“Are you sure you want to leave, darling?” Siege asked as Elara and Talle went ahead of them and up the ramp into the Dossier, where Xu and Lenda were putting the last fixes on the sails. “Once you do . . .”

“My home’s here,” Jax replied, and his gaze drifted to Robb, who lingered on the docks, his gaze set on another ship—a freighter destined for Eros. “Ma’alor?”

Robb hesitated, rubbing his mechanical arm. “I—I think I need to do something.”

“Then I’ll come with you—”

“No!” he said quickly, and then said again, softer, “No. I think I need to do this alone. Koren Vey said something, and I want to . . .” He frowned, unable to express the words, but the light in Jax whispered anyway.

“Resonance,” he filled in for him.

The Ironblood seemed surprised for a moment and then nodded. “And it’s almost guaranteed that the HIVE will track the Dossier. It’ll be better if I split off and go to Eros alone. I won’t be in any danger, but we all know Ana attracts it.”

“Doesn’t she,” he agreed.

“Then I’ll go with you,” Elara said from the top of the ramp, and cast a nervous glance back at Xu. “Xu can run the cloaking while I’m gone.”

Why not me? he thought, but in truth Robb hadn’t met his gaze once since he’d woken again, and a lump settled in his stomach. Because things were different now. He was the C’zar, and Robb knew he was the C’zar, and Robb knew he had lied to him for so long.

“Be careful,” Xu said, and Elara kissed her cheek.

“Never.” She hurried down the ramp to Robb, and Jax didn’t leave the ramp until they had disappeared into the crowd. He still felt their lights, pulsating, flickering, anxious and afraid, and so was he.

Siege called from the hull doors. “Jaxander?”

He tore his eyes away from the crowd and hurried into the Dossier.

Ana

Only she could go after the heart. It couldn’t be anyone else.

She kept telling herself that as she drove from the outskirts of Calavan into the wilds of Eros, toward the coordinates on her holo-pad. In the distance, the Bavania Range rose up like spiked ridges on a monstrous backbone, white-capped with snow. The shrine was nestled at the foot of one of those mountains. So close, and yet so far.

She would find the heart and destroy it before the Great Dark could get it. Somehow. The skysailer hummed quietly as she skimmed across the grassy road overgrown with weeds and brambles.

She tried a few times to contact the Dossier—Lenda, at least—but every time she tried, her comm-link just gave a crackle—jammed. Or broken.

When the trees began to swallow up the road, she banked the skysailer up and skimmed the tree line. The wind had a chill to it, but the sun was high and the air smelled fresh and clean, and her hands were clammy with sweat. The chill in the air—the smell of winter—reminded her of the time the Dossier escorted an ex-con from the city-state of Tavenktcha on Iliad to the northern quadrant to Neon City on Eros.