It sounded like Sorry and failed you.

Elara stepped back, shaking her head. “No—no, there’s a way out of this. I’m not going to let you die!” Determined, she walked through Koren Vey to the control board beside the crystal, brushing off centuries of rubble and dirt and leaves to reveal the strange console underneath.

The crystal began to whine, emitting a strange energy that prickled at Robb’s skin.

“No, Elara, don’t touch—!”

The moment Elara touched the controls, the crystal sent out a sizzling shock wave that threw her back. She skidded like a rag doll across the floor, again through Koren Vey, who tried to catch her, and came to rest an arm’s length away from the spinning rings. She didn’t move.

“Elara!” the ancient C’zar cried, and her body flickered again. The core was failing.

Goddess, he prayed as the loud, high roar filled his ears, and he clung to Ana, death so close he could taste the bitter fear of it on the back of his tongue, I wish I could see Jax again.

Jax

“Darling, I need you to wake up.”

He knew that voice. He had heard it a hundred times before. In a small starship sailing across space—he piloted starships? That felt . . . impossible. He was a C’zar. He was a weapon for his people against the darkness. Trapped in a role he couldn’t escape. He couldn’t have been a starship pilot.

But that voice . . . it was so familiar.

It reminded him of a woman whose hair changed colors with her mood, in a red murdercoat with polished buttons and too many secret pockets. The first time he met her, he had just tried to pick one of those secret pockets in the Market District of Nevaeh. He’d snagged a piece of jewelry—a strange crest that wouldn’t fetch much, all dented and rusty. A bird with outstretched wings, catching the tail of a star. He now knew it to be an Ironblood crest—a rare one.

He took it and ran.

The woman, who had been walking beside another woman with long black hair, had noticed a few moments later and shouted after him, “Oy! You little—”

But he was too fast, and he knew all the hiding holes in this space station since he’d stolen his way aboard a few months ago. He hadn’t had a good meal in ages. This would at least get him—

As he rounded the corner where a shopkeeper sold watches, he slammed into someone else. He backpedaled, about to apologize, when the tall woman with long black hair took him by the wrist and twisted it just far enough to make him let go. She had a grim set to her face.

A moment later, the woman with burning orange hair caught up with them. Jax struggled against his captor, but her grip was like iron. She tossed the crest back to the woman he’d stolen it from. “You seem to keep losing that, Sunshine.”