“For now,” replied the hacker, who tapped Robb to help pull her up from the floorboards and back into her seat. She flipped back her shoulder-length hair, and Jax noticed that she was Solani as well, though she must have had hints of Erosian blood. She gave a start when she saw Jax—they’d barely glanced at each other when she first fell into the skysailer—and his skin prickled.

She hadn’t recognized him, had she?

If she did, she didn’t mention it. Maybe that was worse. “That signal should keep us cloaked for at least twenty minutes, but I’ll say fifteen just to be safe.”

“To do what?” Robb asked. “Ana’s gone.”

In the rearview mirror, he watched as a silent conversation passed between the girl and the Metal, and then she nodded and reached into the Metal’s dark bag. She pulled out a holo-pad, her fingers moving quickly across the glass. “Not quite. I slipped a tracker underneath her coat collar. No one ever looks there.”

Jax turned around in the seat to give her a weary look. “Why would you do that?”

“So . . . I could find her?”

Robb blinked. “Who are you?”

Without even looking up from her holo-screen, she waved to her Metal friend. “This is Xu, my partner, and I’m Elara Vath’aka.”

Vath’aka—a name given to Solani with no birthright. Her family had been exiled, then—either her parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents before that. The little knot of tension that had solidified in his chest began to unravel, because if she was born without a birthright, she had probably never visited Zenteli. Which meant she wouldn’t have recognized him.

She didn’t know he was the C’zar.

“The HIVE has her in a skysailer already. Taking her off-world and onto one of those dreadnoughts the Emperor recommissioned, if I’d hazard a guess. And that’s not good. If those rumors are true . . .”

“They can’t be,” Jax said, pulling at his gloves nervously. “Only Rasovant knew how to make people into Metals. It’s just a rumor.”

“But what if someone else figured it out?” wondered Xu.

That was something Jax definitely didn’t want to think about. “We should save her either way—as quickly as possible.”

Robb gave him a solid look and dipped his head in to say quietly so only Jax could hear, “Ma’alor, I don’t trust them. It seems so fortuitous. How did they know to contact us? That we were looking to stop the HIVE? It’s too easy. We should make them promise on iron and stars to help us.”

Like how Jax had made Robb’s mother promise on iron and stars to keep Robb safe, and so she stepped in front of a bullet meant for him. Jax had never mustered up the courage to tell Robb—and whether or not it had any hand in her death, he felt ashamed anyway. To hear Robb ask to make this girl and the Metal promise, it made his skin prickle. He wouldn’t let Robb make the same mistake he had.