Heart of Iron

by Ashley Poston

  Stop. Thinking.

  He rubbed his thumb against his chip, which was no longer hurting, though he wished it still did.

  Jax should have left him on the Tsarina after all.

  The starboard observation deck was empty, thankfully, not that he knew of anyone else on the Caterina who liked this room. Only he, and his father, stretched out on the two benches overlooking the passing stars.

  He’d avoided windows ever since the Academy, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

  He sat on the left bench with a hiss, the ache in his side as sharp as ever, and watched space slowly move by. He didn’t notice the Messier in the corner of the room until it asked him, “Do you need a refreshment, Lord Valerio?”

  Robb jumped.

  The Messier looked so much like D09, he thought for a moment it was the android. But this Metal’s eyes were blue, and its uniform pristine and pressed. D09 never looked anything short of just-hit-by-a-skysailer.

  “Would you like a refreshment?” the Messier repeated.

  “No—no, thank you. I would like some privacy, though,” he said.

  The Messier’s blue eyes flickered. It bowed and left the observation deck.

  Robb was sure he’d see more of them in the future, now that he was the soon-to-be Emperor’s brother. Wherever the Emperor went, Messiers followed. Their mindless blue-eyed gaze should’ve been a comfort after the red-eyed androids from the Tsarina, but it made him squirm nonetheless.

  He ran a hand through his curly hair. This was the first time he had truly been alone since Astoria, and it was too quiet. It made the doubt and disgust in his head too loud.

  You killed them—the entire crew.

  What did they do to deserve that? Why do you care?

  The reflection in the window tiredly stared back at him.

  He didn’t recognize himself at first.

  His cheeks looked thinner, and he needed a shave—but he’d seen that face before. It hung above the hearth at the Valerio estate of a man who’d died on the far side of Palavar.

  His father was dead, and now the only people who had treated Robb remotely like a person were going to die, too.

  And it’s all your fault, his shame whispered in the silence.

  Resting his face in his hands, he squeezed his eyes closed, trying to push down the shame that clawed up his throat—Siege’s grin during a game of Wicked Luck, the crew mourning over their dead, the look Ana always gave her Metal, the taste of Jax just after their kiss. . . .

  But the guilt bubbled up and up, because he had used them for his own selfish gain. He’d screwed up over and over and still they’d given him another chance.

  Those outlaws don’t matter, he tried to convince himself, but the words morphed, twisted to You betrayed them—they mattered.

  And there in the solitude of the observation deck, he cried. He wanted so badly to be his father’s son, but he had so unwillingly been everything his mother always wanted.

  Ana

  Great plumes of fire reached toward the marble ceiling. She coughed, unable to catch a deep-enough breath, as tapestries dropped from the walls and flowers in rich Erosian vases shriveled in the heat.

  It was a nightmare.

  She knew it was because she had never seen this place before in her entire life, but she recognized the corridors from the newsfeeds—the veiny marble walls and the melting golden trim.

  The Iron Palace.

  The ash tasted familiar on her tongue—and she wasn’t sure how.

  Archways of fire stretched across the ceiling, crackling and smoldering against the white marble. Screams echoed down from the distant corridors. She wanted to save them, but someone had grabbed ahold of her wrist and led her away.

  He was tall and broad shouldered, with thick dark hair and a beard. But she quickly realized that he wasn’t very tall at all—she was short. A child. She couldn’t see his face; it was blurred like rushing lights. Her heart pounded in her chest with fear—

  But it’s a dream—this is a dream.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said, his voice echoing like he was shouting to her from the other end of the hallway, even though he was right there. He bent to her and pinned something to her nightgown—a brooch in the shape of an ouroboros. “As long as you wear it, it’ll protect you.”

  But the fire was too hot—suffocating. She could barely breathe.

  There was a great shudder above them, and she looked up. The ceiling, heavy with fire, gave a groan.

  The man grabbed her arm and darted through the flames, but she twisted out of his grip. He dove through the flames alone.

