Azure curiosity blinks through my mind again, then, slowly, it swells into ripples of cobalt blue. The ship likes that name. Yes. That’s close, it says.

It. That doesn’t feel right. Whatever Mirage is, the ship isn’t an it. “Do you … have a pronoun?” I ask.

Mirage considers the question. I think I like “he,” he says after a moment. Shades of purple swirl around the words. Or—it’s more like the colors are the words, like my mind has somehow learned a new language when I wasn’t looking.

I shake my head. The sensation of someone else talking in my mind, of colors bleeding from an alien ship to me, it’s impossibly weird. I want to pull my wounded hand back—the only time he seems able to communicate with me is when my injury is touching him—but I want answers, and Mirage is the only one who might actually be able to give them to me.

I am sorry about your injury, Mirage says softly. There’s a vast ocean of grief resonating behind the words, a heavy, dark veil of slate gray. I remember what he said before: that the Shatter Ring was pieces of his body. He’s injured too, then. Maybe even dying.

Like me.

I look down at my hand. The crooked black veins have reached across my knuckles now, and have also spread a few inches past my wrist and up my forearm. The pain has receded to a throbbing ache, but I know another wave of agony will come soon. I wonder how long it will take those veins to reach my heart. My brain.

“Do you know if—my injury, maybe it’s not so—?” I can’t manage more than that.

I’m sorry, Mirage says again, confirming my fears.

I bow my head. I don’t want to think about my impending death, so I ask another question. “Is it what’s allowing me to talk to you?”

Your injury is part of the reason I’m able to reach you, yes. The thing that stung you, it was … Again that sense of Mirage rummaging through himself, trying to find the right words. Made by me.

I freeze. My muscles go taut. “What?” I say, confusion and anger burgeoning. I’d just begun to believe Mirage might not be my enemy.

Mirage fumbles again. I didn’t want it to harm you. I would heal the wound now, if I had enough energy.