Robb’s head was pounding.
What did he drink at his brother’s celebration? Nothing that he could remember. There was the champagne, but then there was that waiter with the voxcollar, and the outlaw masquerading as a waiter and—Goddess’s spark.
He snapped his eyes open and looked around. He was in an . . . infirmary? It smelled like disinfectant and gunpowder. The sharp halogen lights made everything bright and blurry. His head swam.
“Get up, Ironblood,” singsonged a voice, and poked him in the side.
He sat up with a hiss, holding his ribs. How had he—
Nevaeh. Blood staining his favorite evening coat. Falling out of the skysailer.
The outlaws.
Robb scrambled off the gurney, away from a young man with violet eyes. A Solani. The one from the skysailer. He must’ve been close to Robb’s age, but his silver hair made him look old—ancient—and his skin shimmered as if starlight hid just beneath. He wore a ruffly purple evening coat, golden filigree decorating the collar to match the lining, and buttons so polished they gleamed. Underneath that insufferably garish jacket was a silk shirt, stained with what Robb figured was his blood. A pair of goggles sat around his neck.
The Solani was impossibly tall—they all were—with a square face and sharp jawline. His eyes were narrow, eyebrows slivers of silver to match his thick and messy ponytail, his lips pressed into a thin, impatient line.
Robb grabbed the first thing he could find—a suture pen—and held it to attack. The pain in his side was a dull roar, but it was quickly sharpening. “Where am I?” he wheezed.
“The Dossier,” the Solani replied, “and put that down before you embarrass yourself.”
“Last time I woke up, a Metal sedated me.”
“D09 rarely likes people who try to get Ana killed. In fact, I don’t like those kinds of people, either.”
Robb steeled his shoulders, because Ana hadn’t been the one dangling a thousand feet over Nevaeh’s slums. “Fine. I assume I am your prisoner. Where’re you taking me?”
“Taking you?” The Solani bit back a laugh. “Ironblood, you’re just along for the ride.”
Embarrassment tinged Robb’s ears. “Then where are we going, star-kisser?”
The Solani’s face pinched. “I have a name, little lord. You could ask me for it.”
Robb bit his lip. “Where are we going?” he repeated, trying to look anywhere but at the Solani—at the cabinets, the rusted walls, the flickering halogen lights of the infirmary.
“The Tsarina.”
He gave a start. “What?”
“It’s Rasovant’s lost—”
“Fleetship. The coordinates. Yes, I know. We’re going?”
The Solani crossed his arms and leaned against the dormant medical console. “Yes, we are.”
I’m prisoner on a ship going to where I need to go, Robb realized. How lucky was that? If he played his cards right, he could use these pirates to get what he wanted. He just had to survive until then.
There had to be a catch. “Where do the coordinates point?” he asked.
“Palavar.”
Ah.
Cerces’s dark moon. Of course. It made sense. Where better to hide a solar ship than a place no solar light could reach?
“And no one’s following us?” he asked. “Not the Royal Guard or . . .” My mother, he thought, rubbing his thumb over the chip in his wrist. It hadn’t been activated yet, so his mother either didn’t know he was missing or didn’t care.
The Solani rolled his eyes. “Please, we lost the Royal Guard. Well, I lost them. Modesty is overrated.”
“And Vier— Captain Carnelian?”
“Lost her halfway around Eros. She’s eating my space dust.”
I wouldn’t count on that, he wanted to say, because if he knew Viera Carnelian at all—and he knew her better than most—she was viciously stubborn. And righteous.
The Solani inclined his head. “Now come on, we’re not staying in the infirmary.”
“We?”
“Yes, we. Someone has to keep an eye on our esteemed guest, and I drew the short straw. What’s your name?”
Did no one know he was a Valerio?
Am I really this lucky? he thought, putting down the suture pen. These criminals had bandaged him up. . . . Why would they do that if they wanted to kill him?
He said the first name that came to mind.
“Aragon.”
The Grand Duchess’s maiden name. Most of their descendants had died of the Plague, so these outlaws would be hard-pressed to catch him in the lie. And when lying, it was best to stick as close to the truth as possible.
“Robb Aragon.”
“All right, Robb Aragon. I’d say it was a pleasure meeting you, but I can’t lie.”