  And then the ceiling collapsed.

  She winced, closing her eyes, when someone scooped her up into its arms—except it wasn’t a person at all, but a Metal. And it was so hot—burning, bubbling hot—she tried to scream but nothing came out. The side of her face lit with unimaginable pain.

  It hurt, it hurt so fiercely she could feel the fire against her cheek as she tried to claw it away. She felt her nails dig into her skin, scratching, drawing blood, but she couldn’t wake up.

  She wanted to wake up.

  And then the Metal monster who had burned her let go, and there was a broken look to the Metal’s face, something familiar, like a memory she couldn’t quite place. She thrashed away from it, but the android grabbed her wrists, moonlit eyes shining.

  “It is a dream, Ana. Wake up,” he said in Di’s damaged voice. “Wake up, Ana. Wake up!”

  She lurched awake.

  The memory of the fire prickled her skin. She couldn’t catch her breath, dizzy from the smoke in her nightmare. It had been so real—there were faces now in the burning hallway. There were words and voices. Where had they come from? Her hair stuck to the back of her neck, slick with sweat, the taste of ash still in her mouth. And—and there was Di.

  Frantically, she looked around. She’d heard him—she knew she had. He was right there in the fire, telling her to wake up. But the further her nightmare slipped into the past, the fainter the memory grew. Because it couldn’t be Di.

  Di was dead.

  Her eyes focused—

  She was in a small room. Steel walls. Worried Erosian-sky eyes watched her. He had a hand wrapped around her wrist, as if he’d shaken her awake instead. Robb Valerio. Her last memory on the Dossier came flooding back. Her crewmates were dead—or dying—and she was about to die, too.

  She quickly jerked her hands out of his grip, and his worried expression fell away to an indifferent mask again.

  The cell door opened behind him, and two Valerio guardsmen entered.

  “We’re here,” Robb said, his voice steel and stone.

  “W-where?” The guards pulled her to her feet, binding her hands behind her back again. Her thumb was sore, but it had been reset, and Wick’s blood had dried on her pants. How long had she been asleep?

  “The Iron Palace,” the Ironblood said as he adjusted his disheveled coat, “to turn you in.”

  Robb

  The Iron Palace looked like a shard of black glass against the otherwise pale landscape of the moon, a gloomy fortress. The North Tower looked like the other three, but it stood as a hollow shell with burned insides. It had never been rebuilt, and instead the doors were locked—the halls never to be trod in again. The rest of the palace, however, was immaculate in its marble walls and golden trim—the pinnacle of opulence. Surrounding the palace lay terraformed gardens blooming with moonlilies, and in the largest garden stood the kingdom’s first Iron Shrine.

  Robb hadn’t been back to the palace in seven years, but he quickly realized as he stepped out onto the docks that nothing had changed. It was frozen in time—a broken relic from a terrible rebellion.

  He wished he were anywhere other than here.

  Two of his mother’s finest guardsmen led Ana down the length of the docks to the waiting Royal Guard, passing large starships with sails that shone like spun gold. They were all warships built in a time of peace, as if Ironbl
oods ever had to worry about battle.

  At least not the physical kind.

  At the end of the docks, Royal Captain Viera waited, a bandage on her cheek from their run-in a few days ago. She looked just about as pleased as a wet cat.

  Robb caught up with the Valerio guards escorting Ana and dismissed them. “I can take it from here,” he told them.

  “But Lady Valerio said—”

  “Did I stutter?”

  The two guardsmen gave each other hesitant looks before relinquishing Ana to him, her hands bound with wire behind her back, greasy hair stuck to her face and neck, clumped together with sweat and dried blood. She looked like a dead girl walking.

  He turned back to the Royal Captain, inwardly cursing his luck that Viera Bastard-Born Carnelian was the Grand Duchess’s Royal Captain.

  He gave a slight bow. “Vee, it’s a pleasure.”

  “I am glad you managed to apprehend her,” replied the Royal Captain, knowing very well that he had escaped with Ana instead of after her.

