Robb’s eye twitched. “We couldn’t have used hoverboards for this?”

Ana popped out her own shield and patted his shoulder. “Well, if I die, it was nice knowing you, Smolder.”

She heard Robb squawk in protest at the nickname as she made a running start for the edge of the hill, launching herself off it. She tucked the shield underneath her feet and landed hard on the grass, then surfed off after Elara.

The grass was smooth under the shield, and a laugh bubbled up out of her throat despite herself. She threw her arms out to keep her balance. As the wind whistled past her ears, the towering bones of the ship rose into the crystalline sky, curving inward like a rib cage. It was longer than any ship she had ever seen before—as big as the dreadnought, but not nearly as frightening. Slowly the shield came to a stop at the base of the ruins. She glanced back to see how Robb was faring, and he . . . had sat on his shield and was bobsledding down, a little slower than the rest of them but with a triumphant look on his face.

Well, Jax had never claimed Robb was cool.

She found Elara standing in the mouth of the ruins and retracted her shield, snapping it to her belt. “How will this Koren Vey help us defeat the HIVE when we can’t kill it because of the Metals inside—”

Elara huffed. “You are relentless. You love him that much, huh.”

She paused, surprised. “Who?”

“That Metal of yours. The reason you’re doing all this.”

“I’m—I’m doing this for the good of the kingdom,” she quickly replied.

The silver-haired young woman gave her a knowing look. “Princess.”

She winced and gave up the pretense. “It . . . was my fault he was HIVE’d, so I have to save him.”

“I actually know the feeling. About a year ago, Xu and I ran into some trouble. This was back when the kingdom, under the late Grand Duchess, just HIVE’d rogue Metals and not all of them. We got into a bad lot, and our employer, the bastard, ratted on us. Xu protected me. They let me escape and . . .” Elara trailed off, then put her shield back on her belt. “What if you can’t save him? What’ll you do then?”

“I’ll try anyway.”

“And if you have to choose? Between him or the kingdom?”

“I don’t believe in choosing,” she argued, but when the Solani girl rolled her eyes, she grabbed her by the arm tightly to stop her and said in a sharp voice, “Enough people have died for me, and it stops with Jax.”

“And if you die?”

“Then I’ll have tried—”

“Bullshit, Princess. You know that if you die, it’s over, right?” Elara asked angrily “The kingdom will follow you if you just tell them you’re alive. That’s why everyone’s protecting you and you can’t even see that—the C’zar, that Ironblood, the nefarious Captain Siege.”