Winter (48 page)

Clearheaded, Cinder bent down to retrieve a gun from one of the fallen guards. She lifted her arm, gritting her teeth against the searing pain in her shoulder, and aimed for the spot between the queen’s eyes.

For a split second, Levana looked terrified.

Then Kai was between them, face slack from manipulation.

Sweat dripped into Cinder’s eyes, blurring the world around her.

The heavy doors crashed open, followed by the sound of boots pounding in the hallway.

Reinforcements had arrived.

Heartened, Levana sent every remaining person in the room charging at Cinder. The Earthens and the aristocrats may not have weapons, but there were a lot of hands and a lot of nails and a lot of teeth. The new guards would be close behind.

What had her sentence been?
Death by dismemberment.

Cinder lowered the gun, pivoted, and ran. Past the puppet Lunars in their glittering clothes. Past the mindless servants and the dead thaumaturges and the splatters of blood and the fallen chairs and Pearl and Adri cowering in a corner. She sprinted toward the only escape—the wide-open balcony hanging above the water.

The pain in her shoulder throbbed and she used the reminder to run faster, her feet pounding against the hard marble.

She heard gunshots, but she had already jumped. The black sky opened up before her and she fell.

Fifty-Two

Kai was rooted to the ground, a statue surrounded by turmoil. Levana was screaming—no,
screeching
—her normally melodic voice turned harsh and unbearable. She was yelling orders—
Find her! Bring her back! Kill her!
—but no one was listening. There was no one left to listen.

Nearly all of the guards were dead. The thaumaturges, dead. The wolf soldiers, dead. A handful of servant and aristocrat bodies littered the floor as well, tossed among the blood and broken furniture, the victims of hungry hybrid soldiers let loose on an unsuspecting, unarmed crowd.

Beside him, Levana ripped the jeweled necklace off some Lunar woman and threw it at a servant girl who was cowering on the floor, splattered with blood. “You! Bring me more guards! I want every guard and thaumaturge in the palace in this room at once. And
you—
clean up this mess! What are you all standing there for?”

The servants dispersed, half crawling, half slipping toward the hidden exits in the walls.

Awareness began to burrow its way through the shock, and Kai glanced around, spotting a group of Earthen leaders clustered in a corner. Torin was among them. He looked stricken. His suit was disheveled.

“Are you hurt?” Kai asked.

“No, sir.” Torin made his way to Kai, gripping the backs of chairs to keep from slipping on the bloody floor. “Are you?”

Kai shook his head. “The Earthens—?”

“All accounted for. No one seems to be injured.”

Kai tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry and the saliva got stuck until he tried a second time.

He spotted Aimery emerging from one of the servants’ alcoves, the only surviving thaumaturge from the trials, though more had since arrived. The members of the court who hadn’t yet run from the throne room were plastered to the back walls, sobbing hysterically or jabbering to one another as they tried to relive the traumatic event, piecing together their stories. Who had seen what and which guard had shot whom and did that girl really believe she was the lost princess?

Cinder, half-starved and surrounded by enemies, had caused so much destruction in so little time, right in front of the queen. It was unnatural. Impossible. Sort of amazing.

A laugh burbled up Kai’s throat, trembling uncontrolled in his diaphragm. His emotions were shredded with fear and panic and awe. Hysteria hit him like a punch to the gut. He pressed a hand over his mouth as the crazed laughter spilled out, turning fast into panicked breaths.

Torin pressed a hand between his shoulder blades. “Majesty?”

“Torin,” Kai stammered, struggling to breathe, “do you think she’s all right?”

Though Torin looked doubtful, he answered, “She has shown herself to be quite resilient.”

Kai started to make his way across the throne room, his wedding shoes leaving prints in the sticky blood. Reaching the edge, he peered down into the water. He had not been able to tell from his seat how far the drop was. Four stories, at least. His stomach flipped. He couldn’t see to the opposite shore. In fact, the lake stretched out so far it seemed to run right into the dome’s wall.

Though the air was still, the water was choppy and black as ink. He searched and searched for something to indicate a body, a girl, a sheen of a metal limb, but there was no sign of her.

