Cress (56 page)

“This isn’t a joke.”

She was surprised at how the words stung. Like before, in the palace, indignation reared up fast and burning. “You have no idea how seriously I’m taking this.”

“Are you? Do you even know what the consequences are going to be for what you’ve done?”

“Yes, actually. I know this is a war. I am aware that more people are going to die before this is over. But we didn’t have a choice.”

“Your choice was to stay out of the way! Your choice was to do nothing! This is my job, my responsibility. I’m the emperor. Let me handle it.”

“By letting you
marry
her? That’s handling it?”

“It’s my decision.”

“It’s a stupid one!”

Kai spun away, his hands clawed into his hair. Whatever product had been used to style it for the wedding was making it messier than usual, and stars, he looked good.

Cinder smothered the thought, annoyed with herself.

“Please,” he said, his voice strained as he faced her again. “Please tell me this isn’t some … some petty act of jealousy. Please tell me this isn’t all because I asked you to the ball, or that time in the elevator, or—”

“Oh, you can’t be serious. I hope you don’t really think so little of me.”

“You
shot
me, Cinder, and then you
kidnapped
me. I honestly don’t know what to think.”

“Well, believe it or not, we didn’t just do this for you. We’re trying to save the whole world from your power-crazy fiancée. I refuse to let Levana become empress. I refuse to give her free rein over the Commonwealth. But we need more time.”

“More time for what? All you’ve done is make her angrier, so that when she retaliates, her wrath is going to be that much worse. Was that a part of your master plan, or are you just making this up as you go along?”

Cinder’s blood began to boil and she desperately, desperately wished she could tell him that, yes, of course they had a grand master plan that was guaranteed to work. Guaranteed to rid them all of Queen Levana and her tyranny forever. But there was no guarantee. Only a string of hope, and the knowledge that losing wasn’t an option.

She swallowed, hard. “I have a plan, to end this for good. But I need your help.”

Kai pinched the bridge of his nose. “Cinder. I hate Levana as much as you do. But she’s the one pulling the strings here. She has this army … it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Those little skirmishes that killed sixteen thousand people a couple weeks ago? Laughable compared to what she’s really capable of. Plus she has an antidote to letumosis, and we desperately need it—you know how much we need it. So while the idea of marrying Levana and crowning her empress makes me want to gouge out my own eyes, I don’t have a choice.”

“Gouge out your own eyes?” she said softly. “She could make you do that, you know.”

His expression darkened. “So could you, I’m told.”

She looked away. “Kai—Your Majesty—”

He waved his arms through the air. “Kai is fine. I don’t care.”

Cinder pressed her lips. It felt like a victory, but an unearned one. “You have to trust me. We can defeat her. I know we can.”

“How? Even if … let’s say you did. Let’s say you even managed to kill her. There’s still a whole posse of thaumaturges ready to take her place, and from what I’ve seen, they’re not much better.”

“We’ll choose the person to replace her. We … already have her replacement, actually.”

He snickered. “Ah. I see. Because you think the Lunar people will bow to just any … one…” He trailed off, eyes widening. And, for a moment, his anger was gone. “Unless … wait. You don’t mean…?”

She looked at the floor.

He took a single step toward her. “Did you find her? Princess Selene? Is that what this is all about?”

Cinder took the pliers out of her pocket, needing something to fiddle with while her nerves sparked and sputtered. She remembered that her metal hand was still bare, but Kai hadn’t glanced at it once through the whole argument.

“Cinder?”

“Yeah,” she breathed. “Yeah. I found her.”

Kai pointed toward the cargo bay. “Is it that blonde girl?”

She shook her head, and Kai frowned. “The girl from France? What was her name … Scarlet something?”

“No. Not Scarlet.” She squeezed the pliers, trying to direct all her frazzled energy into them.

“Then where is she? Is she on this ship? Can I meet her? Or is she still on Earth somewhere? Is she in hiding?”

When Cinder said nothing, Kai frowned. “What’s wrong? Is she all right?”

“I have to ask you something, and I want you to be honest.”