  “One of us would’ve caught her eventually.”

  “Of course.”

  Royal Captain Viera led them into the palace gates and through the empty square, the palace towering over them like a shard of black glass. The palace doors opened into the great hall, lined with pillars as thick as three men. The hall seemed endless, or maybe it was just his wishful thinking.

  He had spent several hours on the observation deck, trying to puzzle out how to fix this, how to save Ana—but it had been staring him in the face this whole time.

  You can do this, he told himself, remembering the moment Ana had picked up the ore, when he realized that it didn’t rust in her hands. It’s just another way to get in trouble. You’re good at trouble.

  That still didn’t calm the twisting, clawing panic rising in his stomach. Because what if he failed?

  At the end of the hall was another set of double doors as big as the ones at the entrance. These were carved with moons and stars, the motto of the Iron Kingdom in gold across its length.

  Dvarek et su Lait.

  In Darkness We Shine.

  The Royal Captain planted a hand on each door and pushed them wide.

  Robb winced as light flooded the hall, a blinding spectacle of beautifully gilded floors and antique tapestries. A plush purple runner trailed its way up a small set of stairs to the Iron Throne, and behind it stood an imposing ancient statue of the Goddess. She almost looked alive, the way Her hair and robes floated in an imagined breeze, as She stretched Her arms out, Her eyes looking up, and up, and up, toward a pinpoint in a sky no one could see.

  The statue made him feel infinitely small.

  The royal-purple tapestries on the walls fluttered in a breeze that made the lanterns overhead bob and sway, warm swaths of yellow-orange light moving over the people in the room like light under the sea. In the corner of the room stood Messiers, as still as statues, their blue eyes glowing, watching.

  Viera took her place on the left side of the throne, while the Iron Adviser stood to the right, his long beard braided halfway down his chest, dressed in the kingdom’s finest—a black suit with draping tails, swirls of silver and purple sewn into the broad sleeves and fluttery hems, and a shimmery gorget around his neck. Lord Rasovant, the shadow who haunted the corners of the room and whispered in the Grand Duchess’s ear.

  Robb bowed to the woman perched on the metal throne. “Your Grace.”

  The Grand Duchess inclined her head.

  The throne swallowed the old woman. Large steel beams spiked out from the chair’s back like sun rays, and she the center. Her glittering navy-colored dress accented the warm brown of her skin, ancient and soft. Her dress was all sharp lines and pointed shoulders, as though it was her choice of weapon against the universe.

  Do you want to take this gamble? a voice whispered deep inside him. Is Ana really who you think she is?

  Ana didn’t look like the Goddess returned, as the late princess was supposed to be. The girl of light. She simply looked like a tired and lost outlaw.

  “I was promised a Metal,” the Grand Duchess said with mild disdain. “Where is it?”

  “Smashed, Your Grace,” Robb replied. “In an accident—”

  “So I suppose for bringing the girl here your family wants a reward?” the Grand Duchess went on, leaning her head on her hand, elbow propped on the armrest. “Tell me, Robb Valerio—your brother is about to be crowned Emperor of the entire Kingdom, and he will have all my worldly possessions, so what could you possibly want?”

  He glanced back to Ana.

  If his father had survived the Rebellion, if he had escaped, then couldn’t she have, too?

  The room was quiet; the only sound was his thundering heart. There used to be people at these hearings. Hundreds of Ironbloods and citizens alike lined the throne room, waiting on the Emperor’s words with bated breath. His father used to stand with him by the door and whisper things only he knew about the Emperor—they had been best friends, along with Lord Rasovant’s son, Dmitri, and Marigold Aragon. They’d grown up together. They’d gone on adventures together.

  He used to envy his father; he used to wonder what that sort of friendship was like.

  And for a moment, in a rusted old transport ship with shoddy black sails, he’d known.

  “Well?” prodded the Iron Adviser impatiently.

