It felt like hours passed before someone came to get them.

“You must be the crew of the Dossier,” said the woman. Her dress looked as if it doubled as armor, with wide epaulets that curved up like horns, a breastplate decorated with images of constellations he didn’t recognize, tapering to a long skirt that trailed behind her in a train. Her skin was pale like Jax’s, and glittered in the noonday sun with the radiance of Cerces’s diamond mines, her short hair cropped in jagged edges, making her square jaw all the more striking.

He knew this Solani before she even introduced herself.

Jax’s mother.

Siege stood, her fingers intertwined with Talle’s tightly. “Ma c’zar,” the captain greeted her.

“Siege, is it?” The ma c’zar’s voice was as warm as the recesses of space. Before Siege could confirm or deny it, the Solani woman raised her hand and struck it across Siege’s face.

Robb stood, dumbfounded, until Ana went to lunge for her, and then he took her by the arm to hold her back.

“What was that for?” Ana snarled. “We brought him back so you can help him!”

“Ana,” the captain said softly.

The woman turned her cold violet-eyed gaze to Ana. “Empress,” she greeted her.

“She didn’t deserve that,” Ana said. “If anyone does, it’s me. Jax risked his life to save me, and now he’s here. Why don’t you stop slapping people and just help him?”

The ma c’zar looked away, and Robb felt the ball of panic in his chest tighten. “Child, there is no cure for the dark fever.”

The dark fever.

Jax had talked about it a few times, but only in passing, like when he was trapped in a dark room for too long, or when he felt sick or cranky. It was a passing thing, like a head cold, and the moment starlight touched his skin again he was fine.

He was always fine.

Ana blinked at her as if she didn’t understand. “. . . What?”

“There isn’t a cure,” Jax’s mother reiterated. “It comes to all of us in time, usually when the light inside of us finally goes out. It is also this light that grants C’zars the power to read the stars, but at the cost of their own life span. Most C’zars aren’t fortunate enough to live past their second decade. That was the future my son ran from, and yet he will die early all the same.”

Robb heard a sob hitch in Talle’s throat, and she turned away. He felt numb. He couldn’t comprehend. Jax was—he was out of light?

“Is there any way to refill him?” he asked, and the ma c’zar gave a soft chuckle.

As if it was a joke, and he was a child.

“Your life support only gave him borrowed time, and for that I must be grateful. Will you please follow me, Captain? You and your wife are the ones who raised him. I would expect that you would want to see him before . . .”