Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(28)

He used to love looking at the stars, but he couldn’t remember the last time he had. Not since Aran Umbal.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked dimly.

“Scared that a star-kisser’ll screw you up?”

He felt the tips of his ears reddening. “I’m sorry I called you that. And I meant because you’re a pilot, not a medic.”

“Don’t put me in a box, little lord—I might just surprise you. Hold still—”

“Aah!” He cried out in pain, trying to pull away as Jax took out the broken stitch. He blinked and tears stuck to his lashes.

Perfect, he was crying in front of a Solani. Valerios didn’t cry. Not from pain. Not at funerals. Not even for Aran Umbal. Goddess strike me.

He gritted his teeth, willing himself to stop. “Numbing it first would be—be grand.”

“Oh, must’ve slipped my mind,” the Solani replied offhandedly, taking a numbing agent from the medical kit and administering it around the wound. “Do you know where the word comes from? ‘Star-kisser’?”

The pain ebbed with the medicine. Robb took his first full breath. “The stars?”

“My, you’re a genius.” Jax began to restitch the wound with the suture pen. “Long before we came to the Iron Kingdom, my people learned how to see the future in the stars. What may be, what will be, and what will never be. With this knowledge, we created a great empire and prospered for thousands of years.”

“Really?”

“That’s what the stories say. Until one day, the stars began to blink out, and the D’thverek—what your lovely people call the Great Dark—came for our sun. We had relied on the stars for so long that we didn’t know how to defend ourselves, so we took what remained of our people and fled to where the stars pointed—here.”

“So . . . you can read the stars? Like the rumors say?”

Jax snorted. “Please. We can barely read our own mother tongue anymore. Over the generations, we fell in love with humans and Cercians, and we forgot.”

“But, theoretically, if there were any Solani who never married Erosians or Cercians . . . they still could?”

Jax raised his eyes to Robb’s. They were more red than violet—like a dying star—and Robb felt as if the Solani was telling him a secret in that stare, one that his mouth could not form words to. The smell of lavender was making him light-headed for a completely different reason.

“Theoretically, anything could be possible,” the Solani finally said, cutting his eyes away. He took another strip of gauze from the medical kit and wrapped Robb’s wound again. Jax’s long, gloved fingers felt whisper-soft, making goose bumps shiver across Robb’s skin. “And . . . we’re all done. Better than the Metal, if I do say so myself.”

Robb tugged down his shirt and sat straight again. If a Solani couldn’t lie, he found himself asking, “If you—if you could read my fate in the stars, do you think I’ll find my father?”

The silver-haired boy blinked. “Truthfully?”

“Truthfully.”

Jax reached up. Robb winced, thinking he’d slug him again, but Jax brushed his thumb across Robb’s busted bottom lip, so gently it sent a shiver down his spine. “Please don’t ask,” he whispered, and left Robb alone in the infirmary with a plea that sounded more like an answer.





D09


Two hours and four minutes and seven seconds.

Recalculating.

Fifty-eight seconds.

Recalculating.

Two days and four hours and thirty-two seconds—

D09 sat drumming his fingers on the pilot chair’s armrest, space passing by in a blur of stars and nebulae. He kept a counter running in the back of his computing, constantly recalculating the time until he would no longer function. He had first begun the calculations when they had visited the mechanic on Iliad, who told him about his damaged memory core, but the countdown was not logical. It sped up. It slowed.

But it never gave him enough time to figure out how to say good-bye.

Perhaps it would be best if he were smashed instead—the slang for destroying a Metal’s memory core. Not murdered, or killed, but smashed like a child’s plaything. Metals had been useful during the Plague in keeping those infected quarantined from the rest of the kingdom, but now that the threat was no longer an issue, they were not needed.

Perhaps that was all Metals were supposed to be—impermanent tools. Means to an end.

On a star map pulled up on the cockpit monitor, a white dot moved toward the third and farthest planet in the kingdom, Cerces. It was his duty to watch the cockpit while Jax slept.

Nights were quiet. They gave him time to mend temperamental fuses in the ship or find ways to lock E0S in service closets.

Where was the troublesome robot, anyway?

He keyed up the video feeds to look when footsteps echoed down the corridor, activating his motion sensors. He shifted in his chair. No one should be awake.

The captain stepped into the cockpit. “Any news since the video feed from the Grand Duchess?”

“No, sir. There has been no sign of the Royal Captain or the Messiers on the radars or comm-links,” he relayed. “There are only two freighters and a passenger ship in our immediate vicinity, but they are not a threat.”