He remembered pulling the sword out of the window. It fractured—one moment a sound and then nothing at all as space swept in. He knew he’d only be out in space for a few moments, so he hadn’t been worried. He’d been spaced before.

But then Di had reached out to him, touched him, and then—

So many stars. So many souls. Thousands of them. They invaded his head and showed him so many fates. Paths not taken and paths that were. Lives twisting, braiding, in an intricate web of should haves. That single touch drained his light, like a candle snuffed out—

Oh.

Every time he read a fate, a little more of his light vanished, a little more of his life drained away, and in the span of a moment he had read thousands.

He was dead, that was simply it. He had to be.

But . . . if he was dead, he expected darkness—a void, perhaps? The Moon Goddess welcoming him home, a land of bountiful fruits and gold and . . . he didn’t know. The Solani didn’t believe in an afterlife. When they died, they became stardust again, and the cycle continued.

He didn’t expect . . . to be here.

Wherever this dimly lit hangar was. It stretched endlessly on both sides, the halogens above casting sickly white light across the makeshift medical stalls. The sounds of people moaning, sick and diseased, clogged the cold air, making it hard to breathe. He’d heard about these Plague hospitals—they still sat on Eros, falling into ruin where no one dared to go, fearing that the Plague might still cling to a gurney or hospital robe or food tray. But he never expected to see one, and he never expected it to feel so . . . so wrong.

Because these Plague hospitals were twenty years gone, but it seemed like time had no meaning here, and even the noises felt like they were trapped, rebounding back against each other, quieter and quieter, until they were nothing but whispers.

He pushed back the white cloth to the first medical stall.

There was a young man not much older than himself sitting on the edge of a hospital gurney. He wore a white hospital shift, his left wrist tagged with a plastic band that read his patient number and allergies. His hands were blackened, and Jax could feel how much they hurt—twisting, excruciating pain, as if he was being devoured alive.

He was reading a book. There were dozens of them piled up on the makeshift half shelf behind him. They looked dirty and old, having been read a hundred times. Jax tilted his head to the side a little to read the title. The Swords of Veten Ruel. An old classic about as enjoyable as watching paint dry.

The young man seemed to be enjoying it, though.

His hair was shorn short, the color of blood to match his thick eyebrows. It was startling, how much he looked like the Metal he and Robb had found on the Tsarina, though his eyes were a gradient of browns and reds. Rust colored.