Ana shook her head. “I didn’t tell anyone! No, wait, that’s not true,” she added, frustrated. “Robb and Elara knew, and maybe Jax? I told Viera and Lenda I was going to Eros, but not where. So the crew knew, mostly, but no one else.”

“And no one saw you on the trip? No one recognzied you?”

“I mean, someone could have. But they wouldn’t have known where I was going.”

The captain gave a long sigh. “That’s what I feared.”

“Is that why you didn’t allow the rest of the crew into the meeting? Because we have a spy?”

“It is,” the captain admitted. “I wish you’d never gone to the ruins.”

“I thought I could destroy the heart before the Great Dark ever got to it.” Ana looked away and chewed on the inside of her cheek. The ruins still haunted her. She had been helpless. If Robb’s mother hadn’t stolen the heart before she’d gotten there, the Great Dark would have it now, and if Siege hadn’t come to rescue her when she had, Ana was sure she’d be dead in a caved-in tomb. “I was stupid to think I could do it alone—or at all. I mean, I’m not the Goddess. I can’t defeat the Great Dark.”

Her captain cast a bemused smile. “Oh?”

“Koren Vey said I wasn’t, when we went to the ark. She said, ‘You are not the Goddess’—just like that, straight faced, soul crushing.” She sighed and sank down in her chair. “I’m no one, Captain. I’m just an orphan.”

The sunny yellow tips of Siege’s hair bled up the rest until it was completely golden, shining like the sun. “You are Ana of the Dossier. You are my daughter,” she replied, kissing Ana’s forehead, “and wherever you go, you carry me with you—you carry all of us with you. Always.”

But what happens if you die? she wanted to argue, through she didn’t want to imagine that kind of universe.

She couldn’t.

“Try to get some rest before tomorrow,” her captain said. “It’s going to be . . .”

“I know,” Ana replied quietly.

A wrinkle crinkled between Siege’s brows, as if she wanted to say something more. Something comforting, perhaps, something to soothe the rising fear in Ana’s bones, but that had never been the captain’s way, really. Her comm-link flickered, a private message only she heard, and she sighed. “Get some rest,” she repeated, pushing herself off the table, and left.

Ana sat there for a moment longer, her hands curled into fists in her lap.

Ana of the Dossier. The captain’s daughter. Siege’s girl.

It was a mantle she felt too cowardly to be worthy of. Siege was brave and steadfast, and here she was afraid that tomorrow would be her last, and she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want anyone to—

Stop it.

A cleaning bot opened the door and gave a timid bleep.

“All right, all right, I’m leaving,” she told it.

She needed some quiet, but the only quiet place she could think of was the medical ward. She always felt most at home there. It might’ve been from when she was young and recovering in the ward—it was safe and familiar. Or it might’ve been because whenever she was in there, she could remember Di the best. The hum of his circuits and the sweet sound of his motion.