His eyes narrowed, instantly suspicious, which bothered her more than she cared to admit. She loosened her grip on the pliers. “Do you really think I brainwashed you before? When we met? And all those times, before the ball…”

His shoulders drooped. “Really? You’re changing the subject to talk about
this
?”

“It’s important to me.” She turned away and started gathering the tools she’d used to fix Iko. “I understand if you do. I know how it must have looked.”

Kai fidgeted with his ceremonial sash, then, after a moment, pulled it over his head and bunched it up in his fists. “I don’t know. I never wanted to believe it, but I’ve had to wonder. And when you fell, and I saw your glamour … Cinder, do you have any idea how beautiful your glamour is?”

Cinder cringed, knowing that he didn’t mean it as a compliment.
Painful to look at
were the words he’d used at the time.

“No,” she said, distracting herself by returning each tool to its designated place on the magnetic wall. “I can’t see it.”

“Well, it’s … it was a lot to take in that night. But then, Levana has manipulated me plenty of times, so I know what it feels like. And it never felt like that with you.”

She released the last tool.

“Of course, the media wants to think that’s what happened. It would be convenient.”

“Right.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “A convenient excuse for inviting a cyborg to the ball.”

He blinked. “For inviting a Lunar to the ball.”

The knot that had been tied up in her stomach for weeks began to unravel, just a little. “Not that it makes a difference what I say, but … I never did. Manipulate you, I mean. And I never will.” She hesitated. It was a promise that she didn’t know if she’d be able to keep. Not if he didn’t agree to help them. “And I did try to tell you about being cyborg. I mean, kind of. I’m sure I considered it at least twice.”

Kai started to shake his head and she held her breath. “No, you were right before. If you’d told me, I probably never would have spoken to you again.” He stared down at the sash twisted between his fists. “Although, I like to think I would act differently now.”

He met her gaze and she noticed, with a start, that his ears had gone pink. And then his lips quirked into the faintest of smiles.

It was the smile she’d been waiting for.

It didn’t last long.

“Cinder. Look. I am glad I’m not married right now, but this was still a huge mistake. I can’t risk angering Levana. Whatever you’re planning, you have to leave me out of it.”

“I can’t. I need your help.”

He sighed, but it was shaky, and she could tell his resolve was crumbling.

“You think Selene can overthrow her?”

Biting the inside of her cheek, she nodded. “I do.”

“Then I hope she intends to do it soon.”

Dragging her hands down her sides, Cinder felt nervousness pressing against her rib cage. “Kai, she may not be exactly what you were hoping for. I don’t want you to be disappointed. I know you put a lot into trying to find her and—”

“Why? What’s wrong with her?”

Cringing, she knotted her fingers together. Metal and skin. “Well. She was rescued from that fire, but it destroyed a lot of her body. She lost some limbs. And a lot of her skin had to be grafted. And … she’s just not … entirely
whole.
”

He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean? Is she in a coma?”

“Not anymore.” She braced herself for his reaction. “But she’s a cyborg.”

His eyes widened, but then his attention was darting around the room as though he couldn’t look at Cinder while he adjusted to that information. “I see,” he said slowly, before meeting her gaze again. “But … is she all right?”

The question caught her by surprise and she couldn’t help a startled laugh. “Oh, yeah, she’s great. I mean, half the people in the world want to kill her and the other half want to chain her to a throne on the moon, which is just what she’s always wanted. So she’s
fantastic.
”

He stared at her like he was once again questioning her sanity. “What?”

Cinder shut her eyes and tried to bury her mounting panic. Opening them again, she spread her hands, placating. Hesitated.

She looked at the ceiling.

Took in a breath.

Met his gaze again.

“It’s me, Kai. I’m Princess Selene.”

Sixty-One

Kai’s face was made up of confusion, like she’d spoken gibberish. His wedding sash slipped out of his hands and drifted to the floor.

