Winter

Forty-Nine

Cinder jabbed her finger’s screwdriver into the wall beside the cell door. A thumbnail’s worth of dust and rock chipped away, joining the pile at her feet. The lava rock was hard, but her titanium tools were harder, and her resolve was the hardest it had ever been.

She was angry. She was frustrated. She was afraid.

She was distraught over Maha’s death, which kept replaying in her memory, making her want to jab the screwdriver into her own temple to make it stop. She had looked at the raid on RM-9 from every angle, torturing herself with what-ifs and implausible scenarios, trying to find some way to bring Maha back to life. To free herself and Wolf. To protect her friends. To defeat Levana.

She was aware of how futile it was.

Maybe Aimery was right. Maybe she should have controlled everyone in that sector from the start. It would have made her a tyrant, but it also would have kept them alive.

She was nauseated from the rank smell coming from the bucket against the wall. She was annoyed that Levana’s goons had taken her best weapon—her cybernetic pointer finger with the gun attachment—and locked her up with her stepmother and stepsister, who had barely spoken since she’d arrived.

Rationally, she knew there was no way she could dig through to the door’s hinges before the guards came for her. She knew she was working herself into a frenzy for no logical reason. But she couldn’t bring herself to slump to the ground, defeated.

Like they were.

Another rock chip crumbled down the wall.

Cinder blew a lock of hair out of her face, but it fell right back down.

According to the clock in her head, she had been in this cell for over twenty-four hours. She had not slept. The wedding, she knew, would be over by now.

The thought tied her stomach into knots.

It occurred to her that if she had let Levana come and take her from New Beijing, this was where she would have ended up anyway. She still would have been executed. She was still going to die.

She’d tried to run. She’d tried to fight. And all she got for it was a spaceship full of friends who she’d now be taking down with her.

“Why did he call you Princess?”

Cinder paused, glaring at the pathetic scratch marks she’d made. It was Pearl who had spoken, her voice fragile as she broke their silence for the first time in hours.

Pushing the miscreant hair back with her sweat-dampened wrist, Cinder glanced at Pearl and Adri, not bothering to hide her disdain. She had already hardened herself to any sort of sympathy for them. Every time a twinge struck her, she called up the memory of Adri demanding that Cinder hobble around footless for an entire week, as a reminder that she “wasn’t human.” Or the time Pearl had thrown Cinder’s toolbox into a crowded street, ruining the silk gloves Kai had given her.

She kept reminding herself that whatever was going to happen to them, they deserved it.

It didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, thinking about it was making her feel cruel and petty, and also giving her a headache.

She shook it off.

“I’m Princess Selene,” she answered, turning back to her work.

Pearl laughed, a short hysterical sound, full of disbelief.

Adri stayed silent.

The cell filled with Cinder’s persistent scrape scrape clatter, scrape scrape clatter. Her pile grew larger, pebble by hard-earned pebble.

She was never getting out of here.

“Garan knew.” Adri’s voice was brittle.

Cinder froze again. Garan had been Adri’s husband, the man who had made the decision to adopt Cinder. She’d barely known him.

She was annoyed when her own curiosity forced her to turn around. Switching the screwdriver for her flashlight, she beamed it toward her stepmother. “Excuse me?”

Adri flinched, both arms wrapped around her daughter. They hadn’t moved from their corner. “Garan knew,” she said again. “He never told me, but when he was taken away to the quarantines, he told me to take care of you. He said it as if it were the most important thing in the world.” She fell quiet, like the presence of her dead husband was there, hanging over them all.

“Wow,” said Cinder. “You really excelled at that dying request, didn’t you?”

Adri’s gaze narrowed, full of a disgust Cinder was all too familiar with. “I will not tolerate you speaking to me this way when my husband—”

“You won’t tolerate it?” Cinder yelled. “Should I tell you all the things I’m no longer going to tolerate? Because it’s a long list.”

Adri shrank back. Cinder had wondered if Adri might be afraid of her, now that she was Lunar and a wanted felon. Her reaction confirmed it.

“Why wouldn’t Dad say something?” said Pearl. “Why wouldn’t he tell us?”

“Maybe he knew you’d sell me for ransom the first chance you got.”

Pearl ignored her. “And if you really are the princess, why are you in here?”

Cinder glared at her. Waited. Watched as understanding dawned across Pearl’s face. “She wants to kill you, so she can stay the queen.”

“Give the girl a treat,” Cinder said.

“But what does it have to do with us?” Tears began to pool in Pearl’s eyes. “Why are we being punished? We didn’t do anything. We didn’t know.”

