She bent down, tears streaming down her face, and kissed her mother’s forehead as the light faded softly from her hair.
Robb
Black banners decorated the Iron Palace. If anyone didn’t know they were coming to a funeral, he hoped they figured it out by the time they came into the ballroom. Most Ironblood funerals weren’t held at the palace, families opting for quiet wakes at their private estates where the reading of the will came directly after the victuals. There was little pomp and circumstance, since most of the time it devolved into long-lost family members coming out of the woodwork to try to snag what few valuables they could get from the will.
But Robb was not only a Valerio—he was an Aragon too, since he took the captain’s last name, so he had the power to buck a little tradition. Where the Valerios were notorious as sharp and merciless businesspeople, having investments in almost every type of company in the kingdom, the Aragons were magnanimous to the point where his mother had to spit out their name. He thought it rather fitting.
So tonight, for the first time in the history of the Iron Kingdom, there was a funeral at the palace. The lanterns in the hall bobbed with a new orange glow—as if they’d taken the light directly from Siege’s hair. He wondered if that was Di’s doing. He’d seen him messing with one of the lanterns in the hallway earlier today.
He hurried down the ballroom stairs and nodded to a few Ironbloods who looked vaguely familiar, adjusting his dark frock coat as he went. The Aragon symbol was pinned to his lapel, and he felt too many eyes lingering on it as he passed. A Valerio who became an Aragon, who had inherited both houses after his brother met his unfortunate end.
Goddess, he had so much wealth he didn’t know what to do with it—and so much responsibility he got panicky just thinking about it.
“Thank you,” he said to a passing waiter, snagging two glasses of rose champagne—Suvan’du, from the Aragon estate itself—and made his way toward a tall and slender boy. He stood out against the sea of black like a star in the night, the orange-yellow lanterns above making his skin sparkle like sunbursts.
“Hey, Smolder!” Elara yelled from the refreshments, and she waved with a beignet. Xu stood beside her, looking quite dashing in a golden tux. They were still missing an arm from the battle in the square, but a new one was supposed to arrive at the palace any day now.
After Di had freed the Metals from the HIVE, the Metals had returned to themselves as if waking up from a long dream. He saw it firsthand, as one moment Viera had lunged at Lenda, and the next she had fallen to her knees on the ground, the sword skittering away across the cobblestones.
Lenda had whirled back to her, dagger at the ready, but at the same moment the other Messiers had dropped their weapons, too. Viera looked around in confusion.
“Where—where am I?” she asked.
Lenda, hesitant at first, sheathed her dagger and walked up to the ex–guard captain.“You’re free,” she replied, and stretched down her hand for Viera to take.
In the week following the death of the Great Dark, Ana returned to the Iron Palace with the crown, and she faced her people. She was met with so much love, she cried. She told the kingdom about Di, and how the HIVE had used him as a puppet Emperor. She wasted no time getting to work. Nevaeh was to be repaired, the Iron Shrine rebuilt, the garden of Astoria restored to its former glory. The dreadnoughts were quickly decomissioned. The special laws about “rogue” Metals were rescinded. She elected Xu as a liaison between Metals and the kingdom, and they had a chair on the Iron Council. So did a lot of other people who were not Ironblooded, and who did not come from prosperous bloodlines, but to Ana that didn’t matter. If she was going to exist in a galaxy where an orphaned rebel could become the Empress of the Iron Kingdom, she didn’t care about titles or bloodlines.
And quite frankly, Robb looked forward to the new dynamic in the Council.
Elara shouted with a mouthful of pastries, “You’re looking hot tonight!”
“That’s quite inapproriate to say at a funeral,” he called back.
“Good!”
Robb waved her off and slipped up next to his partner, handing him one of the glasses. “Champagne to dull the boredom, ma’alor?”
