So much time.

Siege instructed Elara, who was sitting in one of the emergency foldout seats on the back wall of the cockpit, to erect another of the cloaking bugs she’d used to throw off the HIVE in Neon City, and again at the dreadnought. The codes were more complicated than any of the ones the Dossier used, and the less they got pinged by searching spacecrafts, the quicker they would arrive at Zenteli. Every second counted.

But what if the life support . . .

She swallowed thickly, her nails still digging into the armrests of the communications chair. Don’t think about it, she coached herself. It’ll be fine. He’ll be . . .

Why couldn’t she convince herself?

There was a soft knock on the cockpit doorway, and Xu poked their head in to say that Talle had made a stew, and the captain dismissed Elara to go grab some food.

When they were gone, the captain asked, “Aren’t you going to eat, darling?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

Her captain turned in the pilot’s chair to face her and, as if reading her thoughts, said, “What happened to Jax wasn’t your fault.”

Oh—oh, that made it so much worse. She just wanted her captain to scold her and tell her to do better next time, because at least then Ana would know that there would be. That Jax would . . . that this wasn’t . . .

The captain just didn’t understand.

“How can I stop the Great Dark, save the Metals from the HIVE—save Di, if I can’t even save my friends?” she asked. “It’s impossible—”

“Don’t say that.” Siege leaned forward, across the console that separated the two chairs, and brushed her thumb across Ana’s scarred cheek to wipe away the tears. “I didn’t teach you to give up when things got hard, did I?”

“Y-you didn’t see what was in that dreadnought, either. It was horrifying. I was trapped with the HIVE, and if it wasn’t for Robb and Jax cutting the power, I know they would’ve tortured me—he said he’d torture me.” He—Di, but not Di. Not her Di. “I was helpless. I don’t—I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how we can defeat that thing. We’ve been trying for six months and . . . shouldn’t the Goddess be able to save the people she loves?” Her eyes stung with tears. “If I’m the Goddess, shouldn’t I be able to . . .”

She tried not to cry, really she did. But the last twenty-four hours finally caught up with her. The running, the capture, the dreadnought—and she couldn’t get the moment Jax was sucked into space out of her head, the way the glass glittered around him, the lightsword shining bright, the way that terrible XO had reached out to him as if it wanted to keep him. She couldn’t stop thinking about how cold he felt when she pulled him into the skysailer. How his lips were blue. How he had stopped breathing.