  “I want to tell Your Grace a story,” Robb said, looking back at Ana, a dirty outlaw with blood staining her shirt, and burn scars on her face, and the eyes of an Imperial bloodline, “of how Princess Ananke Armorov of the Iron Kingdom survived.”

  Ana

  Princess Ananke Armorov.

  She—Ana—couldn’t be. She had no recollection, no memory, no proof. She was Ana—she was the daughter of ship traders. They had died in mercenary raid, and she and Di had escaped. Siege found them drifting on the far side of Iliad, and healed her wounds, and raised her.

  She was not an Ironblood.

  Princess Ananke Armorov had died in the Rebellion. She had burned to death, and Ana pitied the girl, because she knew what it felt like to burn.

  Her stomach clenched in fear.

  Burns. Like the burns on the side of her face. The scars. But hers were from the raid. Siege said they were from a ship explosion.

  Siege said.

  “There was once a fire,” Robb said, his voice so loud it crackled, “that set the North Tower ablaze—”

  “Silence!” the Grand Duchess hissed, and turned her scrutinizing gaze to Ana. “What game is this?”

  “No game, Your Grace—”

  “My granddaughter is dead, young Valerio.”

  Robb lifted his hand to Ana. “She survived, Your Grace.”

  The old woman looked as if she wanted to break Robb in two on her knee, the rage on her face was so potent. “Then how did the girl escape?” She turned her vicious gaze to Ana. “How did you survive when no one else did?”

  Ana’s mouth went dry. Because there was a gap in her memory, an expanse of blurry images she couldn’t make out. “I—I don’t—I don’t know, Your Grace. I can’t remember—”

  “A convenient excuse,” said the Iron Adviser dryly, “for a girl pretending to be—”

  “I don’t pretend to be anyone I’m not,” Ana snapped, her voice rising, echoing off the walls, remembering the words Di had told her the evening before when he’d braided her hair. It felt like a lifetime ago. “I am Ana of the Dossier—”

  “Send the young Valerio on his way,” the Grand Duchess interrupted. She was shaking, so old and brittle she could fracture apart from her anger alone. “And you, girl—you are a terror to this kingdom. I have seen enough. On my word of iron and stars, you, Ana of the Dossier, are found guilty of treason—”

  “No, Your Grace!” Robb cried.

  “—and hereby sentenced to death.”

  Before she could take a breath, Messiers swarmed toward her like a tidal wave to seize her. She struggled against them, but there
were too many, and each time she tried to push away, they held on tighter. This was not how she thought she’d die. She wanted to die fighting. On a ship. Surrounded by nothing but light and space and sky.

  She wasn’t royalty—she wasn’t the Goddess. The girl of light. If she were, then she could have protected Mokuba. She could have shut down Lord Rasovant’s ship, rescued Barger.

  She could have saved Di.

  But she hadn’t. And there would be no tombstone, no grave—and no one would remember him.

  Where was the justice in that?

  The thought broke something inside her, something so deep it reverberated through her soul. Where was justice at all? Where had it ever been?

  If there was justice, Lady Valerio would be here, answering for Wick’s death. Lord Rasovant would be standing here in judgment instead, answering for the monsters he’d created on the Tsarina.

  She was innocent.

  Count your bullets, Siege had said, but the count was still at zero and yet here she was. Sentenced to death. For trying to save her best friend?

  There was no justice in that.

  With a scream, she tore against the Messiers that pulled her away, their grips bruising her. They clamped on harder, but she knew their weakness—like she knew Di’s when they trained in the cargo bay. She slammed a foot into one of their knees, and the Messier buckled, and crashed into the one beside it, knocking them both off balance, and she twisted out of their grips.

  She spun back toward the doors, toward the exit, toward freedom, but a hand snaked into her hair and grabbed ahold of it near her scalp.

  And pulled.

  The Royal Captain dragged her back and pressed a lightword against the side of her neck. “Be silent,” she hissed.

  Tears pooled at the edges of Ana’s eyes. She would not be silent. It was not a virtue she’d learned from Siege.