Jax melted with relief. He looked as dashing as always, in a crisp lavender coat and pressed trousers. It was still a little startling to see Jax with short hair, falling just below his chin, but he was no less dashing. He wore starlike decorations on his head, too bright to be silver, that seemed to glow all on their own—the C’zar’s crown. “About time you got here! I was worried I’d have to waste away over here alone,” Jax said, and they kissed.
Robb couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll never get tired of doing that.”
“We should do it as often as possible.”
“Because you love to kiss me, right?” he asked.
“Because it makes the Elder Court so deliciously angry. An Ironblood and a C’zar? How devious.” He nodded over to a group of stodgy old men who were glaring daggers at them. “And also because I love to kiss you. That’s a given.”
“Thanks for the clarification—”
Jax kissed him again, longer this time, slower, running his tongue along his bottom lip, and when they parted, he lingered so close they shared a breath. “I clarify very well, thank you. Are they scowling yet?” he added, nudging his head toward the Elder Court.
Robb chanced a look. “Oh yes, scowls galore.”
“Good.”
He rolled his eyes and took another sip of champagne. “Is Di here?”
“Not yet.”
“I heard he had a few, um, appointments with some engineers. Because of his—” He motioned to his chest. “What my brother did. It brushed his memory core.”
“Yes, well, he’s glitching—like he had been before this whole mess started. Except this time it’s a little worse, I think.”
“And Ana doesn’t know, does she?”
“No, and speaking of whom, she’s yet to grace the party. Fashionably late as usual.” When Robb began to ask if he knew what was taking her so long, Jax nudged his head toward the other side of the ballroom to change the subject. Across the way, Lenda nervously clutched the arm of the newly reinstated captain of the royal guard. Lenda never did do well in crowds. They were talking with Mokuba and part of Captain Redbeard’s crew, and Robb happily noted that at least two of them had gold teeth. “I never thought Viera and Lenda would become a thing. They seem to be having a good time.”
Robb agreed. “I think Viera’s smiling. Never thought I’d see that.”
“At a funeral, too, ma’alor. Ghastly.”
After a moment, Robb asked, “Ana is coming, isn’t she?” in a low voice, so as not to alarm anyone.
The C’zar tilted his head one way and then the other. The light under his skin flickered playfully. “Why wouldn’t she? She is Siege’s daughter.”
“That’s why I’m worried.”
Ana
She took the royal purple coat from where it was laid out on her bed and held it, trying to decide if she really wanted to wear something so . . . so purple. There really wasn’t a better way to describe it. Purple and gold, the crown’s colors—and so also her colors—although too bad she looked better in literally any other shade. The purple coat reminded her too much of her father’s.
“You know, your father used to scowl like that too whenever he wore that color,” commented Siege, who was lounging back in one of the cushy red chairs in the room. She had a flute of champagne in one hand, her hair peppery gray and wild, reaching toward the sky. She looked mismatched in Ana’s room, in a worn black coat and trousers, and yet at the same time perfectly at home. She leaned her head on her hand. “Though you look so much like Nicholii I could cry.”
“I do?” she asked, turning back to the mirror. “I don’t feel like royalty.”
“He never did either.”
It was strange how you could be something but not know how. The coat didn’t fit right, and she
was afraid that the title Empress wouldn’t fit either. It was more of a birthright, anyway. Something that she had just lucked into—there were other, better leaders out there in the kingdom, and she wanted to make sure they had a voice. She couldn’t do it all on her own. She didn’t know how.
There was a knock on the door and Talle peeked into the room. “Oh, here you are, sunshine. Are you ready to get going?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for the funeral?” Ana asked.
“Ah, I’ve had enough of those,” said the captain, “and it’s as good a time as any to disappear.”
“And you can’t tell me where you’re going?”
Talle and Siege exchanged an unreadable look, and then the captain said, “I’m sorry, darling. We need to hide the heart, and the fewer people who know, the better. The Great Dark is gone—but we don’t know if it’s forever, or if we just destroyed a part of it, or if something else will come after the heart’s power. We’ll come back, though,” she added when Ana started to look a little panicky. “We promise.”