“What’s your name?”
The silver-haired boy cocked his head, as if debating for a moment. “Jax.”
“No last name?”
“Not one that matters. Now follow me.” Then Jax pushed himself off the old console and left the infirmary.
Robb—feeling like he didn’t have much of a choice—followed. The dried blood on his shirt crackled when he moved. The pain was horrible, but the smell was worse—rotten eggs and iron. He tried not to gag.
Of all the people to get hit by a stray bullet, it had to be him.
Goddess, he was cursed.
The stairs hurt. Walking hurt. Even breathing hurt. On the first level of the ship, the Solani showed him to an empty bed in the crew’s quarters. Two bunk beds sat on either side of the room, with a communal meeting area in the middle. His bunk was apparently across from Jax’s. The quarters were small—smaller than any room he’d ever slept in before—and smelled like fresh linens. A row of bookcases lined the far wall, filled with medical texts and ratty adventure books, the covers so worn they were falling off. This . . . wasn’t the type of living space he imagined when he thought of outlaws.
The rest of the crew were somewhere else on the ship—Robb could hear them shouting. He’d rather not meet them, but he knew he would eventually.
They’ll gut me and eat my insides, he thought, remembering the stories from the Academy.
“Here,” said Jax, handing him some clothes from a trunk.
Robb stared at them.
“Unless you want to go around smelling like a corpse, little lord.”
Little. A muscle in his jaw throbbing, he took the shirt and breeches. They smelled like lavender, reminding him of the skysailer, pressing his chest against the Solani’s back—
He swallowed thickly and turned his back to the silver-haired boy.
Unbuttoning his shirt, he winced as pain spiked across his ribs again, racing up his side. He managed to get one sleeve off, but it hurt to move his right side. After his third try, he noticed the Solani watching, sitting on the edge of his bunk with one leg draped over the other.
“Do you need assistance?” asked Jax, amused.
“I can do it,” he snapped, and to prove it, he unlaced the other sleeve and tore off the shirt, dried blood crinkling, and pulled the new shirt on. It was too baggy. He hesitated before he took off his breeches. “Do you mind?” he asked, giving Jax a pointed look.
“Mind what?”
“A bit of privacy?”
The silver-haired young man grinned then, toothy like a cat. “Afraid I’ll judge too harshly?”
Robb narrowed his eyes.
“Fine.” Jax sighed, turning to look toward the wall instead. “You know I’ve always heard Ironbloods were never any fun. Glad it wasn’t a lie.”
I do have fun, he thought angrily, quickly changing into the new breenches, and sat down to lace up his boots again. The trouser legs were so long, he had to roll them up to his ankles.
“And I’m glad to know that all Solani—” Robb went to stand again when black spots ate at his vision. He swayed, trying to catch himself on the side of the cot, but the Solani caught him first and set him down on the edge of the bed again.
Robb was afraid to move until his head stopped spinning.
“You’ll pull your stitches if you don’t slow down,” the silver-haired boy cautioned, and rerolled Robb’s left pants leg.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sure you are,” replied the Solani, and leaned forward, “but just a word of warning: if I catch you lying to me or the rest of the crew about anything you’ve said, I promise you’ll wish I’d let you fall out of that skysailer on Nevaeh. Do you understand?”
Robb sat back, distancing himself from that fierce violet-eyed glare. His chest wound tight—from panic. It was definitely panic—
A shrill bell rang across the intercom.
Robb jumped.
Jax quirked an eyebrow. “It’s the dinner bell, little lord. Stop being so jumpy. You act like you’re expecting company.” He stood, dusted his knees off with his leather-gloved hands, and left the quarters.
Once he was gone, Robb finally got a chance to catch his breath. The lingering smell of lavender was suffocating.
The sooner this band of space pirates found the fleetship, the better. He hoped this antique ship had enough of a head start to the Tsarina before his mother tracked him down. What happened after—to these outlaws, to that Solani and that girl Ana—didn’t matter.
His father mattered. Finding him mattered. And the answers were on the Tsarina, Robb was sure of it. He was sure he’d find his father. Or find out where he’d gone—find something. He had to.
He’d spent seven years searching, and he wouldn’t let anything stop him now.