He shivered. Could Cinder swim? Was her body even designed for swimming? He knew she’d taken showers aboard the Rampion, but to be fully submerged …

“Could she have survived?”

Kai jumped. Levana stood a few feet away with her arms crossed and nostrils flared. Kai moved away from her, spurred by the irrational fear that she was about to push him off the ledge. As soon as he backed away, though, he remembered she could still make him jump.

“I don’t know,” he said. To provoke her, he added, “That was some marvelous entertainment, by the way. I had high expectations, and you did not disappoint.”

She snarled and he was glad he’d backed away.

“Aimery,” she snapped. “Have the lake combed by morning. I want the cyborg’s heart served to me on a silver platter.”

Aimery bowed. “It will be done, Your Majesty.” He nodded toward the group of thaumaturges that had arrived after all the action, who were all trying to look like the destruction of the throne room wasn’t as shocking as it was. Four of them departed. “I am afraid I must inform Your Majesty that there has been a disturb—”

“
Clearly
there is a disturbance!” Levana bellowed. She jutted her red fingernail toward the lake. “You think I can’t see that?”

Aimery pressed his lips. “Of course, My Queen, but there is something else.”

Her gaze burned. “What else could there be?”

“As you know, the trial and execution tonight was live-broadcast to all sectors. It would appear that as a result of the cyborg’s escape, the people are … they are rioting. In several sectors, it seems. SB-1 is the nearest that our security footage indicates, and there also appears to be a sizable crowd of civilians beginning to march toward Artemisia from as far away as AT-6.”

“She did not escape.” Levana’s voice sounded thin and taut, about to splinter. Kai took another step away from her. “She is dead. Tell them she is dead. She could not have survived the fall. And find her!
Find her!
”

“Yes, My Queen. We will assemble a broadcast informing the people of Linh Cinder’s death immediately. But we cannot guarantee that this alone will subdue the riots…”

“Enough.” Levana shoved the thaumaturge out of her way and stormed toward her throne, planting herself before it. “Barricade the maglev tunnels in and out of Artemisia. Shut down the ports. No one is to enter or leave this dome until that cyborg has been found and the civilians of Luna have repented for their actions. If anyone tries to get through the barricades, shoot them!”

“Wait,” said Europe’s Prime Minister Bromstad, stalking toward Levana. The throne room had mostly emptied of Lunar aristocrats, leaving only the servants who were trying to rid the room of bodies and the Earthens who were trying not to look as shaken as they were. “You can’t lock down the ports. You invited us to a wedding, not a war zone. My cabinet and I are leaving tonight.”

Levana raised an eyebrow, and that simple, elegant gesture made every hair on Kai’s neck stand on edge. She approached the prime minister, and though Bromstad held his ground, Kai could see him regretting his words. Behind him, the other leaders drew closer together.

“You want to leave tonight?” said Levana, the purr having returned to her inflections. “Well then. Allow me to help you with that.”

A nearby servant, who had been attempting invisibility, stopped scrubbing the floor and instead picked up a stray serving fork. On her knees, head bowed, the servant handed the fork to Prime Minister Bromstad.

The second his hand closed around the fork’s handle, fear surged through his face. Not just fear. But a fear in knowing that he was now holding a weapon, and Levana could make him do anything—
anything
—that she wanted to.

“Stop!” said Kai, grabbing Levana’s elbow.

She sneered at him.

“As I said before, I will not make you my empress if you attack a leader of an allied country. Let him go. Let them all go. There’s been enough bloodshed for one day.”

Levana’s eyes burned like coals, and there was a moment in which Kai thought she might kill them all and simply take Earth with her army, her pathway cleared with all the world leaders gone.

He knew the thought had crossed her mind.

But there were a lot of people on Earth—far more than on Luna. She could not control them all. A rebellion on Earth would be much more difficult to secure if she tried to take it by force.

The fork clattered to the floor and the air left Bromstad in rush.