When the silence slipped toward awkward, Cinder cleared her throat. “And in case you weren’t sure, I was being sarcastic before about all that ‘great’ stuff. Not that, I mean—I know you have your own things to worry about, so you don’t need to … I don’t … I’m fine, really. It’s just been a rough few weeks with the whole”—she circled her hands wildly through the air—“Peony-ball-Levana-wedding thing. And now Dr. Erland is dead and Scarlet is gone and Thorne is blind and Wolf … I’m not sure. He’s so
still
these days and I’m really starting to worry about him. But I’ve got it under control. I can do this. I’m—”

“Stop. Please stop talking.”

She clamped her mouth shut.

The silence dragged on.

Cinder opened her mouth, but Kai held up his hand. She shut it again. Bit her lip.

“You?” he finally said. “
You
are Princess Selene?”

Grimacing, she rubbed at her wrist. “Surprise?”

“All this time?”

She ducked her head, suddenly uncomfortable at the way he was looking at her. “Um, yeah, technically. Dr. Erland figured it out first, when I was taken in for the cyborg draft. He ran my DNA and … yeah. But he decided not to tell me until I was locked up in prison, which complicated a few things.”

Kai guffawed, but not in a mean way. Inhaling a shaky breath, he rubbed the palms of his hands into his eyes. Then, as quickly as his disbelief had come, the comprehension came faster. “Oh, stars. Levana knows, doesn’t she? That’s why she hates you so much. That’s why she’s so determined to find you.”

“Yeah, she knows.”

“And it was you. This whole time, it was
you
.”

“You’re actually taking this better than I thought you would.”

He dragged both hands down his face. “No, you know, it almost makes sense. Kind of.” He scraped his gaze over her. “Although … somehow, I always pictured the princess … I don’t know. In a dress.”

Cinder laughed.

“And I always thought that when I found her, it would be so easy. We would just … present her to the world and announce her as the true queen, and Levana would crawl away to some hole. I never imagined that Levana would already know. That she would be
fighting
it.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “I’m beginning to think you may not know your fiancée very well.”

He scowled at her. “That’s it, Cinder. No more secrets. I don’t know if I can survive any more big reveals from you, so if you have anything else to tell me, out with it. Right now.”

Cinder rocked back on her heels, pondering.

Cyborg. Lunar. Princess.

No more secrets. No more lies.

Well, just one.

She thought she might be a tiny bit in love with him.

But there was no way she could tell him
that.

“I can’t cry,” she whispered instead, hunching her shoulders.

Kai blinked, twice, then scratched his ear and looked away. “I already knew that.”

“What? How?”

“Your guardian may have said something about it. And I … I’ve seen your medical records.”

“My—” Her eyes widened. “You’ve seen … you know…?”

“You were a fugitive and I needed to know more about you and I … I’m sorry.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d seen the diagram of her cyborg implants. Every wire. Every synthetic organ. Every manufactured panel. Thinking about it made her feel nauseous. She couldn’t imagine what someone else would think when they saw it. What Kai must have thought.

“No, it’s all right,” she said. “No more secrets.”

He took a step toward her. “Your eyes … are they really…?”

“Synthetic,” she murmured, when he couldn’t say the word himself.

“And that’s why you can’t cry?”

She nodded, unable to look up at him, even as he came to stand not two steps in front of her. “I don’t need the tear ducts for lubrication, and they were getting in the way of … um.” She tapped a finger against her temple. “I have a retina scanner and display in my eye. It’s like a really small netscreen, so there’s a lot of wiring. Oh, stars, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.” She buried her face in her hands.

“It’s kind of brilliant,” said Kai.

She nearly choked on her own laugh.

Kai reached for her wrists. “Can I see?”

She groaned, knowing that if she had the ability to blush, her face would be as red as his wedding sash.

Mortified and resigned, she let him pull her hands away and struggled to hold his gaze. He stared into her eyes like he could see through to her control panel, but then, after a moment, he shook his head.

“You’d never even know.”

Trying not to fidget, Cinder raised her eyes to the ceiling, hating herself a little bit for what she was about to do. But what did it matter now? He would never again be fooled into thinking she was human.

“Watch the bottom of my left iris,” she whispered. She turned on the retina display, pulling up a newsfeed she’d been watching before they got to New Beijing—news from the African Union. An anchor was talking, but Cinder didn’t bother to turn on the audio.