He’d saved them from the dreadnought. That wouldn’t be something the HIVE would do, would it?

She wouldn’t know know either way standing on the opposite side of the door, but she remembered the terror she’d felt in the tomb, the way he’d pinned her against the wall, red eyes searing, ready to kill her—

But then he hadn’t. He had saved her life.

It could’ve been a trick.

The HIVE’s done that before, she reminded herself, absently brushing her fingers against the scar on her abdomen, but then she paused and began to wonder. Hadn’t it?

She had seen the lengths Mellifare would go to to kill her because she thought Ana was the Goddess. It seemed odd—almost fantastical—that Di hadn’t killed her the first time.

Or in the tomb.

It couldn’t have been a coincidence.

Gathering up her courage, she unlocked the door to the medical ward and it eased open with a sigh. She kept a hand on her pistol as she crept toward him. “Di?”

His blank stare didn’t waver.

She brushed a lock of bloodred hair out of his face and pinned it behind his ear—

He jerked awake with a start. For a moment he looked afraid, as if he’d just awoken from a nightmare. He struggled against his bindings.

She took a step back and without thinking drew the dagger from her boot.

His eyes snapped to hers, and they weren’t dark like in the palace, but a brilliant white like they had been in his old body, pitch-black pupils ringed with the color of the moon.

“Ana,” he whispered, and his voice broke at her name. It broke like she was a ghost who had come back to haunt him, and suddenly, she was angrier at Mellifare than ever before. Mellifare took and destroyed, and even the things that came back weren’t the same. They were twisted and hurting, like Viera—like Di.

Like herself.

His gaze lowered to the silver dagger she pointed at him, and he flinched away. He couldn’t meet her gaze. “Let me speak to the captain.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “Di . . .”

“Please.”

His eyes were trained on the floor, and they didn’t waver. A muscle, or a gear, or something in his jaw throbbed. The longer she waited, the stranger the silence grew between them.

She lowered the dagger.

“You are not safe in here. What if I am still HIVE’d?” His voice was cold and detached, so different from his old and damaged voice, that she wondered if he was the same at all. “I could break these handcuffs and kill you now. Is that not what the HIVE would do?”

In susprise, she blinked. “The HIVE wouldn’t have asked.”

His shoulders stiffened. She now recognized the motion of his jaw working—the grit and throb of it—because it looked like the movement of someone trying not to cry. Metals couldn’t cry, but she wondered what the feeling of needing to felt like. He said, “You cannot be so sure.”