Ana nodded. She guessed that was as good as she was going to get from her captain. She played with the golden toggles on her coat as Siege stood, slowly, one hand on her side, and grabbed the golden-handled cane propped up on the side of the chair. As she turned to leave, Ana blurted, “Captain?”
Siege paused and glanced back over her shoulder. “Yeah, darling?”
Are you really the Goddess? Is the Great Dark really gone? Will you be back? She had so many questions to ask her, but none of them seemed as important as: “I love you.”
Siege smiled, and the ends of her hair glowed faintly, reminding Ana of how once her hair had lit an entire room. She came up to Ana, and they were close to the same height now, but she thought she would always feel infinitely smaller against Siege—a shadow to rise up to. Her captain kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “To the ends of the galaxy, my darling.”
Then her mothers were gone.
Pursing her lips, she blinked the wetness out of her eyes because she had cried too many times over the last week and slipped on the coat. The metal shoulders and the accolades on her lapel made the coat cumbersome, and it buttoned in this ridiculous way that must have been very fashionable a hundred year ago.
Was this going to be the rest of her life? Slipping into coats she didn’t like, fretting about the state of the kingdom, and whether she ruled well, and what kind of world she would leave her own heir?
Her heir.
Oh, that meant love and marriage and—and other things. She barely knew what love was, and even so, she wasn’t all that sure he loved her, too, and thinking about it got her nervous. Had the room just become stuffy? She began to unfasten the coat, one button at a time, almost tearing off the last one to get it undone, pulling at the collar of her blouse to get some air.
Stop thinking. You’re okay. You’ll be—
“That color really doesn’t suit you,” said a voice in the doorway.
Surprised, Ana glanced into the mirror, and behind her stood Di. He looked just as tragically handsome as ever, clad in an evening coat as black as coal, designs of golden suns across the collar and cuffs, a ruffly white ascot tight against his throat, his trousers as dark as his polished leather boots. His bloodred hair was half up in a bun, silver stitches sewing together the wound on his cheek. He had a box under his arm that was tied tight with a piece of string.
She spun around to him. “You always seem to find me in a state of undress,” she noted.
She had barely seen him this last week, and standing there he looked both familiar and strange—someone she knew intimately and yet didn’t know at all.
“Seems so,” he replied. “You have a visitor who wants to see you. If you don’t mind your state of decency, I won’t say anything.”
She was about to tell him to shush when a familiar whirring made her pause. Her eyes widened. It couldn’t be. A moment later, a small square bot peeked over Di’s shoulder, its lens widening at the sight of her.
“E0S!” she cried, flinging out her arms.
The bot gave a shrill beep and flew around Di to her, and she grabbed it and squeezed it tight to her chest.
“I thought you were fried!” She laughed. It wiggled out of her arms and nuzzled her cheek. She wanted to cry, she was so happy to see it. She asked, “How did you fix it?”
He rubbed his chest where Erik had punctured him with the sword. It was fixed now, she’d heard, the wires soldered, but rubbing it had become a habit, like with the scar on her belly. “Well,” he began, “I broke the bot, didn’t I? So I had to fix it. Besides, I thought you’d need your little companion back. It’s much better use like this than you lobbing it at my head.” E0S swirled away from her and bumped against the side of his head again. He glared at it. “Or not.”
E0S blipped happily.
“Ah, you’re right. Almost forgot. This is for you.” He handed her the box from under his arm.
She took it, resisting the urge to shake it. “A present?”
“I surely hope so, or I grabbed the wrong box.”
“Smart-ass.”
“I’ll take the gift back if you don’t want it.”
“No, I do!” She laughed, and then realized, “Wait, did you just use contractions?”
He touched his fingers to his lips in surprise. “Oh. I guess I did.”
