Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(60)
“Mother, you can’t honestly want to kill her—”
She grabbed his wrist and dug her thumb into the chip, as she had done in Astoria, as she always did to remind him of who he was. His mother never needed to brandish threats, because they were quiet and subtle, laced into her bodice, sewn into her seams.
“You will not interfere. Do you understand, my son?” she repeated.
He could feel Jax’s violet eyes on him, but he couldn’t meet them; he was too ashamed. All Robb wanted to do was go back to those moments on the Dossier. He wanted to do it all differently. Maybe then they wouldn’t have ended up here.
“Yes, Mother,” he replied softly, and she let go of his wrist.
“Good. Come, Solani, we should leave Robbert. He’s had a long day and I am sure he needs his rest,” she said, and Jax silently followed, leaving Robb alone in the room with the realization that he hadn’t changed Ana’s fate after all.
Because of who he was, he had damned her all the same.
Di
He hovered his hand over the lock to the crew’s quarters and tried to remember how to reach inside again. He concentrated, letting his programming slither into the keypad, and threaded himself through the code. He twisted his hand and the lock responded, beeping green—
And as the door opened, he dodged Riggs’s mechanical leg.
“LET US GO, YOU PIECE OF— Captain!” Riggs cried, eyes growing wide as he looked past Di to Siege. “You’re alive!”
Lenda dropped her makeshift weapon—a stool—as Talle leaped at Siege, swinging her arms around her, kissing her on the mouth, her nose, her cheeks.
“Goddess, I thought you were dead!” Talle, with dark circles under her eyes and clothes rumpled, sobbed into Siege’s shoulder. “I thought you’d gone to the stars!”
Siege pulled her wife into a hug. “I’m here, starlight. I’m fine. How is everyone?” Her green eyes wandered over the three of them. “Where’s Jax?”
“They took him,” Riggs said as Di handed his leg back to him. “And . . . Ana is . . .” He shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell us, Captain?”
“Tell you what?”
Talle said, “That Ana is the lost princess, sunshine.”
Di was not so sure his sound receivers were working properly. “The what?”
Talle fussed with Siege’s coat buttons. “It’s not true, right? She can’t be. You’d have told us.”
Behind her, Lenda agreed, folding her thick arms over her chest. “It’s all over the newsfeeds. She’s Ananke—”
“Didn’t you use to work in the palace?” asked Riggs. “Why didn’t you recognize her?”
“I never saw her. They always kept the princess locked up so we plebeians couldn’t see her—”
As the crew bickered, Di backed out into the hallway. One step. Then another. There was a mistake. His thoughts raced so fast he could barely compute them all. Ana was not—she could not—there had to be some—
The other crew members voiced the same thoughts. That she was not, that she could not be, because the princess was dead, because the princess had burned.
But those scars. Those burn scars.
How did it suddenly seem so probable when it had not been a possibility ever before?
No, no, no—
He grabbed Siege by the back of the coat and yanked her through the doorway and into the hallway with him. He needed to think—just two seconds alone—and suddenly there was a swift click in his head—
And the door shut to the quarters with a loud snap.
Locking the crew inside.
“D09!” Siege barked, catching herself on the wall. Her hair blazed a bright, angry red. “What in the bloody—”
“You found us stranded in an escape pod,” he interrupted. “The palace does not have escape pods.”
The captain pursed her lips. “It was a ship’s.”
“Like from a—a transport vessel? A merchant ship? From the aftermath of the Rebellion?” he asked desperately, searching Siege’s face for the truth.
After a moment, Siege shook her head. “No.”
He went numb.
In the seven long years he had been Ana’s, he had never known. He had never even thought to question it. He was Metal. Metals did not care. The probability of her being the princess was .0034 percent. It was not enough for a rational computer to consider. And he was a computer. He did not care.
But then why were his hands trembling?
His functions were going strange. His code jittered.
“You saved her,” the captain said, as if that was supposed to bolster him. “The crew found your pod floating in the dead space between Iliad and Cerces, and when we opened it up, there you both were. The little girl in your arms was badly burned, and you asked to use our infirmary. You told only me who she was, and you asked me to protect her.”
“I asked you? I remembered? Why can I not now? What were you supposed to protect her from?”
“You didn’t say. You struck a deal with me to protect her and wipe your memories. We didn’t realize she’d lost hers, too, until after I’d already wiped yours.”
“My glitches,” he realized. “That was why my memory core was glitching. Because you tampered with it.”