Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(65)

Robb quickly scrambled to his feet and gave a low bow. “Your Grace. I was just—”

“Enjoying the moonlilies, as we all are,” the Grand Duchess replied, and turned to Ana. “I am sorry for interrupting, but I was on my way to the shrine when I heard voices, and you sounded so much like your mother. . . .” She faltered. “Forgive me. I’ll leave—”

“Wait.” Ana began to rise to her feet, but Robb snagged the edge of her tunic.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

“If we’re going to find out about that fire, where do you think’s the best place to start?”

Point.

The Grand Duchess turned back, strangely curious. “Yes?”

“Can I come with you?” Ana asked, swiping his hand away, and rose to her feet. “To the shrine?”

“Of course!” The Grand Duchess looked pleased. Robb had never seen the old woman look anything besides dour. “It would be an honor, Ananke.”

“Great,” replied Ana, and without even a good-bye, she followed the woman out of the moonlily grove.

She’s definitely adapting quickly for a girl found in an escape pod, he thought—before he realized exactly how his father’s pendant had ended up around her neck.

The screens on the Tsarina’s engineering console.

The ejected pod.

Goddess’s spark—his father’s missing brooch. It had been staring him in the face this whole time.

His father had sacrificed his life to save Ana.

But if the Metals who had ignited the North Tower had been destroyed, as Rasovant claimed, then why hadn’t his father and Ana escaped to the rest of the palace, like Rasovant? What were they running from? And if Metals had burned the tower, why had his father trusted D09? And if that malware was a Metal from the Rebellion, then how had it survived?

Ana was right.

Rasovant had lied.





Ana


The last time Ana visited a shrine, Messiers tried to kill her, and this time she willingly accompanied the woman who’d almost handed her a death sentence.

If the Goddess had a sense of humor, Ana didn’t see it.

Inside, long stone pews stretched up to the pulpit, and behind it towered a statue of the Goddess, twenty feet tall. Ana searched the face of the Goddess, trying to find herself in the nose, the cheeks, the lips—but the face was as foreign as the rest of the palace. The statue loomed over them, lit with the glow of nine hundred and ninety-nine candles, one for each year that had passed since the girl of light drove away the Great Dark.

The Grand Duchess made a crescent shape across her chest and kissed her palm. Ana did the same, and took a seat beside her on the first stone pew. She hoped she hadn’t made a mistake by inviting herself here.

“This place brings me peace,” the Grand Duchess said, her lips perpetually curving downward into a scowl, accenting the lines in her tired face.

“I . . . guess,” Ana replied.

“You do not remember me, do you?”

Startled, Ana turned to look at the Grand Duchess. “What?”

“Do you remember anything?”

She shook her head.

“Perhaps it’s for the best,” the old woman said. “I was not the best grandmother, and when our family died, I was the only one left. I am an Aragon by birth, married into the Armorov family, so I could not wear the crown. I was never supposed to rule.” Taking a locket out out from underneath her collar, she pried it open with her long nails and offered it to Ana. “This is the last picture of our family and you.”

At first, Ana didn’t want to take it. She didn’t want to look at a family that wasn’t hers. But curiosity got the better of her.

The portrait was so small she had to squint. The Emperor, clad in royal purple, had a hand on his wife’s shoulder. He looked like all the pictures she’d seen in the newsfeeds. Golden-brown eyes and rich brown skin, like the Grand Duchess, a full beard over a strong face. Beside him, his wife, the Empress, smiled out of the portrait, brown curly hair and Valerio-blue eyes. There were three boys in front of them, all with heads full of dark curls. The youngest had his mother’s eyes.

Tobias, a voice in her head whispered. Rhys, Wylan, and Tobias.

Names she’d heard on newsfeeds before, in articles, passed around on people’s lips with “Goddess bless them” and “tragic loss.” They were names that still meant little to her, and that made a hollow part inside her ache.

She was supposed to remember them, and she didn’t.

Beside the youngest boy stood a girl. Dark hair and warm bronze skin, as though an expert painter had taken the best colors from her paints to make her, with eyes that Ana had seen every day of her life. She stared hard at the locket, trying to find herself in the picture, to remember that scratchy dress, the way it always pinched her under her arms—

She handed the locket back quickly. “I’m sorry that you lost them.”

“They were a good family,” the old woman said, staring up at the overpowering statue. “I should have looked for you—but I left you in this kingdom alone to fend for yourself against those heathens—”

“They were kind and they loved me. Captain Siege—”

The Grand Duchess tore her eyes away from the statue to gaze at Ana in horror. “That criminal?”