“She will not save you,” Levana hissed. “I know you think she’s alive and that this little rebellion of hers will succeed, but it won’t. Soon, I will be empress and she will be dead. If she isn’t already.” Schooling her features, she slicked her hands down the front of her dress, like she could smooth out the disaster of the past hour. “I do not know that I will see you again, dear husband, until we stand together for our coronations. I am afraid the sight of you is making me ill.”

Thanks to a warning look from Torin, Kai managed to withhold commentary on this unexpected disappointment.

With a snap of her fingers, Levana ordered one of the servants to have a bath drawn in her chambers and then she was gone, blood clinging to the hem of her gown as she swept from the throne room.

Kai exhaled, dizzy from it all. The queen’s sudden absence. The iron tang of blood mixed with sharp cleaning chemicals and the lingering aroma of braised beef. The way his ears still echoed with gunfire and how he would never forget the image of Cinder launching herself off that ledge.

“Your Majesty?” said a shriveled, frightened voice.

Turning, he saw Linh Adri and Pearl crouched in a corner. Tears and dirt streaked their faces.

“Might we…” Adri gulped, and he could see the fluttering rise and fall of her chest as she tried to gather herself. “Might it be possible for you to … to send my daughter and me home?” She sniffed and brand-new tears pooled in her eyes. Scrunching up her face, she let her shoulders slump, her body barely supported in the corner of the room. “I’m ready … I want to go home now. Please.”

Kai clenched his jaw, pitying the woman almost as much as he despised her. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like anyone is leaving until this is over.”

Fifty-Three

The water hit her like concrete. The force pounded through her body. Every limb vibrated, first with the hard slap of the water, then from its icy cold.

It swallowed her down. She was still reeling from the hit as the air left her lungs in a burst of froth and bubbles. Already her chest was burning. Her body rolled over like a buoy, her heavy left leg dragging her down.

A red warning light filled up the darkness.

L
IQUID
IMMERSION
DETECTED
. S
HUTTING
DOWN
POWER
SUPPLY
IN
3 …

That was as far as the countdown got. Blackness pulled at the back of Cinder’s brain, as if a switch had been turned off. Dizziness rocked her. She forced her eyes open and looked toward the surface, only able to orient herself because she could feel her leg pulling her down, down.

White sparks were creeping into the corners of her vision. Her lungs tightened, begging to contract.

Slippery weeds reached up to grasp at her, sliming her right calf where her pants had bunched around her knee. Willing herself to stay conscious, Cinder aimed her finger’s flashlight into the blackness at her feet and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened.

With just enough light from the palace filtering through the muck and water, Cinder thought she detected a series of pale bones caught among the grasses. Her metal foot sank into a rib cage.

She jolted, surprise clearing her thoughts as the bones crushed beneath her.

Gritting her teeth, Cinder used every ounce of energy left to push herself off the lake bottom, struggling back toward the surface. Her left leg and hand weren’t responding to her controls. They had become nothing but dead weights at the end of her limbs, and her shoulder screamed where the mutant soldier had dug his teeth into her flesh. It took every ounce of remaining energy to claw her way upward.

Her diaphragm twitched. Overhead, the glare on the surface grew brighter, lights flickering like a mirage over the surface. She felt the strength draining out of her, her waterlogged leg trying to drag her back down …

She burst through the surface with a sputter, sucking huge mouthfuls of air into her lungs. She managed to tread water for one desperate moment before she was pulled down again. Her muscles burned as she kicked, bobbing back up at the surface, straining to keep her head above the water.

As the flashes in her vision began to recede, Cinder swiped the water from her eyes. The palace towered above her, ominous and oppressive despite its beauty, stretching along either side of the lake. Without artificial daylight brightening the dome, she could see the spread of the Milky Way beyond the glass, mesmerizing.

On the balcony far above her, Cinder caught shadows moving. Then a wave crashed into her and she was underwater again, her body battered against the current. She lost her sense of direction, up or down. Panic burst again in her head, her arms flailing for control against the buffeting waves. Her shoulder throbbed. Only when she felt herself sinking did she reorient herself and flounder back to the surface.