“If this is another glitch, you’re keeping this one,” she said with another laugh, and he gave a strained smile.
“Why don’t you open your present?”
“Fine, fine.” She busied herself setting the box on the bed. It was a simple beige box tied with string. She pulled it loose and quickly opened the box—and stared down at the mountains of supple red wool and brass buttons.
Di came up beside her, his hands patiently behind his back. “I seem to recall you were eyeing it in a storefront window a while ago. This one’s a little different, but I think it suits you better.”
E0S peered over her shoulder and gave a long, awed beep.
Inside the box was a coat as red as blood, its collar black to match its cuffs, brassy buttons gleaming. She ran her fingers along the intricate details of the lapel, suns and moons and stars in a tapestry that reminded her of Siege and Talle and the nights on the Dossier when she couldn’t sleep, so she and Di watched the stars instead. It was built from the best parts of everything she loved. Its insides were a soft cotton she could sink into. The coat was so sharply fierce, she was afraid the threads themselves would cut.
Gingerly, she held it up. “Oh, I can’t take this.”
“It’s a gift, so I insist.” Then he outstretched his hand to the mirror.
Excitedly, she shrugged out of the purple coat and raced to the mirror to put it on. And Goddess, it was a perfect fit, brushing just above her knees. She spun around in it, grinning, as E0S swirled around her, obviously happy. It even had room for her pistols, and a flash grenade, and—
Except Empresses never wore pistols. They didn’t carry flash grenades in their pockets.
And in the mirror, there was a bittersweet look on his face, one he tried to hide but couldn’t. She could never read him before, but the more she studied the slant of his brow or the dip in the corner of his mouth, the easier he was to translate.
And no one gave gifts like this unless something was wrong.
Her smile began to drop from her lips.
Di asked, “Do you not like it?”
She turned to him, pulling at the cuffs. “Why does this feel like good-bye?”
“Ana . . . I . . .” He tried to find the right words, but he seemed not to be able to find any. He turned his moonlit eyes down and pursed his lips together tightly. “I can’t—” He winced suddenly, his hand quickly going to the injury at his chest—and froze.
Like he had in the shrine—when they were hiding from Mellifare.
And now that she watched, she had seen this happen countless times before.
The terrib
le realization began to crawl up her spine like tiny spiders. She pressed a hand against his chest, where the wound had been. “Di?”
His eyes flickered.
“Di—Di, you’re okay,” she soothed, touching his cheek. Her fingers trembled. She’d never thought she would see this again. She never wanted to. She tried to be patient, to stroke his cheek, to wait—
Suddenly he jerked, the sound of a gasp escaping his lips, and he snagged her wrist, twisting it away from him. For a moment he looked at her as if he didn’t recognize her—it was a look she had seen for six months while he was HIVE’d—but then remembered who she was and quickly let go.
He stepped away.
“I—I’m sorry. I can’t . . . It’s difficult to sometimes . . . I . . .” He pulled his hands through his hair, his face crumpling, because it was so apparent he wished she never had to see.
She took him again by the hand. “You’re glitching, aren’t you? Like you did before—”
“It’s worse than before,” he interrupted, unable to meet her gaze. “When I glitch, all I see are memories. I relive them—of when I was alive, and as a Metal, and HIVE’d, and I never know which it’ll be.”
“We can deal that. I can help you,” she said, folding her fingers into his, but he tugged his hand away from her, and her heart sank.
He gave her a sad look. “What if I wake up from a glitch, all these screams in my head, and I can’t remember you?” His face began to scrunch, wrinkles bunching his forehead, like someone trying desperately not to cry. “I wish I had never made that promise. The one in Rasovant’s lab. I promised I would go away forever.”
“Because I was in danger, and now I’m not,” she realized.
“Yes.” He balled his hands into fists. He was in pain standing there, as if waiting for her permission to leave. But if he left, he would go forever—she would never see him again. She would never talk with him, or laugh with him, or dance with him—
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