Grabbing an extra helmet from the rack in the cargo bay, he swirled his ponytail up into a bun and shoved it on. The air lock sighed and opened, bringing with it Riggs and Wick, carrying—
“Goddess, Barger,” Jax gasped, staring at the lifeless body between his crewmates.
A gaping hole was carved into the center of Barger’s back. Panic seized Jax’s insides and twisted, because he’d lost contact with that blasted Ironblood a few minutes ago. What if the Metals had shot him, too? What if he’d accidentally led the Ironblood straight into harm’s way? Goddess, he hated the Ironblood, but he hated the thought of him bleeding out somewhere alone even more.
“Have you seen Robb?” he asked, trying to disguise his panic.
Riggs shook his head. “Not since he ran off to go cut the power. You can’t possibly be going on the ship—it’s about to toss itself into Palavar.”
“How can a ship toss itself?” Wick muttered, but Riggs waved him off.
“You know what I meant—Jax!”
But the Solani was already latching his helmet on to his suit. “Look, whatever awoke the ship is ninety-nine-point-for-sure coming after us, and the Ironblood’s not answering his fucking comm-link.”
“Leave him,” Wick grunted, earning a sharp look from Riggs.
“What about the ship? You’re the pilot,” said Riggs.
“Wick, you can take the helm, yeah? ” Jax asked, and the Cercian nodded. “Good—if you don’t hear from me in five minutes, leave,” he added, stepping into the air lock.
Great—he was even sounding desperate now. But he wasn’t. He simply wanted to look after his investment. Yes, that was it. He’d saved the Ironblood’s life once. He didn’t want that rich brat to die now.
The door closed behind him and the air lock decompressed. He opened the outer door and grabbed onto the starbridge, hooking the safety strap onto his suit, and flicked the switch. Humming, the machine hauled him across the expanse toward the other ship.
The Tsarina made him feel much smaller than he already did as he traveled across the line between the ships. His heart thumped louder against his rib cage the closer he got to the air lock, the only sound save for the voice in his head telling him that he shouldn’t get attached.
You’ll regret it, the voice warned.
It sounded suspiciously like his father’s.
The zip line came to a stop with a whine, and Jax heaved himself into the Tsarina’s outer cargo air lock and closed the door behind him.
The ship’s cargo bay looked like a war zone. Half a dozen Metals lay sparking on the ground; a trail of blood was smeared across the floor in front of the cargo-bay doors. Barger’s blood. He wondered, faintly, if Ironbloods bled the same, and the panic made him frenzied.
“Lenda!” he called, taking off his helmet. The air in the Tsarina tasted like metal and dust. “Lenda! Where are you?”
The blond woman peeked up from behind one of the cargo crates. Her eyes were bloodshot. “What’re you doing over here?”
“Have you seen the Ironblood?” he asked, pretending he hadn’t noticed she had been crying.
“Not since before the ship lost power,” said Lenda, wiping her nose with the back of her arm. “The captain’s gone looking for Ana.”
“I know—she at least answered her comm-link,” he grumbled, and whirled around toward the opposite hallway, trying to remember what the ship’s map looked like. He’d told Robb to go into the ventilation shaft over there—the one with the destroyed grate—then that meant . . .
He went that way.
“Don’t wait for me. Once you see Siege and Ana, get off the ship!” he shouted back to Lenda, and took off running toward a door at the other end of the hull, grabbing a helmet off the floor—assuming it was Robb’s.
If the ship had powered down, that meant its emergency functions were depowering, too. He did not want to be swimming around on this ship in zero gravity. He hated zero gravity.
I’m going to kill Robb if he’s just not answering his comm-link, he thought, tripping on his own feet, as he followed down the hallway Robb would have shimmied alongside in the air shaft. It was dark, and he could barely see.
I’m going to kill him when I find him.
But in his head, kill sounded suspiciously like another word.
Foolish, self-centered Ironblood! And, just as vehemently, Foolish me.
The engine room must be somewhere in this area. He would search through every corridor until he found it. The ventilation shaft hadn’t taken Robb far. Just a few rooms, but the longer Jax ran, the farther it seemed to be.
Finally, he slid into the next hallway—and stopped.
It was a dead end. His heart plummeted like a rock into his toes. He was lost—was he lost? No, he couldn’t be. Solani were never lost. Solani knew exactly where they were exactly when they needed to—
Someone stepped out of the room at the end.
Dark, curly hair, sun-kissed skin, a lightsword in his hand illuminating the corridor like a flickering star. The boy lifted his sky-colored eyes to Jax.
“Ma’alor,” he breathed in relief, then a little louder, “Robb!”
His legs went faster than his mind, darting down the corridor before he could gather what little decorum and dignity he had left. The Ironblood looked flustered to see him.
“What are you—why are—”
“Here, put this on,” Jax interrupted, handing him the helmet. “Why weren’t you answering your comm-link?”
A sigh whooshed through the ship as the gravitational systems shut off. Jax felt his stomach float first, then the rest of him. He tried to claw his way toward a wall.
Robb seemed perfectly at ease to float—he didn’t seem in a hurry to leave at all, actually. “Why’re you here?”
