“I bought a new comm-link for you” came a voice as she crossed the hull.

Oh, busted. Again.

Ana spun around to find Lenda ducking out of the engine room with a grease towel tossed over her shoulder, followed by Xu. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“Where’s Elara? Robb?”

“We . . . ran into some trouble.”

“How come I always miss the good stuff?” Lenda grabbed one of Talle’s flash grenades from one of the weapon workbench in the cargo bay and held out to her. Ana gave her a curious look, and the gunner rolled her eyes. “Rucksack, Di’s coat, sneaking around? You’re going somewhere, so instead of trying to stop you, I’m arming you. Be careful with this thing, yeah? I think Talle tweaked it to pack more of a punch.”

“Thank you,” Ana replied gratefully, slipping the grenade into her coat pocket. She would be lying if she said that she wasn’t a little nervous. Her anxiety wound like a tightening rubber band, ready to snap.

She glanced around the hull one last time, frowning. “Where’s Viera?”

“She still has not returned,” replied Xu. “I believe she is helping at the shrine. She is a little . . . odd.”

“She’s just—she’ll be fine,” Ana replied. “I just have a feeling the Great Dark did something terrible to her while they had her.”

“Yeah, about that . . .” Lenda rubbed the back of her neck, leaning against the side of the skysailer. “Why didn’t they turn her into a Metal?”

To that Xu said, “Perhaps she knows a secret they want. Metals do not have the function to retain their human memories. Or at least my memory core did not. Perhaps Lord Rasovant created others that could.”

Like Di’s new body, perhaps? Had he remembered who he was? She wished she’d asked when he found her in the palace, before the HIVE took it all away from him.

“Well, whatever secret that is, it must be important,” replied Lenda, and fished for something in her pocket. It was a star-shaped comm-link. “Here.” But when Ana reached for it, she jerked it away. “You don’t have to go and do this stuff alone, you know. I don’t know everything that’s happening, but I do know you think you have to do everything solo—”

“I know,” she interrupted, unable to meet Lenda’s gaze. “It’s just safer this way.”

Or at least, that was what she told herself.

The burly woman gave a frown, seeing right through her where Elara hadn’t. “Riggs and Wick and Di weren’t your fault, so stop carrying them around.”

Ana thought of Di’s memory core sitting deep in the pocket of her coat and shook her head. “I’m the Empress. They were my responsibility.”

“And you were their family, so you were theirs . . . just like you’re ours. So don’t die on us, okay?” Lenda finally outstretched the comm-link again. Ana took it and pinned it to the collar of Di’s sage coat, syncing her earring to it.