Her shoulders gave a shake, and tears fell down her cheeks, and she didn’t want Jax to die. It would be another life scratched into her soul, added to the number of people who had already died for her.

Barger. Wick. Riggs. Di. Jax.

She wasn’t worth their lives. Even if she was the Goddess.

No one was worth the life of someone else.

Siege took her hands tightly. There were small pale scars across her captain’s fingers. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against Ana’s forehead in a soft kiss. “Go and get some rest, darling,” she said gently.

Though Ana knew she probably wouldn’t get any sleep at all, she nodded anyway, unfurling her fingers from her captain’s, and left the cockpit. When she got into the crew’s quarters, she sank down into one of the chairs on the back wall.

It was quiet there, at least.

She dried her eyes, and waited. That was all there was to do.

Ana had dozed off in the chair when Lenda knocked on the door. She jerked awake, scrambling to pull herself up in the chair. For a moment she was disoriented—was she still on the dreadnought? Had a Messier come to kill her? Turn her into a Metal?—until she recognized Lenda, dirty blond hair tucked back behind her ears, her blue eyes rimmed with exhaustion. She motioned behind her, toward the galley. “Food’s getting cold. Want some?”

Ana shook her head. “Oh—no.” She still wasn’t hungry. “Go ahead.”

“Good. I eat when I get worried and that entire pot of stew is calling my name,” she said, and began to leave—but then she hesitated in the doorway and turned back to Ana. “You know we’re with you, right? That all of us on this ship are with you. In defeating the HIVE and saving the kingdom. None of us blame you for Jax. He wouldn’t want you to blame you, either.”

Ana looked away. “I appreciate that.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

Lenda frowned, knowing that Ana didn’t believe her, but then she just shook her head and left for the galley again.

Ana checked the time. It had been only three hours since she’d dozed off. Nine more to go. Slowly, she stood, her muscles screaming, and peeled off her coat. She took out Di’s memory core before she put the coat in the dirty clothes basket in the corner of the room. She tried not to linger on Jax’s empty bunk, or on one of his favorite coats hung on the hook over his bed. She touched the soft velvet of the sleeve.

“We’ll fix you,” she promised softly, not to the coat, but to Jax. “And then I’ll let you punch the Great Dark first when we find it—”

“Ana?”

She whirled around as Viera ducked into the crew’s quarters. She had taken a shower, her platinum hair pushed back against her head, the dirt and grime of the dreadnought scrubbed clean. There was a blanket and pillow tucked underneath her arm. “Talle said I could take one of the bunks, but I’m not sure . . .”