“Is that how you say thank you?” he asked, incredulous. Even with his long limbs, the walls were too far away. He couldn’t grab ahold of anything. Unless he wanted to grab ahold of the Ironblood. “I’m trying to save your pretty ass.”
“I didn’t ask you to—and stop with the backhanded compliments,” Robb snapped. “Leave me alone.”
“You honestly want to die here, then? On the forgotten side of Palavar?”
Robb finally looked up to Jax, eyes rimmed red—as if he’d been crying. “My mother would say I deserved it. Like my father.”
Jax recognized the note of bitterness in his voice, and despite his carefully built walls, his heart gave a lurch. You found him, then. “Robb . . .”
“Mother would say this was the legacy I earned.” His eyebrows knit together. “So yes, I want to die here. I deserve to die h—”
Jax took Robb by the face, fingers in his hair, so this insufferable Ironblood could look nowhere else but at him. Every speck of stardust in his being told him to let go. Being so close was a hazard, the thin gloves of his space suit the only thing separating skin from skin.
What Robb didn’t realize was that Jax knew something about legacy, too. How stories were never all true or all lies. How the Solani gift to read the stars had slowly faded over a thousand years into one of those many stories, and how he was the last bit of truth left.
“Screw legacy,” he said, the space between them barely a breath, but just enough to not touch, just enough to orbit without ever colliding. He pushed a curl behind Robb’s ear, but it sprang back. “I was worried about you.”
For a moment, it felt like the words didn’t register.
Robb blinked. Once. Twice.
Then the Ironblood bridged the gap between them and pressed their lips together.
Robb’s mouth was hungry and desperate, tasting like honey and salt and surprise. Jax’s skin buzzed at their nearness, and he wanted to sink into the kiss and rebel, to be closer and a thousand light-years away. He braced himself, waiting for the inevitable—
For a second, a second more before—
Solani could read the stars, but it wasn’t through the sky. It never was.
There was a jolt—like touching a live wire. A burn. A hiss. Then the star-stuff inside Robb swirled, brighter and brighter, sending his fate through Jax with the sharpness of a knife.
A black collar. A marble palace. Ana touching iron. Moonlilies. The glint of knuckle rings. A bloodied crown—
With a gasp, Jax tore himself away, the taste of Robb still on his tongue, the visions filling his head like sand. His lips stung. The pull of the stars was so strong it made him dizzy and weak.
“Goddess,” he said, breathless, shaking. “You—you have—you’re going to . . .”
“You said a kiss would do, remember?” Robb replied. He must’ve seen something odd on Jax’s face, because he looked away a moment after and fastened her helmet on. “Before we go, I want you to see something.”
Jax felt numb, trying to box away the images, but they were so fresh and raw. He hadn’t seen someone’s stars—touched someone—in ten years . . . and this was how he broke his streak?
“Did you hear me?” Robb said, and nudged his head back toward the door at the end of the hallway, where two Metals lay. “I said I’ve found something.”
“W-what?”
“Just trust me—you have to see it.” He took Jax by the arm and pulled him into the room at the end.
The room was pitch-black until Robb drew his lightsword, and it illuminated the small room. Dim holo-screens lined the walls, flickering as the ship used up the last of its energy, monitoring levels of oxygen and hydrogen and other vitals—like a hospital room.
The thought of Robb’s stars quickly fell to the back of Jax’s mind.
He fastened on his helmet, suddenly wanting to be anywhere else. He hated dark spaces. “Ak’va, what is this?”
“It’s in here,” said the Ironblood, motioning to a long white box in the middle of the room. It reminded Jax of the caskets used to jettison deceased crew members into space. Robb planted his feet at the base of the casket, worming his fingers under the lid, and with a heave lifted it open. The steam from dry ice spilled out and quickly swirled in zero gravity, like snaking clouds.
“It’s creepy, just so you know,” Robb warned.
“What is it? Some sort of new tech? Frozen animal? A weapon?”
“Worse.” Robb hovered his lightsword over the opening.
Jax peered into the box, not wanting to see what was inside. Wanting to leave. To get the taste of Robb’s stars out of his mouth.
But when he looked closer, his heart began to race.
Inside the box was a young man.
He looked slightly older than Jax—maybe eighteen—with a brush of freckles across his shoulders, and deep-red shoulder-length hair. Jax quickly pressed his fingers against the boy’s throat, but his skin was cold even through Jax’s gloves. And there was no heartbeat—
He quickly took his hand away.
“It’s a Metal,” said Robb before he could freak out, and turned the android’s head to the side to show him a small circle of grooves at the base of its neck.
A port.
“I think it can help Di. Will you tow it over to the Dossier with me?” Robb’s sky-blue eyes met his, and in the shine of the sword light Jax saw something in them that looked like hope.
And Jax didn’t have the heart to tell him that hope was not in his stars.
Instead, he pressed the comm-link on his chest and radioed Wick. “I found Robb. Keep the Dossier idling. We’re bringing something over.”
“Yep. Captain’s returned, too. Standing by,” Wick replied.
Then Jax reached in and grabbed the android under the left shoulder, and Robb grabbed its right, and they pushed their way out of the hidden room and down the hallway, hoping this Metal—whatever it was made of—didn’t mind floating naked in the harshness of space.