry—for fighting with you after Di died. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, darling, I was never mad,” replied her captain. “And I’m sorry—for keeping your past from you.”

“It’s okay. I forgive you.”

Siege pulled away, blinking the tears out of her eyes. “You do?”

“You love me unconditionally. You didn’t treat me like a princess but like . . . like you would a daughter.”

“You are my daughter,” Siege said, and the words made Ana’s heart sing. “I’ll never let anything happen to you again. We’re heading to Xourix, where you’ll be safe. No one will look for you there.”

That sounded nice. She could disappear into the kingdom and never be seen again. She was dead, after all. Was that what Di had thought when he’d stabbed her? She could let herself fade into history and live the rest of her days being a girl with no destiny, no stars, no fate.

But Di’s memory core pulsed in her grip, beating softly, reminding her of who she was, and what had been taken, and of a Great Dark that now sat on the kingdom’s throne, having waited a thousand years to return.

She swallowed her trepidation and looked at the crew. “I don’t want to run away, to go to Xourix and just disappear. The HIVE has control now, and I’m not going to sit by and watch it destroy the kingdom.”

“But the kingdom doesn’t care about us,” Lenda argued, “so why should we care about it?”

“And it’s dangerous, darling,” the captain added, frowning.

But then Jax said, “Yet don’t we always go looking for danger?”

“And we have a Metal to save,” Robb added.

Talle shook her head. “Who is now a brainwashed murdering robot who wants to kill us.”

“But he didn’t,” Ana argued, painfully aware of the wound in her stomach. If he had wanted to kill her, he could have. He knew how. She didn’t tell them what Di had whispered before he plunged the blade into her, wishing to have let her burn. That was not Di. So, she kept it to herself, a secret between her and her new scars. “And that means the HIVE didn’t take everything. The HIVE won’t take everything. The Iron Kingdom isn’t mine—it’s ours. We’re the outcasts, the rebels, the refugees—”

“And the royalty,” said Jax.

“And the royalty,” she agreed. “We’re part of the Iron Kingdom. We’re the parts no one remembers, so they’ll never see us coming. Who’s with me?”

Jax and Robb raised their hands without hesitation, and then Lenda, and Talle. The captain pursed her lips, blinking the stray tears out of her eyes, and then she nodded because Ana knew she just wanted to keep her safe—but now it was Ana’s turn to save people.

“To the ends of the universe, darling,” Siege finally replied.

Ana’s heart swelled. She held tightly to Di’s memory core, a lifeline glowing with hope in the dark. Once, she had not known who she could be without Di, and once she couldn’t have fathomed the thought. But now she knew she carried Di with her, and Barger, and Wick, and Riggs—and Siege, and Talle, and Lenda and Robb and Jax, and Machivalle and Wynn, and Viera, and her late parents and lost brothers, tucked within the steady thrum of her heart. They were the sum of her parts that made her whole.

She was Ananke Armorov. She was the heir to the Iron Kingdom. She was a girl born in fire and raised in the stars, and she would burn against the darkness—and drive it away.





Acknowledgments


I can’t find the right words.

Perhaps it’s because Heart of Iron means a great deal to me. But see? Even those words don’t really convey how I feel. They don’t have the weight I’m looking for, the moments in a quiet room while Di braids Ana’s hair, the seven years in search of Jax’s stars, the different coats Robb tried on before he found a perfect blue vintage number that fit like a dream. I daresay all these characters have become a part of me, as things often do when you carry them long enough.

Everyone says that writing is a solitary thing, but it’s because of Heart of Iron that I met so many wonderful people, and they are all carried in these pages.

I want to thank my agent, Holly Root, for being my greatest champion, and for believing in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.

And I also want to thank my wonderful editor at Balzer + Bray, Kelsey Murphy, who gave Ana a home. She took my words and shaped them into a story that I am so dearly proud of, and without her this book would not be half of what it turned out to be.

The road to publication was long, and rife with terrors, but the Fellowship was a bright spot in an otherwise murky Mordor. Thank you, Hannah Fergesen, Bess Cozby, Lauren Spieller, and Chelsea Fought, for all of our text threads and cathartic conversations over bottles of wine.