Cinder’s adrenaline and anger were slipping, exhaustion crawling into the spaces they’d left behind. “You gave me your invitations to the royal wedding, which allowed me to kidnap Kai, which drove Levana crazy. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“How can you think only of yourself at a time like this?” Adri snapped. “How can you be so selfish?”

Cinder’s hands curled into fists. “If I don’t take care of myself, nobody will. That’s something I learned early on, thanks to you.”

Adri pulled her daughter closer and smoothed down her hair. Pearl slumped against her without a fight. Cinder wondered if she was in shock. Maybe they both were.

She turned back to the wall and carved a C into the stone. These walls were scored with hundreds of words, names, pleas, promises, threats. She considered adding a “+ K” but the idea of such whimsy made her want to beat her head against the iron door.

“You’re a monster,” Adri whispered.

Cinder smirked, without humor. “Fine. I’m a monster.”

“You couldn’t even save Peony.”

At the mention of her younger stepsister a new bout of rage surged like a thousand sparking wires in Cinder’s head. She spun back. “You think I didn’t try?”

“You had an antidote!” Adri was screaming now too, her eyes wild, though she stayed hunkered over Pearl. “I know you gave it to that little boy. It saved his life. Chang Sunto!” She spat the name like poison. “You chose to save him over Peony. How could you? Did you taunt her with it? Did you give her false hope before you watched her die?”

Cinder gaped at her stepmother, her own anger eclipsed with a surprising jolt of pity. This woman was full of so much ignorance it was almost like she wanted to stay that way. She saw what she wanted, believed anything to support her limited view of the world. Cinder could still remember how she had felt running to the plague quarantines. How she’d desperately clutched the vial of antidote. How she’d been so hopeful she could save Peony’s life, and so devastated when she failed.

She’d been too late. She still hadn’t quite forgiven herself.

Adri would never know, would never understand. To her, Cinder was just a machine, incapable of anything but cruelty.

Five years she had lived with this woman, and never once had she seen Cinder as she was. As Kai saw her, and Thorne and Iko and all the people who trusted her. All the people who knew her.

She shook her head, finding it easier than she’d expected to dismiss her stepmother’s words. “I’m done trying to explain myself to you. I’m done seeking your approval. I’m done with you.”

Kicking at the pile of rock shavings, she jabbed the screwdriver into the wall at the same moment she heard footsteps.

Her jaw tightened. Her time was up. Turning, she reached Adri and Pearl in three long strides. They both shriveled away.

Cinder grabbed the front of Adri’s shirt and pulled her upward.

“If you even think about telling them my foot can be as easily removed as that finger, I will force you to gouge out your own eyes with your fingernails if it is the last thing I do—do you understand me?”

Adri paled and gave a trembling nod before a man’s voice sounded beyond the door.

“Open it.”

Dropping her stepmother back into the corner, Cinder spun back.

The door opened and the cell filled with the corridor’s light, a single guard, Thaumaturge Aimery, plus four additional thaumaturges dressed in a mix of red and black. Five of them. How flattering.

“Her Majesty has requested the pleasure of your company,” said Aimery.

Cinder lifted her chin. “I can’t promise my company will be as pleasant as she expects.”

She strode toward them to show she wasn’t afraid, but suddenly felt herself being thrown against the wall. The pain jolted down her spine, knocking the air from her lungs. It reminded her of all the sparring matches she’d had with Wolf aboard the Rampion, except a hundred times worse because Wolf always looked guilty afterward.

The guard who had thrown her wrapped his hand around Cinder’s throat. Cinder scowled at him, even though she knew he was being controlled and her true attacker was one of the thaumaturges. The guard glared back.

“That was your first warning,” said Aimery. “If you try to run, if you try to fight, if we sense you trying to use your gift, we will not bother with a second one.”

The guard released her and Cinder slumped, bracing herself with locked knees. She rubbed her neck briefly before her wrists were yanked behind her back and bound.

The guard shoved her toward the door. There were four more guards in the hallway, weapons drawn. Unfortunately, they were already under the control of the thaumaturges. She had no hope for turning any of them to her side.

Yet.

But if anyone slipped for a moment, she wasn’t going to bother with a first warning.

“Bring the Earthens too,” Aimery said.

Adri and Pearl whimpered as they were hauled to their feet, but Cinder turned down her audio interface to drown them out. She didn’t know why Levana wanted her stepmother and stepsister, but if she thought Cinder held some affection for them, she would be disappointed.

“Where are we going?” Cinder asked as she was shoved away from the cell.

There was a long silence, and she was sure she was being ignored, but eventually Aimery answered, “You are to be the guest of honor at Her Majesty’s wedding feast.”

She clenched her jaw. Wedding feast. “But I forgot my ball gown on Earth.”

This time, it was one of the females who snickered. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to get blood all over it anyway.”