Robb

He slipped behind a line of shrubbery, following the neatly trimmed bushes down the length of the garden. He ran his hand along the wall of leaves, feeling twigs catch against his fingers. The orchestra had gone silent. That could not be a good sign.

Don’t think about it, he told himself, traveling deeper into the garden. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied a flash of platinum hair, the pale blue of a Wysteria uniform, and he traveled deeper. He used to play in Astoria’s garden when he was little, getting lost in the hedge maze as his father pursued, playing hide-and-seek. He had been wicked good at finding Robb, but then again Robb never really made it a sport to hide all that well. It was one of the few blissfully untouched memories he had of his father.

“Night star bright, where is your light?” his father used to call in his warm baritone, and Robb had to answer:

“Out of sight!”

Even now he felt his father in the garden. He could hear his laughter, almost picture him standing at the edge of the hedge maze in his royal best, crimson coat pressed and dark beard trimmed, waiting for Robb to come out.

But he wasn’t playing a game anymore, and it wasn’t his father following.

He stopped under a willow tree, the sound of Ironblood chatter dim voices now, and ran his hand along the names carved on the wood. Viera stopped a few feet away, and he turned to look at her—really look. He should have known. It had been too easy to find her on the dreadnought—alive, anyway, especially when Mellifare took and took. At first he had wondered why the Great Dark had spared Viera, afraid to think anything else.

But now that he looked back at her, it all seemed so clear. The fire in the shrine on Zenteli, the ruins where the heart was kept, how the dreadnought had caught them so easily in Eros’s orbit.

How Mellifare knew they would be here today.

“Is the heart here?” Viera asked, putting her right hand on the holster of her Metroid.

He studied her. They had been schoolmates once. He’d dueled her on the rooftop, lost to her in strip poker. He should have realized earlier. He should have recognized.

“Since when have you been ambidextrous?”

Her gaze narrowed. “You are worried about that now?”

“You’re left-handed,” he pointed out.

“This is not the time for casual chatter. Where is the heart?”

He reached for his lightsword at his hip, his mechanical hand curling around the hilt. “It’s not here . . . and you are not Viera.”

The woman’s gaze darkened. “You tricked me.”

“And you fell for it.”

Her eyes flashed red—the color of the HIVE, the Great Dark, the heart of a burning coal—and before Robb could even take out his lightsword, she raised her hand and a bolt of lightning shot out of her fingers. He felt a flash of pain, his blood boiling, his muscles tensing—and then nothing at all.